Are Freeserve email addresses now completely dead?

John_Gray

A charity I help occasionally has been using a Freeserve.co.uk email account for years and years (as you can well imagine!) but last month it seemed to stop working, and came up with the username/password sign-on box. I rang up Orange technical support on Friday and the technical supporter said there was no record of this particular email address - surprising because of the length of use.

I seem to remember reading a year or two ago that Orange were going to discontinue Freeserve email addresses, then nothing more.

Does anyone know if this has now happened?

Thanks!

Whitefiver

Hi,

No, freeserve email addresses are still functioning, at least mine is. However, you do have to log onto it regularly, or it will go. There is a bit more information here.

Regards,

White.

dm575

Yes, you will find that Orange will just delete your email account with no warning at all. I was using mine daily having been a user for over 10 years. As it was originally a dial up account every so often I would have to reactivate things. A couple of weeks ago it all stopped working and this is the reply from Orange "customer service".
We are sorry to hear you are having problems accessing your email. We
have checked our systems for the email address you provided us, but the
account has been deleted. The reason for this is because the email
address was registered to our Pay As You Go dial up service and has not
been dialled into for over 219. The account then follows a deletion
process. As the account has now been deleted we are not able to
re-activate it. We apologies for any inconvienience caused.What a discraceful way to behave. I retrieved emails daily so the account was obviously still active. The least they could have done was to give me notice it was closing but there was nothing. You can be assured that I will have nothing to do with this company in the future and will warn everyone I know of how they behave.

aerostar

I have a number of freeserve e-mail accounts, and they always e-mail when it is about to expire. You may well collect your e-mails every day, but I suspect you do via broadband, if so this does not keep the clock reset, you have to either dial in at least once every 3 months or so, or when you cannot get into your e-mail and before the 200+ days have elapsed you re-activate it on line.

go here enter your details and see what happens, but if it is over the magic period, you may be able to setup the same email address again.


https://www.orange.co.uk/signup/noties/ar60.cfm

noopin

I cannot believe, in this day and age, that there is not a server somewhere that contains all the "deleted" email accounts. Can you imagine US Homeland Security simply deleting email traffic, that might include very recent communications?
You'll have guessed that my fsnet account vanished last week - I really can't remember the last time I was prompted to log in using Orange internet, rather than just the homepage. I've read some heartbreaking tales of what some people have lost, after we've been encouraged to archive various media and documents with them.
I asked Orange (after spending an hour talking to an operative in India who was trying to retrieve my password, and who didn't realise this might have happened) to tell me when I last logged on the "correct" way; apparently, that info was lost with the account, but it's certainly more than 18 months, and now I can't show that they haven't recently warned me!