Email address charges branded 'daylight robbery'

alanwsg

Saw this on the BBC news today,
People seem surprised that a company isn't going to provide them with a free service for life.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51571275

JJ_Egan

Ofcom are looking at what they call high prices .

ISPs may well lower the price if forced to ,OR simply not supply the service to non customers .

Chino

Yet again, the world is supposed to bend over backwards to accommodate the idle and lazy.

Neil_Jones

Daylight robbery, my backside.  Nobody's forcing you to keep the email address.

 

Anyway, surely its relatively obvious that if you have an email address @plus.net and you move to Sky,  you may not be able to keep the plus.net address if you're no longer with them?

Of course free email providers have their own quirks and problems, but at least you can use your Yahoo Mail account immaterial of the provider.

macman

No one was much bothered by this when the fee was a couple of quid a month. But now BT have milked the cash cow dry (as I suspect the vast majority of people unwilling to change email addresses are ex-BT customers) by hiking it up to a rip-off £7.50pm, so Ofcom feels it now has to act. 

onomatopoeia99

macman said:

No one was much bothered by this when the fee was a couple of quid a month. But now BT have milked the cash cow dry (as I suspect the vast majority of people unwilling to change email addresses are ex-BT customers) by hiking it up to a rip-off £7.50pm, so Ofcom feels it now has to act. 

BT can always say "If you won't let us charge what we feel is fair, we'll discontinue the service in 14 days".  Then we'll have the same people complaining about their email being disconnected.

Cisco001

No one force you to pay if you don't want.
There are free service like gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.

spadoosh

Iv always considered someones email address a bit of an identifier. 

If you use an ISP email address youre, for all intents and purposes, incompetent on computers. My wife has one. She still refuses to use online shopping. The assumption from me is that ISP email address = cant use google (other search engines are available for those who use a ISP email address) and type 'best email provider'.

Theres options for people. Up to them if they want to be charged or not. Some people pay for mail diverts, i get in touch with the people who need to get in touch with me to avoid paying for that service. 

onomatopoeia99

spadoosh said:

Iv always considered someones email address a bit of an identifier. 

If you use an ISP email address youre, for all intents and purposes, incompetent on computers. My wife has one. She still refuses to use online shopping. The assumption from me is that ISP email address = cant use google (other search engines are available for those who use a ISP email address) and type 'best email provider'.
. 

When I got my ISP email address, Larry Page and Sergey Brin hadn't even met, so at the time I couldn't use google.  Still using it 26 years later, even though the ISP no longer exists. 

It would be easier to move house than change my email address.

J_B

I still have a xxxx@onetel.com email address

Haven't used it for years but Thunderbird keeps checking it, so no need to delete it!

Robisere

When I first saw this, I marvelled at the lack of initiative and knowledge of people using devices. Off they go, buying something to get them on the internet, without the basic knowledge of how it all works and what to do if it goes wrong. I knew nothing of computing until my late 50's and disability, but I went for courses and I taught myself a lot. I learned as much as I could and I wound up building desktop systems and building a business designing and printing. I also learned how to use email and that webmail is garbage. I often see email addresses that contain the names and/or other identifying details. I have advised people to change them into something that cannot be used to ID them, but it's mostly a waste of time. Too many people are too lazy to do anything to learn something about the devices they use and then they wail when it all goes TU.