How do I get rid of BT?

jesslover

Please, please, please, can someone please help. My wife and I have been with BT for...well....forever and want to change our broadband provider.

I know there are loads of other suppliers but the main issue are our email addresses.

Every time I ask BT if we can keep our email address the answer is "Yes, of course, if you have our broadband package. Or you can pay £6.99 (?) a month to keep it"

REALLY? £7 a month just to have an email address? All our 'life' accounts are linked to these addresses and it would be such a pain to change them all.

Please, can anyone tell me how to get out of these shackles with BT but still keep our email address without paying best part of £100 a year?

Yours

Mr Sad and Mrs Depressed

littleboo

You can have BT Email Basic for free. However, you would be better long term moving to a non-ISP provided email address. If you have a free email, you cant really complain if there is a problem with it or the provder decides to withdraw it at some point in the future.
https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-email-products

flaneurs_lobster

The BT Basic email service (web-only access) should be available to you 

https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-email-products

If I've read that right you can keep any existing BT email addresses but not add any more.

JJ_Egan

Much the same with many ISP emails as you don't own them , just do as above and start shifting them .

You dont say why you want to change BB provider , unless you move to Virgin it will come down the same BT route .

£7 pm  i thought it was dearer .

iniltous

FWIW, if you  leave some ISP’s  they just delete your email account,you don’t get the option to keep it,  at least you have to option to keep it active , for free with the basic service ( email clients won’t work with the free option ) or the paid for option.

[Deleted User]

jesslover said:

.... it would be such a pain to change them all.

Please, can anyone tell me how to get out of these shackles with BT but still keep our email address without paying best part of £100 a year?

Yours

Mr Sad and Mrs Depressed

Yes it is a a bit of effort to change them but for a few hours work saving £100 per year or whatever it works out for you by changing ISP is well worth the effort.

I've done this before, just go through your password manager which will give you a head start for listing all the online accounts you have and work through those. 

Then go through your contact list, send them all an email to tell them about your change of email address.

Just motivate yourself by reminding yourself of how much money it will save you in the long run.

[Deleted User]

JJ_Egan said:

Much the same with many ISP emails as you don't own them , just do as above and start shifting them .

You dont say why you want to change BB provider , unless you move to Virgin it will come down the same BT route .

£7 pm  i thought it was dearer .

Just because it comes down an OpenReach line, it does not mean all broadband is one and the same.

Neil_Jones

jesslover said:

Please, please, please, can someone please help. My wife and I have been with BT for...well....forever and want to change our broadband provider.

I know there are loads of other suppliers but the main issue are our email addresses.

Every time I ask BT if we can keep our email address the answer is "Yes, of course, if you have our broadband package. Or you can pay £6.99 (?) a month to keep it"

REALLY? £7 a month just to have an email address? All our 'life' accounts are linked to these addresses and it would be such a pain to change them all.

Please, can anyone tell me how to get out of these shackles with BT but still keep our email address without paying best part of £100 a year?

Yours

Mr Sad and Mrs Depressed

Set up a Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo account.

Set this and your BT account up in Outlook/Thunderbird or another email program of your choosing.

Once they've synced you should be able to just a new folder in the Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo account and drag all your old emails over.  Once resync is done, your emails are out.

Then you can just email Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby and all your other contacts that your email address is no longer thewaltons@bt but is now Olly olly oxen free@gmail and not to email the BT address.  After a month or so of monitoring the BT address for new email you can tell BT what to do with it.

This is the peril of ISP email unfortunately.  You're usually better off with a third party one anyway as it lets you change providers until the cows come home and your email is not affected.  Yes you'll have to shift all your "life" accounts but if you want to save £100 a year, it's worth doing.

brewerdave

jesslover said:

REALLY? £7 a month just to have an email address? All our 'life' accounts are linked to these addresses and it would be such a pain to change them all.

Please, can anyone tell me how to get out of these shackles with BT but still keep our email address without paying best part of £100 a year?

Yours

Mr Sad and Mrs Depressed

Before I negotiated my b/band renewal this year, I decided to move all my essential contacts over to one of my public email addys with hotmail, gmail or yahoo in case I couldn't get a decent price.
 Took about 2-3 hours one afternoon to change ~ 60 contacts over. Still a few with the ISP addy; I change them as I find them now.

JJ_Egan

Deleted_User said:

JJ_Egan said:

Much the same with many ISP emails as you don't own them , just do as above and start shifting them .

You dont say why you want to change BB provider , unless you move to Virgin it will come down the same BT route .

£7 pm  i thought it was dearer .

Just because it comes down an OpenReach line, it does not mean all broadband is one and the same.

Yes as you know service could be better or a lot worse ,and we have no idea why the OP wants to change  .

HaroldWren5

Neil_Jones said:

jesslover said:

Please, please, please, can someone please help. My wife and I have been with BT for...well....forever and want to change our broadband provider.

I know there are loads of other suppliers but the main issue are our email addresses.

Every time I ask BT if we can keep our email address the answer is "Yes, of course, if you have our broadband package. Or you can pay £6.99 (?) a month to keep it"

REALLY? £7 a month just to have an email address? All our 'life' accounts are linked to these addresses and it would be such a pain to change them all.

Please, can anyone tell me how to get out of these shackles with BT but still keep our email address without paying best part of £100 a year?

Yours

Mr Sad and Mrs Depressed

Set up a Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo account.

Set this and your BT account up in Outlook/Thunderbird or another email program of your choosing.

Once they've synced you should be able to just a new folder in the Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo account and drag all your old emails over.  Once resync is done, your emails are out.

Then you can just email Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby and all your other contacts that your email address is no longer thewaltons@bt but is now Olly olly oxen free@gmail and not to email the BT address.  After a month or so of monitoring the BT address for new email you can tell BT what to do with it.

This is the peril of ISP email unfortunately.  You're usually better off with a third party one anyway as it lets you change providers until the cows come home and your email is not affected.  Yes you'll have to shift all your "life" accounts but if you want to save £100 a year, it's worth doing.

I agree. I think sadly using ISP email addresses now just means they can try to quote you a high price when it comes to renewing broadband. Probably best moving the e-mail over to Gmail or even Yahoo. I thought BT and Yahoo were using the same platform at one point. 

Ultimately it's a case of changing your contact e-mail in order to save 100s of pounds.