BT emails are we being conned?

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forestlands
forestlands Posts: 105 Forumite
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edited 13 January 2018 at 3:53PM in Broadband & internet access
I pay £5 a month to BT for emails, BT is using Yahoo mail which is advertised on line as free! I acquired a Yahoo account without my requesting one and without my knowledge, obviously contrived by BT.to enable me to get Yahoo mail

I have tried uninstalling Yahoo and got a warning If I uninstall Yahoo now I will loose saved documents, Yahoo says! Looks like we are charged for using BT Yahoo email when BT is there in name only and uses Yahoo free email service! When I login I am logging in to Yahoo not BT!

Looks like a scam to me, anyone else noticed this and agree ?
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  • Tom99
    Tom99 Posts: 5,371 Forumite
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    [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]If you pay BT £5 per month just for an email address then yes you are being conned, just stop paying them.[/FONT]
  • jonesMUFCforever
    jonesMUFCforever Posts: 28,898 Forumite
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    Move saved documents or back them up to a Cloud?

    Then up to you if you want to continue paying or moving to a different email address.
  • iniltous
    iniltous Posts: 3,120 Forumite
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    edited 13 January 2018 at 5:33PM
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    Presumably you use another ISP and not BT, if you don't want to keep your @btinternet.com email address active you don't have to , but if you do then either become a BT customer or continue with the current arrangement.

    It's irrelevant if you can get a 'free' Yahoo email address, you can get 'free' email from many vendors...some ISP's don't offer the option of keeping your email account open after you stop being a customer, BT do offer this, but only you can decide its it's worth what BT charge to keep on using the BT email address after you stop being a BT customer.

    I don't see how offering a service for payment is a scam, its included if you are a 'customer' , you may not think it value for money.

    If you don't like paying for the email address and don't want to be a BT customer, use the email offering from your current ISP or sign up with a 'free' email address that will endure if you change ISP again.
  • phillw
    phillw Posts: 5,595 Forumite
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    Never ever use your ISP email, they only offer it to you because it makes it a hassle to leave.

    Start switching everything over to googlemail or hotmail, make sure you have all your emails backed up locally. Using mozilla firebird you should be able to download your emails from bt, setup your new email provider and then import those emails into your new provider. It's a bit fiddly, but worth it for £60 a year.
  • Berwynview
    Berwynview Posts: 285 Forumite
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    We had a BT internet email address for many many years until we left BT in 2015. We continued to keep the email address but cancelled it in June 2016 when BT increased the cost to £5 a month.

    Nearly two years later, this cancelled BT email address is still live and forwarding emails to our current email address - we still log in to check it occasionally! It's definitely not worth paying £5 a month for
  • ic
    ic Posts: 3,293 Forumite
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    I realised back in 2003 I think it was that I was never going to stay with the same internet/email provider for ever - so bought a co.uk domain. It costs me £8 a year, and I can set up as many addresses as I like, and forward them wherever I want. I actually back my domain with a google mail account which is awesome - I've never seen anything as good. I can search all my emails all the way back to June 2004, when I opened the google account.
  • poppasmurf_bewdley
    poppasmurf_bewdley Posts: 5,910 Forumite
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    Tom99 wrote: »
    [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]If you pay BT £5 per month just for an email address then yes you are being conned, just stop paying them.[/FONT]

    Very bad advice. Don't just stop paying them or you could end up with a CCJ.

    Contact BT and give them the required month's notice to cease the service.

    And it's not use saying you never requested BT email. You must have signed up somewhere even if you don't remember doing so. BT don't just invent email accounts.
    "There are not enough superlatives in the English language to describe a 'Princess Coronation' locomotive in full cry. We shall never see their like again". O S Nock
  • forestlands
    forestlands Posts: 105 Forumite
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    I stayed with BT for emails as it would be a great inconvenience to loose the email address, account and service that goes with it! .I pay the premium rate for BT's premium service. BT have transferred my emails onto their free email service, run in conjunction with Yahoo, while still being paid for their premium service.

    I appreciate we all live different lives with different needs. My email needs have been met by BT for over 10 years. I and many others pay for BT email service, £5 a month is not cheap and service is expected! Thanks to those who have posted comments with suggestions .
  • iniltous
    iniltous Posts: 3,120 Forumite
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    edited 24 January 2018 at 10:22AM
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    forestlands wrote: »
    I stayed with BT for emails as it would be a great inconvenience to loose the email address, account and service that goes with it! .I pay the premium rate for BT's premium service. BT have transferred my emails onto their free email service, run in conjunction with Yahoo, while still being paid for their premium service.

    I appreciate we all live different lives with different needs. My email needs have been met by BT for over 10 years. I and many others pay for BT email service, £5 a month is not cheap and service is expected! Thanks to those who have posted comments with suggestions .

    I'm not clear on what you mean that BT have transferred your email address to the 'free' Yahoo server while still charging you for a premium service, I seem to recall in the early days the BT ISP email address was something like @BTYahoo.com, but you should have a @btinternet.com address now ( it could be both will work) , if you are saying that because you use that address with Yahoo in the domain it should be free as @yahoo.com is 'free' it doesn't follow that because Yahoo offer a free service, the arrangement BT has with Yahoo is free, BT may pay Yahoo to host presumably a very small part of BT's email service, and if the email address in question is @btinternet.com chances are Yahoo are not involved at all.

    As already said, obviously BT want you as a ISP customer so why would they make it easy for you to keep a useable email address for free for ever while using a competitor for Internet access, other ISP's would simply delete the email account if you leave them...paying to keep the address is a choice, you don't have to take, it then becomes a question of its value to you, is it worth £5/month to the individual....some will say yes it's worth it and keep it , others will say no it's not worth it, and prepare for the address to eventually stop working, 'worth it' isn't really a monetary value as to some £5 may represent very little and to others a quite a lot, and presumably (begrudgingly) it is worth it to you as you have decided to keep the arrangement.

    £5 a month for something available for 'free' from other vendors may seem steep, but with 'free' email providers you should be asking why is it free , what's in it for them ?, and it's the same answer for all these type of 'free' things, email , social media, photo sharing, it's you, your individual data,( D.O.B, location etc) your habits ,the places you visit and the data obtained from that , that has value , and that is the price you pay for these 'free' services, you are 'paying' the company offering the free service, with access to your 'data'
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Newbie
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    iniltous wrote: »
    I'm not clear on what you mean that BT have transferred your email address to the 'free' Yahoo server while still charging you for a premium service, I seem to recall in the early days the BT ISP email address was something like @BTYahoo.com, but you should have a @btinternet.com address now ( it could be both will work) , if you are saying that because you use that address with Yahoo in the domain it should be free as @yahoo.com is 'free' it doesn't follow that because Yahoo offer a free service, the arrangement BT has with Yahoo is free, BT may pay Yahoo to host presumably a very small part of BT's email service, and if the email address in question is @btinternet.com chances are Yahoo are not involved at all.

    As already said, obviously BT want you as a ISP customer so why would they make it easy for you to keep a useable email address for free for ever while using a competitor for Internet access, other ISP's would simply delete the email account if you leave them...paying to keep the address is a choice, you don't have to take, it then becomes a question of its value to you, is it worth £5/month to the individual....some will say yes it's worth it and keep it , others will say no it's not worth it, and prepare for the address to eventually stop working, 'worth it' isn't really a monetary value as to some £5 may represent very little and to others a quite a lot, and presumably (begrudgingly) it is worth it to you as you have decided to keep the arrangement.

    £5 a month for something available for 'free' from other vendors may seem steep, but with 'free' email providers you should be asking why is it free , what's in it for them ?, and it's the same answer for all these type of 'free' things, email , social media, photo sharing, it's you, your individual data,( D.O.B, location etc) your habits ,the places you visit and the data obtained from that , that has value , and that is the price you pay for these 'free' services, you are 'paying' the company offering the free service, with access to your 'data'

    BT's mail is hosted on the Yahoo! Mail platform.

    They have a premium service (that you pay £5 per month for) that gives you XX number of additional email addresses/aliases and also I think more storage space.

    And they have the free service that includes just the one address and smaller storage space (I believe - someone can correct me if I am wrong).
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