I daresay that many of you reading this probably have e-mail addresses that, in human terms, are approaching the age where they would be getting close to graduating from university. If you’ve had a particular account for more than a few years, however, with the increasing number of online apps you’ve probably associated with it (be it Netflix, your gym, or your bank), the work required in changing your e-mail address does seem rather laborious and increasingly so as you continue to register more and more things to it.
Put simply, it is, in something rather ironic, a lot easier to change your ISP than your e-mail address. What about when your e-mail address is associated/provided by your (soon to be prior) broadband company though? – Well, in a report via the BBC, while you can (in many cases) keep your e-mail address, it seems that many providers are charging customers through the nose for the privilege.
ISP’s Accused of Price Gouging to Keep Their E-mail Addresses
In the report, it has been found that of the UK’s 4 largest internet companies, two of them charge quite a significant sums if you still want to keep your e-mail address while moving to an alternative provider. BT is specifically brought under scrutiny for charging £7.50 a month to some customers who wish to retain their e-mail address, but not their internet access. It is, of course, a bit complicated. It does, however, largely break down to the following factors:
- BT – £7.50 a month for ‘standard’ access. Although potentially available for free, limitations do apply including that users will only be able to access it via a web browser.
- TalkTalk – £5 a month (“discounted” to £50 a year for upfront payment)
- Virgin – No option to keep your e-mail address is made available. All terminated accounts are deleted after 90-days
- Sky – The only major provider who offers customers the chance to keep their @Sky e-mail for free!
What Do We Think?
Well, presuming that Google, Yahoo and/or Microsoft never start charging for the use of their e-mail services, the most obvious solution for those who do have ISP associated e-mail addresses is to look to start transitioning your accounts to a platform which you know will (hopefully) always be free.
I mean, while changing your e-mail is undoubtedly a huge pain in the backside, I don’t think I’d want to pay my old ISP £7.50 for the ‘convenience’ of keeping the one they gave me!
What do you think? Do (or did) you use an ISP provided e-mail address? Have you since switched providers? If so, what happened to you? – Let us know in the comments!
I’ve never used an ISP email address, I thought it was a big ‘eggs in one basket’ problem.
Additionally, the email address is used on so many sites as the login account id, which makes it doubly painful to lose an email address.
With a wide range of free, non-ISP associated email systems – outlook.com, gmail, even yahoo is still around, there’s no reason to tie yourself into an ISP email address. Anyone still using one should migrate their accounts off ASAP.
Never use your ISP email address provided when you sign up. Just get yourself a Gmail or outlook address etc to protect yourself from this nonesense in the future!