BT Email - Again!

[malkymoo]

I left BT for broadband a few years ago, but have retained my BT email address, I have the Yahoo-based mail rather than BT Mail.

When they started charging £1.60 a month to retain the btinternet address I decided I would live with that. When they put it up to £5 I decided to move but inertia prevented me doing anything about it, but now they want to put it up to £7.50 I will be cancelling soon. I already have an alternative address, but some emails still come to my BT address.

A number of posters in this thread have stated that their BT Yahoo address did not stop working when they left BT. What I would like to know is if anybody has had a different experience, ie the address has stopped working.

I do think BT have shot themselves in the foot here. I would probably have carried on paying the £1.60 indefinitely, and considered going back to BT for internet services. As it is I will be cancelling paying for the email and would now strongly avoid going back the BT for broadband.

[XFool]

I left BT for broadband a few years ago, but have retained my BT email address, I have the Yahoo-based mail rather than BT Mail.

When they started charging £1.60 a month to retain the btinternet address I decided I would live with that. When they put it up to £5 I decided to move but inertia prevented me doing anything about it, but now they want to put it up to £7.50 I will be cancelling soon.

Same with me, except I dropped out at the £5pm. Well, it was actually more complicated than that, this is BT!

I already have an alternative address, but some emails still come to my BT address.

Or one could possibly now get the same service at less than £5pm direct from Yahoo (for Yahoo Pro) and keep the same (Talk21) email address! I don't know if this would work with 'standard' BT email addresses.

A number of posters in this thread have stated that their BT Yahoo address did not stop working when they left BT. What I would like to know is if anybody has had a different experience, ie the address has stopped working.

What would be really interesting to know is if anyone is still using their ex BT Yahoo Email with a POP3/EMAP client. And, if so, what addresses they are using for incoming and outgoing servers.

I do think BT have shot themselves in the foot here. I would probably have carried on paying the £1.60 indefinitely, and considered going back to BT for internet services. As it is I will be cancelling paying for the email and would now strongly avoid going back the BT for broadband.

At the end of the day - with their double dealing over the "in-house transfer" plus the £5pm cock-up - that has been my reaction too.

[XFool]

Last time I looked, a long time ago now, I seem to remember I thought the talk21.com domain was owned by BT (Boo!) and was due to run out in the not too distant future. Just thought I'd check:

DOMAIN INFORMATION
Domain:talk21.com
Registrar:Network Solutions, LLC.
Registration Date:1997-03-24
Expiration Date:2019-03-25
Updated Date:2018-03-13
Status:clientTransferProhibited
Name Servers:ns0.bt.net
ns1.bt.net
ns2.bt.net

All normal contact information fields are blocked e.g. Name:Statutory Masking Enabled

So who are 'Network Solutions LLC'? Wikipedia

Surely those servers, 'bt.net', must belong to BT? Also, that original registration date, 1997, seems to correspond to the likely origins of Talk21 email addresses. Expiration date now March 2019. Does any of this matter? Then again, I guess an actual Talk21 email address is now merely an alias into a 'real' address.

Going to the ordinary Yahoo page I can log on to Yahoo with my BT Talk21 credentials, if I click on Mail I see my inbox and can go to my BT Yahoo email account, when I log out from there I get taken to the BT Home page, home.bt.com

I have no idea what all this amounts to... Just thinking aloud.

If I enroll with Yahoo Pro I presumably have a contract with Yahoo, not BT. Yet surely it is still BT (or Network Solutions?) who own Talk21 addresses. Will the Talk21 addresses survive (which is what I'm after) long term with Yahoo? Will they survive long term with BT? If I later decide to leave Yahoo, presumably I would THEN finally lose my account and Talk21 address, and also access to BT Yahoo account? If I join Yahoo Pro would my Talk21 email account still be BT branded or not?

In particular, if I signed up for one month for Yahoo Pro as a tester and then cancelled, would I retain the old (currently 'Free') Yahoo/BT account?


Thinks: Perhaps the reason people are still on BT Yahoo years after it 'closed' and that cancelled accounts still 'work' is because BT couldn't get around to fathoming all this out either?

[Infrasonic]

BT hikes the cost of holding on to their email address to £7.50 A MONTH for former customers

Sounds more like holding to ransom...

Just goes to show the wisdom of having your own domain name and linking it to your choice of email service provider.
MSFT O365 email is £4.56 pm in VAT (or £11.28 if you want all the Office apps as well, including Outlook).
GMail for Business pricing is similar.
Both allow use of your own domain name/s.

You can do it for free with Outlook.com via the 'alias' facility and I also have it with my free Gmail accounts (I think they stopped it for the free accounts though, I set mine up years ago.)
The only fly in the ointment is if you check the routing you can see that it sends via your Outlook.com or Gmail servers, rather than your domain.
But for individuals/sole traders I don't really see that as a major issue (and if it is then the paid for option is there.)

[modellingman]

I left BT for broadband a few years ago, but have retained my BT email address, I have the Yahoo-based mail rather than BT Mail.

When they started charging £1.60 a month to retain the btinternet address I decided I would live with that. When they put it up to £5 I decided to move but inertia prevented me doing anything about it, but now they want to put it up to £7.50 I will be cancelling soon. I already have an alternative address, but some emails still come to my BT address.

A number of posters in this thread have stated that their BT Yahoo address did not stop working when they left BT. What I would like to know is if anybody has had a different experience, ie the address has stopped working.

I do think BT have shot themselves in the foot here. I would probably have carried on paying the £1.60 indefinitely, and considered going back to BT for internet services. As it is I will be cancelling paying for the email and would now strongly avoid going back the BT for broadband.

I had a very longstanding talk21.com email address which I acquired in the days of dial-up when I also switched from BT. I used to use the service with an Outlook client and, apparently, the £1.60 monthly charge, was introduced because this use counted as a "premium service" (ie they couldn't serve me ads). Some time after the price was hiked to £5, I cancelled my direct debit and prepared to move to a new provider, transferring a lot of historic mail to the new provider, updating all my online accounts (well over 100 ), re-directing mail from talk21.com and putting an out-of-office message on talk21.com to inform folk of my impending change of email address. After several months BT caught up with me and suspended the service. I paid what I owed them, let the service run for another month and then cancelled it.

Attempts to login to the talk21 account after cancellation were (and still are) met with the message "your BT Mail address no longer exists but you can sign up to another one at any time in My BT". The worst aspect is that, sending email to my old talk21.com email address was (and still is) met with no response whatsoever - no bounceback, no "address does not exist", nothing. Anyone sending email to my old address may well conclude I have ignored their email.

[XFool]

I had a very longstanding talk21.com email address which I acquired in the days of dial-up when I also switched from BT. I used to use the service with an Outlook client and, apparently, the £1.60 monthly charge, was introduced because this use counted as a "premium service" (ie they couldn't serve me ads). Some time after the price was hiked to £5, I cancelled my direct debit and prepared to move to a new provider, transferring a lot of historic mail to the new provider, updating all my online accounts (well over 100 ), re-directing mail from talk21.com and putting an out-of-office message on talk21.com to inform folk of my impending change of email address.

The plot thickens! Everything above applies to me (apart from the Out-of office message). But the following doesn't:

After several months BT caught up with me and suspended the service. I paid what I owed them, let the service run for another month and then cancelled it.

I had a row with BT over the account following the increase to £5 pm, which I seemed to win as I had them bang to rights wrt their emails to me and threatened to go to OFCOM or whatever. There the matter rests, I'm not paying them, the account is nevertheless still active and available. I don't actually use it, apart from it still Redirecting incoming mail and I log on occasionally to manage the account.

Attempts to login to the talk21 account after cancellation were (and still are) met with the message "your BT Mail address no longer exists but you can sign up to another one at any time in My BT". The worst aspect is that, sending email to my old talk21.com email address was (and still is) met with no response whatsoever - no bounceback, no "address does not exist", nothing. Anyone sending email to my old address may well conclude I have ignored their email.

Maybe I should get on with that paid for Yahoo Pro conversion of my Talk21.com account before BT get round to doing something to it?

[XFool]

I had a very longstanding talk21.com email address which I acquired in the days of dial-up when I also switched from BT. I used to use the service with an Outlook client and, apparently, the £1.60 monthly charge, was introduced because this use counted as a "premium service" (ie they couldn't serve me ads).

That makes sense to me. However, what is puzzling me is: Can you use a POP/EMAP client for free on a free straight Yahoo account, or do you have to pay Yahoo extra for this? After all, doing so would break Yahoo's business model by bypassing their ads. I take it there is no problem with the paid for Yahoo Pro account?

Anyone know about these matters?

TIA

[kyu66]

That makes sense to me. However, what is puzzling me is: Can you use a POP/EMAP client for free on a free straight Yahoo account, or do you have to pay Yahoo extra for this? After all, doing so would break Yahoo's business model by bypassing their ads. I take it there is no problem with the paid for Yahoo Pro account?

Anyone know about these matters?

TIA

I have used multiple free yahoo email accounts for many years, accessing the email via first POP3 then IMAP when it became available, so have never seen Yahoo ads. I only ever use webmail if there is an issue with the client, even then it is usually a Yahoo server problem rather than the email client problem.

HTH
kyu66

[XFool]

I have used multiple free yahoo email accounts for many years, accessing the email via first POP3 then IMAP when it became available, so have never seen Yahoo ads. I only ever use webmail if there is an issue with the client, even then it is usually a Yahoo server problem rather than the email client problem.

Interesting and curious. What then would be the incentive to pay for a Yahoo Pro account? Unless one likes and wants to use an online web based account without adverts?

I am wondering now what would happen if I paid for a Yahoo Pro account conversion of my Talk21.com account, then eventually cancelled it for a standard free account, would I revert to my BT Yahoo Talk21 account or have to get a different new, ordinary free Yahoo account? I thought BT own the Talk21 addresses (and domain).

Sorry, I don't expect anyone can answer that one!

[kyu66]

I have used multiple free yahoo email accounts for many years, accessing the email via first POP3 then IMAP when it became available, so have never seen Yahoo ads. I only ever use webmail if there is an issue with the client, even then it is usually a Yahoo server problem rather than the email client problem.

Interesting and curious. What then would be the incentive to pay for a Yahoo Pro account? Unless one likes and wants to use an online web based account without adverts?

I am wondering now what would happen if I paid for a Yahoo Pro account conversion of my Talk21.com account, then eventually cancelled it for a standard free account, would I revert to my BT Yahoo Talk21 account or have to get a different new, ordinary free Yahoo account? I thought BT own the Talk21 addresses (and domain).

Sorry, I don't expect anyone can answer that one!

I have no idea why anyone would pay for Yahoo email, especially at the prices being mentioned in this thread. For that money (sub £5) I get web hosting and email for multiple domains, hundreds of inboxes and unlimited aliases etc and about 2GB of storage.

I understand that some people prefer webmail, but again that brings all the ads etc (however judicious use of adblockers works wonders) but I just use email clients and IMAP across all my devices - life is so much better

[Infrasonic]

I understand that some people prefer webmail, but again that brings all the ads etc (however judicious use of adblockers works wonders) but I just use email clients and IMAP across all my devices - life is so much better

I use both webmail and clients, so get the best of both worlds including DMARC end to end verification via webmail and the avoidance of 'local viewing' until I know the emails are OK...

[quelquod]

For that money (sub £5) I get web hosting and email for multiple domains, hundreds of inboxes and unlimited aliases etc and about 2GB of storage.

Mind saying who you use (and how the service has been)?
I'm paying towards that just for 2.

[kyu66]

For that money (sub £5) I get web hosting and email for multiple domains, hundreds of inboxes and unlimited aliases etc and about 2GB of storage.

Mind saying who you use (and how the service has been)?
I'm paying towards that just for 2.

https://www.1and1.co.uk/web-hosting

I have their most basic Linux hosting package, which has morphed over the years since I have used it, adding more and more features in-line with the market.

I have multiple domains, managed under one hosting package. The hosting package supports 500 email accounts - I presume this (inbox) limit is the hosting rather than per domain, but I only use a few across each domain, relying on aliases for many more email addresses.

I haven't had any problems, but the sites I have are personal with low traffic. The email has been fine.

HTH
kyu66

[malkymoo]

I left BT for broadband a few years ago, but have retained my BT email address, I have the Yahoo-based mail rather than BT Mail.

When they started charging £1.60 a month to retain the btinternet address I decided I would live with that. When they put it up to £5 I decided to move but inertia prevented me doing anything about it, but now they want to put it up to £7.50 I will be cancelling soon. I already have an alternative address, but some emails still come to my BT address.

A number of posters in this thread have stated that their BT Yahoo address did not stop working when they left BT. What I would like to know is if anybody has had a different experience, ie the address has stopped working.
.

Answering my own question:

I cancelled my premium BT email, and was told that my email address would continue to operate for another 30 days. Exactly 30 days later the address stopped working.