To think BT are holding me to ransom?

[pianodoodle]

OK maybe a bit of an exaggeration but still...

Has anyone with a btinternet email address had an email telling them the address will close by 19th September?

I've had it for nearly ten years since I lived with my mum - and it's on everything!

When she stopped her BT service or got a different package (can't remember which) they stopped my email address as it was associated with her account. I gave them a call and they let me keep it for a one off fee.

Now I've been told I can keep the email address if I sign up to BT broadband or pay £1.60 per month for the premium email service...

Had a Google and found some other people in the same position.

I emailed them and pointed out that if I had been going to move to BT broadband I would not be doing it under threat of losing my email address. All I got was a generic response re-explaining the original email as if I hadn't understood it rather than acknowledging the fact that I had understood and wasn't pleased...

Boo. Anyway AIBU to think this sucks?!

YABU - you stopped the BT service, but expect them to let you carry on using a BT email address. Not on, really. Pay them if it's that important to you.

one pound 60 doesn't sound very much to me.

Sorry YABU. You aren't just getting the email address, but a decent amount of web space, you cannot expect that for free when it's never been designed to be free. Move to one of the myriad of free email accounts.

Hmmm... well, when they originally stopped the service I did pay to keep the email address.

But she's already paid for it, she paid a fee. I don't think YABU but there's not much you can do about it.

Yes, but the way email works is that you have a little bit of web real estate. And unless you buy that real estate up front (for a lot of money) then you need to rent it. Your one off payment wont have covered much.

Yeah there probably isn't much I can do really I can't prove I paid for it ten years ago.

Time to start moving everything over. I know £1.60 a months isn't huge but it isn't worth it and money is tight. The service doesn't offer anything I couldn't get for free really, it's just the ballache of changing everything.

Still.. I won't be going back to BT.

4 weeks notice is a bit grim too :(

Four weeks is plenty of time to migrate email.

yes they have done the same to me but my email address is a talk21.com email address I have had for 15 years.

talk21 was taken over by yahoo, and yahoo was taken over by BT, and NOW BT want us to pay the £1.60 a month or they delete your account with no redirect.

I have paid the money, as it would be far too time consuming at the moment to move everything, but I plan to do so over the next year. My main gripe is that my current address is my full name @talk21.com, and of course I can't get it on gmail as it has already been taken. This means a whole new name, or a 8097987 after my "real" name.

I signed up for something that was supposed to be free, and was, for 15 years, I have ignored all the advertising!

4 weeks sounds like a lot of time but it has happened JUST as DD1 is starting school. Also, there are about 1000 emails I need to click forward to a new account as there is no bulk forward option.

It does seem like they aren't for budging on the subject :(

I thought I would just redirect to a Gmail account but obviously that won't work as there won't be an email address to redirect from in a week or two...

Well - I may be being unreasonable but I still say bollocks to the lot of them anyway

I suppose squatters rights won't apply to an email address...

Pay for one month to buy time to transfer .

I could maybe do that if I don't get it all sorted in time. They'll probably want a direct debit set up although I could just cancel it after a month I suppose.