Thinking of changing from BT to Sky will I lose my e mail ?

[SecretSquirrels]

There is a really good offer on for Sky broadband. In spite of changing utilities and insurers on a regular basis I have never changed broadband as our house would implode if there was a hitch and we lost it. .

I'm on the point of taking the plunge but just had a thought, all my proper business (banking and millions of on line sites) is done through BTinternet. Will I lose that? Does it only come to BT customers? I really, really wouldn't want the hassle of changing my e mail address with all those people. It's not as though they are in the address book IYSWIM?
I have a special spammy hotmail account but wouldn't want to use a hotmail account for proper stuff.

Best to ask BT directly. A colleague recently switched from O2 to BT and lost his email even though O2 confirmed he wouldn't, so check and double check.

We left BT and kept our email addresses. You need to call them to arrange it though and it costs something like £1.99/month.

It's one reason why some don't ever switch.

Best suggestion (for everyone, in case you did decide in 6 months to switch ISP) is to get yourself a free mail address on Live.co.uk or GMail.com so you can register that mail address as your 'new' address any time you find something important comes in via your ISP, and therefore there's a gradual change too let every site know how to reach you. Later on, do the same with relatives and (real) friends - you must have a few 'acquaintances' from some chance meeting 10 years ago that you don't actually have any contact with.

After a few months your incoming mail at your ISP address should be limited or near to nil, and then you are in a position where you could use any ISP and be completely independent for mail messages.

If you're going to update the mail address, then you might want to consider using Spamgourmet.com which allows you to have a unique mail address for each website and forwards mail to your 'proper' mail address. It means that if any one of them was hacked (and it can happen) and all customer mail addresses were sold to spammers, then at least yours would be less likely to get junk mail.

Spamgourmet allows you to set a limit on the number of messages that come through. If you want to continue getting mail, you can 'whitelist' a sender or domain, so their messages always come through. If someone else sends, when the limit is reached, those messages are 'eaten' at spamgourmet and never fill up your inbox.

NetworkGuy as always you don't just answer the question I asked, you answer the question I should have asked.
I do have a live.co address as well as a hot-mail one. I guess I should start migrating, as I'm definitely not going to pay BT for the privilege of keeping their address and Sky's broadband package is probably £20 a month cheaper....
Will look at spam gourmet as well. To be fair I don't have a major spam problem even after many years of using the same bt address for everything. Is that just luck I wonder?

It may have been good luck, but you never know when a site might be hacked (eg Sony with hundreds of thousands of customers' details).

Another situation may be if a firm sells to another whether retail or ISP or some other. Many firms have a no spamming policy / minimal marketing / no selling mail list, but few guarantee the policies would be preserved in any takeover...

PS sorry for essay mode earlier!

Please don't be sorry I meant it as a complement!
DS1 had his hotmail account hacked so I'm wary of using them for proper stuff.
I have a very technophobic DH and two teenagers and we all have our own BT accounts so I need to change us all.
I have spent hours this weekend setting up a gmail account. I had to use a hotmail account as a backup and much faffing to work out the folder/label system.
I find the gmail is very different and not immediately intuitive so I'm going to use it on a small scale for a while before I commit myself and the rest of the family to switching.
Thanks again NWG