Changing a mailbox to an alias - what a pain!

[#1]

I have many mailboxes, set up before aliases were available. Looking at my logs, most of the time trying to download mail is spent setting up and tearing down sessions, one per mailbox. So I decided to change the mailboxes into aliases pointing at the main mailbox.
They don't exactly make it easy.
Delete old mailbox. Wait for deletion to take place. Set up new alias. Wait for creation to take place. Any mail sent to that address over that period presumably vanishes into hyperspace unless you like spam enough to have the catchall turned on.
And if you try to create the alias before the mailbox has been deleted, it just complains at you. And then clears the form so you have to set it up again (which has lead to one alias being created pointing at the wrong mailbox. Despite claims that it should take "up to half an hour", it's been stuck on "Pending" for one hour now. And I can't edit it until the server finally deigns to complete the job.)
Wouldn't it be easier, and more customer-friendly if the process went like this:

• User tries to create alias.


• "That address is already in use as a mailbox. Do you want to convert it to an alias?


• User clicks on Yes.


• If there are messages in the mailbox, ask if they should be discarded or delivered to the new alias.


• Do the whole conversion operation in one step, without massive waits between steps.

I can't believe I'm the only one who's ever tried to do this…
(Did try raising this as a ticket, but all I got for my trouble was a cut-n-paste set of links to the documentation. Cheers >:()

[#2]

Why not create a few new mailboxes first - the names don't matter much.

[#3]

Not sure I understand what you're getting at — I want to turn an existing mailbox, say foobar@myaccount.plus.com into an alias, so foobar@myaccount.plus.com points at mymainaddress@myaccount.plus.com.
The current system requires deleting the old mailbox, waiting for the deletion to take place, then creating the alias. Mail will get lost in the gap between the deletion taking place and the alias being created.
Especially when alias creation is supposed to take "up to half an hour" and the aliases having been showing "pending" for the last 5 and a half hours! Frankly, that's pathetic. Support have tried to claim that I have an unusually high number of mailboxes and redirects, and this is why it could take "up to 4 hours" — firstly, it's blown past that, and secondly, 30 mailboxes is hardly an excessive number!

[#4]

Just set up a catchall for the time it takes you to do it then you won't lose any emails.
Note that if you set the catchall to leave spam on the server you shouldn't see much or indeed any

[#5]

Quote from: somerandomguy

Especially when alias creation is supposed to take "up to half an hour" and the aliases having been showing "pending" for the last 5 and a half hours! Frankly, that's pathetic. Support have tried to claim that I have an unusually high number of mailboxes and redirects, and this is why it could take "up to 4 hours" — firstly, it's blown past that, and secondly, 30 mailboxes is hardly an excessive number!

Wonder if its the same issue thats hampering making up redirects....
Typical as its a Bank Holiday no one will actually look to see there is an issue till tomorrow 😕