Keeping Mail account active after leaving Plusnet, still an option?

[iainh81]

Hi there, hope somebody can help. My elderly father (the account holder) has recently switched over to a competitor's FTTP broadband service (Plusnet do not currently offer FTTP in our location) and has requested that his Plusnet account is closed.
I arranged this on his behalf yesterday evening with a Plusnet advisor over the phone.

I made sure to specifically request that his email account was left active, but was abruptly informed by the advisor that this is no longer a service offered by Plusnet. I was also advised that a redirect could not be set up for any emails sent to the old address once account closure had been completed.

Is this the case? My father is in his late seventies and is going to struggle somewhat with migrating all his existing accounts (banking, healthcare, etc) over to a new email address. Having the option to retain the existing email address would be extremely convenient!

Ta.

[MisterW]

I was also advised that a redirect could not be set up for any emails sent to the old address once account closure had been completed.

Is this the case?

I'm afraid it is. The option of keeping email was discontinued some time ago ( April last year IIRC )

[jab1 · Accepted solution]

@iainh81 Unfortunately, if/when you leave Plusnet, it is no longer possible to have a 'mail-only' account. PN are moving away from providing email, and new customers are not offered this option, leaving ones losing the service as well.This change of policy was effective from mid last year.

[iainh81]

That's unfortunate. I suspect that Plusnet have missed a trick by not even offering it as a subscription service via a small monthly fee for ex-subscribers.

[Townman]

I suspect that this is a matter of the billing system not being able to bill a non-service subscriber.  There used to be charged for email only accounts ... until the new billing system launched.  Then they all became free ... leading to the cessation of free email for departing users.

[dogwhiskers]

I am in a similar boat, I was informed that it was possible to retain email after leaving but the policy did not change until Dec 2023. There is no option to retain the email address even if dropping down to a paying a nominal fee to Plusnet. 

V poor service from Plusnet, very abrupt disconnect and removal of email account in 24 hrs after account closure. This against years of great service from them, so to finish like this is not good 

(If this was a bank and you switch banks then DD and payments would be ported to the new  bank) 

Only option available is to cancel the disconnect and pay for a broadband service from Plusnet that is no longer required. Would be willing to pay a nominal fee just to retain email but that is not an option.

In this specific case the reason to leave was due to Plusnet being unable to provide fibre connection and the broadband speed thru standard phone was too slow (no fibre cable not into house).  The company who will put a fibre line into the house do not have Plusnet on their list of providers who can use their infrastructure at that time.

The customer service from Plusnet were very good, unfortunately their own hands were tied on this one due to a company policy.

[Townman]

The policy of not offering free email to departing customers was changed a good while before (assume you meant) last December.

Paid for retention of email was dropped years ago.

[dogwhiskers]

The information about retain email was supplied to me be a plusnet advisor, they said the decision to drop email was taken in Dec 2022.

The paid for was found in a different forum entry but understand that this may be out of date as a paid for email was changed for regulatory reasons as it should be free. 

In either case does not help in any way as Plusnet do not seem to have a desire to assist even with the possibility of contacting ex-customers in the future. 

Thank you for your concise response to this thread.

[Townman]

To the best of my knowledge, it was not changed due to regulatory reasons specifically, but rather the new billing system cannot bill users who do not have a broadband service.

That might be an artefact of steps taken to ensure that users do not get billed for phone / broadband services after transferring out. The process requires a watch over the account closure / destruction processes … followed by manual activity to resurrect the account as mail only, restore mailboxes and contents. A good deal of goodwill effort delivering no revenue.

[Wendy101]

I've been with Plusnet for years & I now feel trapped with Plusnet because of email, as it's impossible to be sure I'd remember to notify everyone I deal with of my new email address if I switch providers - not to mention the risk that important incoming emails (eg bank / billing mails) are lost in the non-existent switchover period.

The fact that Plusnet no longer provide email to new customers means that email support will at some point fizzle out (as was seen with the lengthy outage last year where the community seemed to have a better handle on the problems than the support staff!) which will surely drive people who rely on reliable email away from Plusnet. 

I get that it's a pain-for-no-gain for Plusnet to keep email accounts open for ex-customers, but an auto forward even just for a month would ensure that most contacts could be picked up & notified.

Can anyone help with ways round this problem? Preferably something not too technical or with much of an ongoing cost. Are there decent provider independent mail services (other than gmail) ? Is that the best solution? 

Also what would happen to emails already downloaded (uploaded?) to PC from webmail? I assume these wouldn't be affected? 

[Townman]

It is simply not possible to put an autoforward on an account which does not exist. When the account has gone, the associated email address goes too.

If you use you@youraccount.plus.com rather than a hosted domain name which many old customers took advantage of, then you are indeed in a sticky place. The best advice I can offer is to plan your email migration well before you plan to change suppliers

The alternative is to not change suppliers!

It must be said that Plusnet was the exception to the norm - few ISPs allowed users to keep email addresses for a charge, let alone for free after flitting off elsewhere. There is a real sense that the loss of the rich all in one service package has to some extent been caused by butterfly users - changing supplier every year.

Some while ago I looked at alternative email suppliers - I struggled to find one which offered the rich functionality of the Plusnet service - un be limited email boxes, unlimited address aliases, unlimited forwarding addresses, with catchall and spam / av filtering. Virtually every provider charged by the mailbox. IIRC with one of the cheaper providers it would have cost £20pcm to move the whole family away from the Plusnet service.

Not giving users cashback payments might be enough to fund a decent service.