@FarTallKnight wrote:
Well, I've got a few generic ones: a Gmail account, an outlook and an iCloud account and tend to use them more these days than VM, and if I could only persuade swmbo (she who must be obeyed), to join forces we could drop the VM but it'd take a while. The thing with my VM BY email address is, I've had it so long it feels like a part of me and so has swmbo, although her name @by & my name @by are simply pseudonyms as the underlying email box is a long winded number and a few letters because we technically have a shared box, and I know they use it to make you feel like you're tied to them like BT & Sky
Well, some general observations for your situation would be ...
VM's email service has been a mess for many years and has gone through various incarnations in that time. New customers to VM cannot now create any VM email addresses and existing customers cannot add any more VM email addresses to their account. This was decided some time ago and one take on this is that it is likely to be signalling the end of VM offering email at all. The latest email fiasco will, no doubt, prompt many people to give up using VM email which could well push VM towards saying that the number of users is too small to continue providing the service. All of this is nothing more than speculation but you can come to your own conclusions.
If VM did decide to close its email service down, you would be working to transfer all of your existing email contacts, and linked services, in line with a timescale set totally by VM.
I ditched using VM for email back in 2010 and probably had 20 years’ worth of contacts and services linked to those old VM accounts.
It is certainly do-able to rid yourself of VM email but it is best done on your own timescales (not one which might be imposed by VM) and it is best done over a reasonable period of time (so you can chip away at it methodically, bit by bit, until you are free of VM email altogether).
I did all of my transfers over the course of a year. This meant that I could pick up any annual emails for things such as insurance renewals etc. and make sure they had been changed to new email addresses. I started with the most important services (such as banking, main online shopping accounts, online services and utilities etc. etc.) and then gradually worked my way through the less important ones until all were moved. Once I thought everything was moved over, I kept monitoring the VM account(s) and mopped up any of the last messages still coming in.
It took some time but was well worth the effort. I now use a small hosting company for email and rarely have a problem with email. If I do, I can log a ticket online. I get a fast response and most issues are logged and resolved within an hour or two.
And you are quite correct, many customers feel locked-in to using VM for their broadband simply because of their historical ties to a VM email address.
