@Ernie_C The fact that you retained an email service as a non-customer has nothing to do with your current situation.
@Anonymous That in itself was probably part of a long running blunder by VM, because for years now the policy has been to close email accounts when customers leave. Other companies have taken a more enlightened view (eg Sky), but first up they don't have to do that, and second, there's nothing to force them to keep doing that. But we're here to help, and you're going to have to change, and notify all your contacts. Using Gmail in future is feasible but any free service can be cancelled at the whim of the provider, so you really need a permanent solution, probably a paid one, and ideally one that is reasonably memorable and perhaps professional sounding? Agreed?
Head over to Ionos
https://www.ionos.co.uk/domains/domain-names
Assuming that your full name is actually Kripti K Chicken, search for the domain KKChicken. At the moment of me writing, kkchicken.com or kkchicken.co.uk are both available at a quid for year one, and a tenner thereafter. If need be consider less desirable domains like dot family and dot online. Buy the domain, and it comes with a single included email account that you have to setup after you've bought it, I suggest as kripti. When you've configured your email client, you're now kripti@kkchicken.com - how freakin' cool is that? If you try for a surname without initials for your domain, then is pretty unlikely to work, since most of these have already gone to companies using their founder's names, and if you're unlucky enough to have a common initial and surname combination you might have to play around a bit to get something that works. Worst case, change your name by deed poll to a set of random or special characters. "Hello, I my name is [%^)&^*, the human formerly known as Kriptikchicken"
The Ionos interface is a bit industrial for setting up the email account, I'm afraid, but if I can do it so can you. You can of course pay a bit extra and setup a web site and have Ionos host it, or again for a few bob more add multiple email accounts, but for the purposes of creating a personalised domain and email account those aren't necessary. So there you have it: Set yourself free from ISP email forever (don't forget to keep paying the £10 domain fee though!). Helpful notes: As it's a new domain some corporate email systems will try classifying your mail as junk, this seems to wear off after a while and hasn't so far caused me any major problems; The passwords that Ionos require you to set when you create the domain and the email account are unusually long, so write them down carefully; The included email account "only" has 2 GB of storage - you can pay for more, or periodically delete stuff from the server, but unless you're emailing large files then you should be able to store around 10-20,000 emails in that volume (ten years of my Blueyonder emails, subject to deleting dross from time to time is only 1.5 GB). Plenty of other domain registrars and domain+email services in the market, depends what you're after.
Your invoice for my consultancy services is in the post!
