Vodafone issues a stay of execution for Demon domain hold-outs

Vodafone has declared a stay of execution for the venerable Demon sub domain, extending the licence until September 2020. Having snuffed out the last vestiges of Demon Internet in 2019, Vodafone was left to deal with the Demon sub-domain, which it had licensed to Namesco three years ago. It had always been a short-term deal, …

[Anonymous Coward]

Blast from the past

Ha, I found out the other day that part of my bank was becoming increasingly agitated because I wasn't answering email they were sending to my .demon.co.uk address which I stopped using 20 years ago. A definite case of left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blast from the past

Doesn't surprise me - my bank keep sending authorisation codes to my old mobile number - I changed it everywhere in online banking 12 months ago and wrote to them as well to update their records, so god knows what part of their system still has the old one in.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Re: Blast from the past

I believe Douglas Adams was the author of a game based along these lines... ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blast from the past

Threaten them with GDPR to get them to remove all traces of your old number. It's amazing what they can discover when faced with such legislation!

[Doctor_Wibble]

Never any mention of it being short-term or temporary

Just to correct the record, none of the communications received had any indication that thie email arrangement with Namesco was due to be short-term or temporary.

It did not look anything different from any other farming-out of a service except that it was now explicitly charged for, and their 'teamed up with Namesco' wording had no indication that this was some kind of complete separation, especially since Vodafone still owned the Demon brand.

[rgrigsby]

Re: Never any mention of it being short-term or temporary

Agreed, this was the root of my complaint to Vodafone. They insisted it had been communicated but I sent them copies of everything they had sent clearly showing it hadn't.

[Interloafer]

Re: Never any mention of it being short-term or temporary

Exactly this, it's never been expressed as a temporary thing, just as an outsourcing of the service.

I'd still like to know why they can't just sell the domain on to someone willing to manage it.

[Alfie Noakes]

Clueless

From the sound of things at https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Other-broadband-queries/Anyone-else-affected-by-Vodafone-disabling-demon-co-uk-emails/m-p/2655220 it looks like Vodafone thought that there were only a couple of Demon e-mail users left!!!

Well, it looks like they might now be losing quite a few thousand "customers" (and their friends and colleagues and much future business) as a result of their lack of basic common sense (and arrogance)!

[UrbaneSpaceman]

TalkTalk in the same boat?

I was expecting my decades-old ukgateway and tiscali email accounts to disappear a few weeks ago but talktalk seem to have let them be.

[Ken Moorhouse]

"If this is something that you would be interested in then I can take your details"

Signed Andy Hacker

Yeah, right.

[Tad 57]

2016 Email From Vodafone

As part of our ongoing upgrades, we’ll no longer be offering free email with our broadband products. Don’t worry – we’ve got plenty of ways to keep you connected. Including a hassle free way to transfer your existing email address.

What happens next?

Your free Demon email will stop working 30 calendar days from the date of this email. So if you’ve been using it, make sure you have a new email service set up and ready to go. Apart from this, your Demon broadband service will continue as normal.

Want to keep your Demon email address?

We’ve teamed up with names.co.uk, expert providers of a wide range of domain and email solutions, to make sure you can keep using your current Demon email address at a great rate."

[Anonymous Coward]

OFCOM

Postings in the Vodafone user comments have pointed out that OFCOM are currently pondering making it a legal requirement to maintain access to email addresses. They did this for mobile numbers a while ago. OFCOM have not yet apparently commented on the Demon complaints.

The uncharitable view is that Vodafone were attempting to evade the requirement of such a legislative change with regard to the Demon domain.

One unexpected impact is that many doctors have a Demon email address going back decades. Central medical systems' communications are currently very busy - so administrative tasks like changing email addresses in databases are at the bottom of the priorities.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is annoying that Namesco have not issued any broadcast information about the changed circumstances. My Demon domain change ticket is well past its SLA date having reached only Stage 1 after several weeks. My query update to the ticket several days ago has received no answer.

With only 14 days to cut-off and still no sign of the dual email service - I was starting to panic until I saw the posting in the original El Reg article's comments about the Vodafone complaint forum. Then I found this El Reg article giving a more official confirmation - but still lacking in substance about how long dual running will persist.

Plan B was to use my "emergency" gmail account to handle my eighty known logins and contacts - but that would have given Google far too much correlated information about me.

[akicif]

Not quite that long a stay

Just received this:

> IMPORTANT:

> Demon sub-domain withdrawal

> Dear customer,

> We recently wrote to you to let you know that the Demon sub-domain attached

> to your Namesco services will need to be updated to a new domain.

...

> We asked you to update your domain before 29th May 2020, but we did not hear

> from you. In response to the current crisis we are able to offer you a short

> extension and are now asking you to make the update by Tuesday 28th July

> 2020.

Looks like I've less time than I thought to change login credentials with more than a hundred companies and websites....