TalkTalk marches OneTel users into a brave new email world The UK's favourite* telecoms outfit, TalkTalk, has continued its impressive track record of delighting customers with a forced upgrade of legacy OneTel.com users to the shiny new TalkTalk Mail. "We'll be upgrading your email in a few days," the company breathlessly told Register reader Martin Parker, skipping over the fact …
People did have ISP email addresses - years ago before webmail was around. I remember my Boss 20 years ago telling me about this new website that you can use for email! This was Hotmail, before MS bought them out, so I can see why people did have them in the olden days.
I wouldn't bother with an ISP address nowadays though
I don't know about being flagged for cards "used fraudulently", but there was a time where you couldn't use Hotmail addresses to sign up to websites because of spam etc.
At least they're telling people this time even if it's only one day. Talk Talk killed Homechoice off and failed to mention it. My folks discovered this had happened only when email stopped working on their phones. There wasn't a pay option like despite them sticking with Balk Balk for broadband. Trying to find out what had happened was "fun". No one had told the staff in India that Balk Balk owned it through their ownership of Tiscali who had slurped it themselves. So denials it was anything to to with them rang out loud and clear despite that being bollocks. Even after complaining repeatedly there wasn't any help from India. They also struggled with my (non existent) accent. Suggesting to yet another rep that their email was @homechoice.co.uk got the normal response:
Bloke: "No you mean @talktalk.net don't you"
Me: "It's what I just said it was and I can spell it out phonetically if you need it."
Bloke: That's not one of our email addresses sir.
Me: Yes it is do a WHOIS search for Homechoice.co.uk
Bloke: Ah well I don't have any information on that.
Me: Great!
Bloke: I'm going to transfer you to someone else
So I explain the same thing to the new guy who thankfully (I thought at the time) is UK based.
New Bloke: "You might want to switch to a Talk Talk email address you know"
Me: "Why?"
New Bloke: "Well that domain's quite old you know"
Me:"So are my parents, and that's why we don't change things if at all possible. What does the age of the domain of the email address have to do with anything anyway?"
New Bloke: "Well you know.......it might get switched off due to its age. We can't support everything indefinitely."
Me: "How long have you worked in this job"
New Bloke: "A while"
Me: "Do you have any qualifications in anything IT related?"
New Bloke: "I'm not sure I'm allowed to answer questions like that"
Me: "Okay, can Talk Talk not afford to keep the payments up on the homechoice.co.uk domain? It's not really that expensive is it? My domain name is a .com and only costs ~£10 a year."
New Bloke: "I can't comment on the company or finances"
He didn't know the difference between a domain and a mail server as far as I can tell.
The folks used the Homechoice mail option because there were far fewer good free options back when they signed up. Also they were getting on a bit back then, fairly stubborn and chose to use that over my suggestions. Changing email addresses was problematic and annoyed the hell out of them.
Can't imagine why anyone ever used an ISP email account.Perhaps because that was what was available when the ISP for first used ~20 years ago, and it continues to work?
All I want is some place that lets me download via IMAP and send with SMTP.
This TalkTalk migration seems to be affecting all of their legacy domains. And whereas OneTel seems to have a valid SPF record after migrating, Pipex does not.
This follows on from Pipex having an invalid MX record earlier this year (it pointed to an Alias, which isn't allowed and some other ISPs refused to play ball as a result).
No doubt a result of lots of GUI admin tools, and hence less understanding of the underlying reality.
Maybe because, over 20 years back you didn't have a web site or a domain name of your own, just needed broadband for email, and were aware of the snooping that the "free" providers carried out. In any case you were probably expected to monitor the admin email for your broadband account so it seemed normal to use for other purposes as well. You didn't have to be stupid to do it, but everyone here is right - it's a pain to extricate oneself later.
Luckily enough they don't seem to have worked out that I stopped paying for it 20 odd years ago. But then they bought the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought the company that supplied my original email so I guess that detail got lost along the way.
For free it's not a bad service. I have 20+ years worth of mail stored on there for nothing and when the password stops working, if you know the right people to contact, you can get a new one. I suspect there are some old techies there who are left alone because they're the only ones who know how it actually hangs together....
There are a large number of non-ISP email accounts, you just have to choose the aspects most important to you, although some have it all
Paid
Free
Secure
Trivial
Adverts
No Averts
Servers in America or China
Servers NOT in America/China
POP
IMAP
On own server/Website
etc etc.
Personally I am more than happy with Tutanota ( as a Teutonophile ) paid or free, but if they stopped there are dozens of others. Had I stuck with every ISP over the last 15 years, I would have about 12 email addresses that needed to be checked to see if they are still allowed ( mail.com drops the address if not used within 6 months ); including such prestigious addresses to impress the ladeizz as Tiscali, Sky, Orange, EE, and Vodafone etc..
.
Personally I miss my POP.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
