Held to ransom by your email address
8th May 2024
Do you want to change broadband provider but don’t want to lose your email address?
Are you using an email address linked to your broadband account and paying over the odds for both?
One of the top blockers to people looking for a better broadband deal is the fear of losing their existing email address which is linked to their current supplier.
But by not switching to better broadband, you could be missing out on huge savings!
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Of the big four UK internet service providers – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin - only one, Sky, allows previous customers to keep their email address when they switch to a different provider. The others either charge you to keep it, or delete it altogether.
· BT Premium Mail charges £7.50 per month*, adding up to £90 annually. These are email addresses ending in @bt.com, @btinternet.com, @btopenworld.com or @talk21.com.
· TalkTalk WebMail charges £5 per month*, or £60 annually – emails ending in @talktalk.com. TalkTalk email accounts that are left inactive for six months will be deleted
· Virgin Media Mail with emails ending in @virginmedia.com lets you access your email for 90 days, after which the account is deleted
So rather than asking if you can keep the email address you have with your current supplier – which you can in some instances – let’s answer the question ‘how do I change my email address’!
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How do I change my email address
Step 1 – set up a new, free email address
The first thing you need to do is use one of the reputable web-based email providers such as Microsoft’s Outlook or Google’s Gmail. Both will give you 15GB inbox storage which is more than enough for most. If you’re an Apple user you might already have a free iCloud Mail account which gives you 5GB of data storage – plenty for some, but if you want to upgrade to 10x that storage, it’s still less than £1 a month.
Step 2: Export your contacts
The easiest way to make sure you have all your saved contacts’ email addresses is to export them from your original account and then import them into your new email one. There is usually an option for this in the main menu, or if you get stuck, your provider will be able to talk you through this step.
Once you’ve got all contacts set up in your new account, you might want to send everyone a short email to notify them of your new address. You can do this in bulk and in a way that your recipients only see their address in the ‘To’ field, rather than everybody else’s – here is how to do it on Outlook and Gmail.
Step three: Forward every important email to your new address
Next, let’s make sure you have all the valuable emails in your new account. Look through your old inbox and any mail folders you have to find emails you want to forward to your new address. While you may not be able to select multiple emails and bulk-forward them all at once (as TalkTalk and BT do not offer this feature), there might be ways to export your mailbox, download emails or use a third party service like Thunderbird to configure your email address as an IMAP account and export messages that way.
Step four: Change your email address on record for every platform or service you use
You’ve likely registered and logged in to plenty of online accounts with your old email address, which means it will be associated with multiple sites and services, such as:
Online banking
Online shopping
Online supermarkets
Virtual membership cards
On-demand TV or streaming services
Social networks
Newsletters and subscriptions
To help find websites where your email is used you can start by checking your web browser. When logging into a website for the first time, your browser usually asks whether you want it to remember your password. If you’ve clicked yes, these sites will be stored in your ‘Saved passwords’ list and you can easily access these on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari.
The next thing to do is search your old email inbox for words such as ‘welcome’ ‘username’ ‘password’ or ‘unsubscribe’ – as these are likely to be on emails you received when registering or signing up for an online account. This website explains some other hacks that might work.
Step five: Say goodbye to your old broadband provider
Once your new email address is up and running it’s time to say goodbye to that old email address that was holding you to ransom, and find yourself a better broadband deal.
For the very latest Voneus broadband packages, click here
*Prices correct at 24.05.24