Dead Letters

Since I have cable, keeping my old ISP makes little sense. I have decided to drop the original service.

What becomes of email that people might send, from old information to the closed account?

For all that email has duplicated the USPS (snail mail), the one thing I haven't seen is change-of-address forwarding. I've heard some ISPs do that, and even allow you to keep your email address and password active. But how have you handled this?

 

You are correct in saying that some ISP's will forward your mail. My suggestion would be to contact that ISP and see what their policy is.

 

Well, I did that too. And I'm afraid it isn't a good thing. Here's my reply:

I had asked about "maintaining" my email and the first reply was that I could not maintain it. But it occurred to me that maintenance is a member privilege and all I wanted was forwarding. That would be a very inexpense service that ISPs could provide as a benefit with payments already received.

Can't help thinking that as the user population continues to grow, the demand for this feature will, too. What would happen if s-mail didn't provide forwarding? Would you go to all your old addresses and send everybody a postcard?

 

LOL!

I totally agree with you about going back to your old address and sending change of addresses from there. Too funny! I think what most people do is get their new address, tell their contacts the new one, change addresses on bulletins and such and hang on to the old one until all mail gets to the new one ok. It is a shame that ISP's don't have that option.

Live and Learn....

 

I keep my old dialup account active for $7.95/month. It's worth it cause in case something happens to my cable, I can reinstall my modem and at least have Net access till cable comes back.

 

I only give out my primary address to those who are in my address book and it is obviously very easy to notify these people of any change of address.

In the case of people/groups/companies who are not in my address book, I use a Sneakemail address which then forwards all mail to whichever POP3 account I specify. The primary purpose of Sneakemail is to avoid spam - but it does make a good forwarding service too I would, however, up poo creek if Sneakemail were to cease to be!!!