Nothing is Ever as Easy as They Say: Switching E-mail Providers
Posted: Tuesday, March 01, 2011
by Dianne Lehmann
Artisan Jewelry from SyZyGy
Recently, we were forced to switch our e-mail provider. First off, had I known when we switched our Internet provider years ago that the e-mail they offered would not be recognized by all sorts of different online vendors, I might have thought twice about it. But bundling a few things to save a couple bucks seemed like a good idea at the time and so we went with the same company that provides our land-line phone service for our Internet service. But q.com has only one character after the "@" symbol and you'd be surprised how many companies' shopping carts will not recognize just the one character. My own website host is one of them. Don't get me started on that nightmare. It's never been resolved.
Our land-line phone service with Qwest is just fine and we are happy with the speed of our Internet connection. We were more than happy with the hotmail they provided in partnership with Microsoft (Windows Live Hotmail). It had great features up the wazoo and worked like a charm … all the time. Then we got a postcard in the mail saying that on or before June 30, 2011, we had to switch to an e-mail service provided solely by Qwest. If we didn’t switch voluntarily, they'd switch us at some unspecified point themselves.
I figured it would be better if I did it myself. That way I would be assured that everything would go as I wanted it. And so far as that goes, the switch did go well. They provided for free (normally a $19.99 value) something called True Switch that moved all our folders. What it did not move is all of our received e-mails that we wanted to keep that had not been put into a particular folder. Nor did it move any of the sent e-mails we wanted to keep. So I've been forwarding them from the old account (it will work for 90 days from the date we switched) to the new account. Aside from the sheer boredom of the task, it is going well.
But … nothing else is really to my satisfaction. And if it weren't for the fact that everyone on earth has our regular e-mail address (including all of our business connections), I'd switch to some other Internet provider … I think. Then again, maybe not. It can get so messy. At any rate, the new service has advertising on the right that severely limits the space available for viewing and composing e-mails. The options for customizing it are pitiful. You can open an e-mail or compose a new one in its own window, but you have to disable pop-up blockers to do that. And … this new service is not one of our options for sending e-mails under Programs in Internet Options in Control Panel. I can not designate the new service as the e-mail program I want to use to send myself links to web pages. That is what has prompted this rant. Or maybe it's really an accumulation of frustrations.
However, Mozilla Mail was offered as an option. We recently made Mozilla our default browser. I do like it, by the way. So I thought, okay, I will enable Mozilla Mail as our default for sending links and the like from websites. To do that, though, I needed to know the POP3 address for receiving mail and the one for sending. Do you think I could find that for Qwest anywhere? All the instructions for finding it that I found online told me to look for things that do not exist on my current e-mail program with Qwest. Simple things like "Options" or "Mail Delivery Settings." How totally stupid is that?
I was able to find POP3 addresses for Yahoo though and then I thought, great, I have a Yahoo account. I'll just set that up so that Mozilla will recognize it and I'll be good to go. Do you think that worked?
Bernd, my husband, was napping in the living room during all of this. I must have spent about an hour on it. Then I decided to send Qwest another of my complaints in a long list of complaints. Honestly, I've probably discovered and reported just about everything that is wrong with their service to them by now. So while I was in the process of typing my rant to Qwest (who by the way has not been of any help with any of it in any way), Bernd comes into the room and wants to know what I'm doing. I stop typing and explain it all to him. And then I start typing again when I hear from over my shoulder, "When are you going to get to the part about the POP3?" Then I'm thinking, did I say what I just thought I said, which was, "Will you just SHUT UP." I did apologize later. Boy, did I feel badly. It's just an indication of how frustrated I am. I never talk to him like that. Bernd said that he knew I was sorry the instant I said it (it was probably my chin immediately hitting my chest and the big sigh that I uttered) and that he forgave me instantly as well. He's a good man … really good.
So do I feel a little better for having had this rant? Yes. Do I have any hope of resolving all my problems? No.
This Article has been viewed 779 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Arrrggghhh! I feel your frustration, Dianne! A while back we got gmail addresses and forward all our email addresses to them. Their system is very easy to use and can be accessed from any computer via the Google home page, saving us a lot of headaches. Bruce would know if that would work for you... :)Hi Jean.
You guys would know about frustration.
I thought about doing that, but we have so many business cards out there with the q.com that I'm loathe to change that if I can at all avoid it. Of course, who knows how many people actually keep and use those cards. Hmmm?
Bernd has a gmail account for his work and I do like the way it works and its accessibility. It's something to think about.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hugs,
DianneWe didn't change any of our cards or anything. We merely forwarded all the existing email into one inbox for our own convenience. We have at least 4 separate email addresses for each of us. The sender of the email doesn't have to do anything differently at all. All the different addresses end up in the Gmail inbox together.
Oh, can I sympathize with you. I had a hacker on Yahoo and needed to get off before more of my friends got deluged with spam. The hacker also took my address list so I couldn't warn friends without spending a day recreating the list... headache. But when our e-mail is working well what a blessing it is! Good article, Dianne.Hi Marijo.
Yes! When it is working well, it is indeed a blessing. I'm so grateful for e-mail. But when it's not working well ... arrrggghhh, as Jean said.
Thanks for reading and for the sympathy!
Hugs,
Dianne
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.