Vodafone to discontinue email forwarding as email security measures increase

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › Vodafone to discontinue email forwarding as email security measures increase

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#2220786 18-Apr-2019 18:44

many years of VF messing with the email and poor attempts to fix it that made it a bad exp. for customers.

I opted to not forward my old ihug address when they announced the closure of email, but later found out that they had messed things up and forwarded this ihug address to someone else's gmail address.

It took over 3 weeks of repeated calls to get the forwarding removed.

VF have a great knack of taking a product or service promise to make it better and right stuffing it up....

dc2daylight

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#2220787 18-Apr-2019 18:44

Gilco2:
Going to switch to 2 deg or Spark for internet and phone. Gave up trying to ring vodafone and cant find a way to contact by email. Links I find now all go to phone number. On MyVodafone I have both accounts billing for outlook but vodafone insist on sending to old ihug account. They are only ones that never updated. So after an hour on hold gave up

Been with them since Bell south days except for a 5 year period where I was working in area that Telecom were only ones with phone coverage

Fair enough. We were with them since the buying of IHUG days, who we were with before Vodafone. The Bell South/Clear days would be around 1990 or so right?

Trouble with the CSRs and offshore support providers, was probably the primary reason I switched to Voyager, followed by poor international speeds and buffering on Netflix. No matter how polite one is with an offshore support center, it won't affect their workers simply not having access to the level of detail in databases that the Kiwi CSR teams do.

In defence of Vodafone, I think they have been more than reasonable in providing advance notice for many months of the changes, and trying hard to alert all customers. They could have just done the cessation of service, then put out a media statement afterward but chose not to and did things properly.

matisyahu

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#2220860 18-Apr-2019 20:47

phantomdb: but can I bail on my contract for not providing all services......???

No..but I'll check with my supervisor...the answer is still no..I can put it through to the complaints department..

*three days later*

The answer is still no.

Side Note: I'm surprised they didn't offer customers to keep the email address if they're happy to pay an extra $5-$10 per month and moving the hosting to Google G-Suite.

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#2220884 18-Apr-2019 22:48

Many providers still forward emails to other email addresses without major issues. It is a way to have email coming in from multiple domains, without having to manage multiple mailboxes. But at least they have given advanced warning and that will be the end of email for them. Email needs significant amount of staff resources for support, for essentially a free or almost free type of service.

Spam4Life

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#2221143 19-Apr-2019 14:28

FWIW, I think offering email is a great way to tie down customers. My mom has an xtra email, and is with Spark. When we consider switching service to a cheaper option, email becomes an issue. Almost all of her bills go through xtra email. So if she has to move to another ISP (say Vodafone), then she (meaning me) needs to get her a gmail or outlook email account. THEN she (meaning me) needs to move all past emails to gmail or outlook. THEN she (meaning me, again) needs to switch all services that know her xtra email to the gmail or outlook. She must have been with Spark for 10 years, so I have nfi how many services know her xtra email. Given all the hassles, the best option is just to stick with Spark but put her on the cheapest plan. And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people, especially on xtra email, who think like this.

My point is, Vodafone scored a massive own goal by ditching email, it is such a great retainer of customers. This news is just the final confirmation (verified by VAR?). Changing email is not like mobile phone number portability. Changing email address is a life altering experience for customers, if it isn't necessary, nobody wants to do it.

phantomdb

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#2221175 19-Apr-2019 15:33

@spam4life, email was the only thing keeping me at Vodafone, I was using there personal web hosting as well. I'm either waiting for my con-tract to finish or bail. 20 years as a customer basicly because I liked my paradise.net.nz address.

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#2221181 19-Apr-2019 15:43

Spam4Life:

FWIW, I think offering email is a great way to tie down customers.

[snip]

Changing email is not like mobile phone number portability. Changing email address is a life altering experience for customers, if it isn't necessary, nobody wants to do it.

100% agree

I now have my own domain, and have diligently worked to swap over email addresses from my old @clear.net.nz address to my own domain name, and have been doing so since VF deprecated their email service.
I still received over a dozen emails to the old address in the last month.

It ain't easy!

There are organisations where your email address is your account name*, and the only 'easy' way is to delete the old account and open a new one. But when there's twenty-plus years' history attached to the old account, you don't want to just vanish it. You have to find someone in the organisation willing to talk to the technical people to do a bit of database editing to make it happen. Very tedious and time consuming.
Then there's the organisations with multiple, evidently unconnected customer databases, where you go in and change your subscription details and your subscription/billing emails now come to the right place but the marketing ones just keep on rolling in to the old address. [cough] Air New Zealand.

Bah, humbug! 😡

* yes, I know it's a bad design choice, and probably so do they, now. But twenty years ago, "customer changes email address" almost certainly wasn't a Use Case for the design of the software.

Spong

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#2221217 19-Apr-2019 17:37

An awful lot of people are still using their Vodafone/IHUG/Paradise email addresses as their Apple account logins as well as for a variety of other account logins. Thankfully when they forget their password, which happens all too often from my experience, they thankfully can reset their password with a link sent to their old email address, which is then forwarded to their new Gmail/Hotmail or other domain address they've been moved to since VF killed their old address. I've lost count of the number of my older customers who can't correctly answer the stupid questions Apple asked them years ago, like "Who was your childhood hero" etc.

Once redirection is closed down, they're going to be pretty stuffed, and we all know what they should be doing in advance of that happening, but the reality is, that inertia happens. Many won't do this despite being given plenty of notice. Hardliners will argue that they only have themselves to blame. Maybe, but it's still a hard-nosed attitude.

IMHO, Vodafone have a long history of doing stuff like this. They simply fail to relate to their customers in a caring and meaningful way. They could at least continue to offer the service at a small cost.

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#2221251 19-Apr-2019 18:13

matisyahu:

Side Note: I'm surprised they didn't offer customers to keep the email address if they're happy to pay an extra $5-$10 per month and moving the hosting to Google G-Suite.

Transferring existing mailboxes to another provider is a non-trivial task to the point I doubt Google would even accept such a transition.

Over that long period of time we have seen the predominant ISP->client email transport method change from POP3 to IMAP. These are not just different protcols but are also stored differently on the mail server's HDD.

Combing several ISP's email together into one platform is also fraught to the point I could understand a company not wanting to do it.

Different SMTP, LDA and POP3/IMAP servers have their own way of doing things and own way of storing stuff. While there is some cross over this should be consisdered a bonus rather than the norm. Especially when some systems and many email boxes may go back 20+ years.

Email is a loss leader and comes with 10 or more times the administrative overhead of web, dns or any other internet server I can think of.

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#2221282 19-Apr-2019 20:12

So is Vodafone going to email all those getting billing emails sent to their soon to be nonredirected email. Asking for the subscribers new contact address?

You just know in september there will be a flood of "we didnt get out bill this month" type posts..

mails from these for example

mobilebill@bills.vodafone.co.nz
fixedlineandbroadband@vodafone.co.nz

Goosey

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#2221367 20-Apr-2019 08:35

Question... my apple ID set to my ihug.

I see I can change my apple ID... is it really that simple or is there a watchout I havent considered?

(ive previously changed my main contact email to my main outlook address).

Edit: I think ive spent the last few years fully migrating from my circa 1998 ihug email addy to outlook.

Any easy way to tell if stuff still being forwarded? (given you don't nessacarially know)

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#2221369 20-Apr-2019 08:40

Goosey:

Question... my apple ID set to my ihug.

I see I can change my apple ID... is it really that simple or is there a watchout I havent considered?

I think it doesn't matter how simple or not, you will have to do it. If one day you need to recover your account and can't get emails with recovery information then you are locked out. Unless they use the email as id and they have a different email address for communications.

Isn't this reason enough?

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#2228812 1-May-2019 15:30

phantomdb: but can I bail on my contract for not providing all services......???

If you speak to them, you'll find they may be accommodating. They were when I approached them when they originally cancelled the email functions.

I was ropeable at the time, as I'd only just re-signed with them on the premise that email services would be safe despite rumours. The unfortunate thing is I'm still on mailing lists from 1995, which despite best efforts, I've been unable to redirect.

Goosey

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#2228837 1-May-2019 15:56

freitasm:
Goosey:

Question... my apple ID set to my ihug.

I see I can change my apple ID... is it really that simple or is there a watchout I havent considered?

I think it doesn't matter how simple or not, you will have to do it. If one day you need to recover your account and can't get emails with recovery information then you are locked out. Unless they use the email as id and they have a different email address for communications.

Isn't this reason enough?

@freitasm

Sorry I wasn’t specific.
Apple ID is very ihug, but contact email/ primary email addy is outlook email.

So hence my question or rather caution on changing Apple ID to reflect the same.
Google a bit vague and some suggest I’ll lose stuff.

I’ll have to have a closer read up about what change ID does.

It’s a pain because auto correct grabs Apple ID as my default email addy.

muppet

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#2228838 1-May-2019 15:57

Poor Vodafone.

I guess ARC signing email as they forward it is "too hard".

Alas.

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