Vodafone shutting down email?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Vodafone shutting down email?

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278 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1860774 8-Sep-2017 11:40

While most of us here are going, "Yay, about time!", we also need to bear in mind that there are a number of older folk in particular who have only ever had one e-mail address at Paradise or Clearnet. I know several such people and have over the years encouraged them to move to Gmail. But resistance to change is huge in this group, and many people fear they will lose out, and that their friends won't know how to contact them. We all know it is trivial to set up a Gmail account and is way better for all users.

Vodafone have the done the right thing here, but I do have sympathy for those older people who will freak out over this.

[Edit: spelling mistake]

Tinshed
Wellington, New Zealand

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Linux

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#1860795 8-Sep-2017 11:56

My parents are going to be impacted but I can start the work around now, Will go check Gmail

Linux

Jaxar

383 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1860796 8-Sep-2017 11:57

Tinshed:

While most of us here are going, "Yay, about time!", we also need to bear in mind that there are a number of older folk in particular who have only ever had one e-mail address at Paradise or Clearnet. I know several such people and have over the years encouraged them to move to Gmail. But resistance to change is huge in this group, and many people fear they will lose out, and that their friends won't know how to contact them. We all know it is trivial to set up a Gmail account and is way better for all users.

Vodafone have the done the right thing here, but I do have sympathy for those older people who will freak out over this.

[Edit: spelling mistake]

Having worked in VF call center as tech support and as complaints while you are right I honestly feel sorry for the frontline staff who are going to have to bear the brunt of angry confused customers who won't understand or agree with the decision.

Back to my happy excel sheets for me.

Please note: I have a professional bias towards Vodafone.

k14

623 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1860801 8-Sep-2017 12:06

Tinshed:

While most of us here are going, "Yay, about time!", we also need to bear in mind that there are a number of older folk in particular who have only ever had one e-mail address at Paradise or Clearnet. I know several such people and have over the years encouraged them to move to Gmail. But resistance to change is huge in this group, and many people fear they will lose out, and that their friends won't know how to contact them. We all know it is trivial to set up a Gmail account and is way better for all users.

Vodafone have the done the right thing here, but I do have sympathy for those older people who will freak out over this.

[Edit: spelling mistake]

Yes, my parents are in the same boat. I told them to change to Gmail but how do you get a decent sounding address? Who wants John.SmithNZ188674@gmail.com? Their previous address was a very simple 3 characters (their initials with a - in between) @clear.net.nz. This is the most difficult thing in my opinion. Even if you buy a domain you'll have to get something long that is not very easy to say over the phone and very easy for the person at the other end to stuff up. Specially if you have a long/difficult to pronounce/foreign surname.

I was lucky I signed up to Gmail the first few months it was out and have my name @gmail.com. That horse has well and truely bolted.

tripp

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#1860806 8-Sep-2017 12:10

Linux:

My parents are going to be impacted but I can start the work around now, Will go check Gmail

Linux

Look at outlook.com as well, there are still a lot of outlook.co.nz email address you can get.

Plus it has a really nice interface now.

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#1860808 8-Sep-2017 12:12

tripp:

Linux:

My parents are going to be impacted but I can start the work around now, Will go check Gmail

Linux

Look at outlook.com as well, there are still a lot of outlook.co.nz email address you can get.

Plus it has a really nice interface now.

I use both and the SPAM filter is rubbish when compared to Gmail

Linux

Tinshed

278 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1860811 8-Sep-2017 12:21

k14:

Tinshed:

While most of us here are going, "Yay, about time!", we also need to bear in mind that there are a number of older folk in particular who have only ever had one e-mail address at Paradise or Clearnet. I know several such people and have over the years encouraged them to move to Gmail. But resistance to change is huge in this group, and many people fear they will lose out, and that their friends won't know how to contact them. We all know it is trivial to set up a Gmail account and is way better for all users.

Vodafone have the done the right thing here, but I do have sympathy for those older people who will freak out over this.

[Edit: spelling mistake]

Yes, my parents are in the same boat. I told them to change to Gmail but how do you get a decent sounding address? Who wants John.SmithNZ188674@gmail.com? Their previous address was a very simple 3 characters (their initials with a - in between) @clear.net.nz. This is the most difficult thing in my opinion. Even if you buy a domain you'll have to get something long that is not very easy to say over the phone and very easy for the person at the other end to stuff up. Specially if you have a long/difficult to pronounce/foreign surname.

I was lucky I signed up to Gmail the first few months it was out and have my name @gmail.com. That horse has well and truely bolted.

That's a fair point you raise about getting a decent email address with any of the major players. Not sure there is a good way forward for either Vodafone or for its customers in this situation. Two months isn't a long time to make this change but I guess they didn't want to get into the Christmas/New Year period with it still going on.

Interesting comments here about getting your own domain and using that. I have several of my own domains with multiple e-mail addresses but I am in the process of simplifying these as I find it an increasing hassle to maintain domains names, hosting, etc. Now I pretty much just use the various free services. Different of course if you have a business or wish to maintain a "brand" then your own domain is essential.

One of other comment about Gmail names. We paid $5 back in the day for an Gmail invite so our son could have the pure surname@gmail.com. Trouble is now his level of spam/unwanted/misdirected mail is so great, even accounting for Google's filters, that he is thinking of getting a less obvious gmail address! Sigh.

Tinshed
Wellington, New Zealand

esawers

516 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1860814 8-Sep-2017 12:27

Signed my kids up with gmail accounts a few years ago for this reason... one has firstlast@gmail, and the other firstmiddlelast@gmail

Just today managed to get my mum with firstlast@gmail as she will be affected

pristle

146 posts

Master Geek

Subscriber

#1860816 8-Sep-2017 12:28

I'm really peeved to hear about this. And by hear about it I heard Leighton Smith mention it on the radio at around 11h30 this morning. As has been the usual story of late, despite being a Vodafone customer since the BellSouth and iHug days, there's been nary a message in my inbox or detailed on my invoice thus far.

I've had 5 @ihug addresses since 1995. Needless to say, since that was early days for email, the addresses are easily relevant to our names. With friends and family well flung across the globe They've been easy to remember. Try port those names now 22 years later to another service. Other than the primary, which is unique, it can't be done for the others.

For 22 years we've been sending and receiving emails with these addresses. I have customers who migrated to a .com address from .co.nz address 6 years ago. I still can't decommission the older domain due to the number of emails being sent to that domain on a daily basis.

Further I was assured at the time of VF's acquisition of ihug that I'd never lose them. It was a response from one of the directors at the time, to my voiced concerns about this very eventuality.

It's been the only reason I've stuck it out with them for this long. I finally signed a 12 month deal back in March for fibre. I may just bite the bullet, pay the departure tax and move on elsewhere.

Jaxar

383 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1860826 8-Sep-2017 12:45

@pristle I'm not sure I understand the problem. From what I have understood VF have agreed to alias your existing address to a new box. From a practical purpose you don't loose it but get a better spam protection.

Now a complaint about hey now I have to do a bunch of stuff to keep my email working that I would rather not have to do as I have better things to do with my time I would understand although not actually agree with.

Please note: I have a professional bias towards Vodafone.

kiwifidget

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#1860829 8-Sep-2017 12:47

Really didnt need this right now VF while trying to port my parents over to Outlook after their ISP pulled the plug on email.

Thank goodness I kept my email addresses from my previous ISP.

Delete cookies?! Are you insane?!

nedkelly

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#1860833 8-Sep-2017 12:52

Sigh, reading the start of this thread I thought that it was just vodafone.net.nz email addresses, now the NZHerald is saying all.

Guess its time to move parents on to my domain.

redherring

83 posts

Master Geek

#1860864 8-Sep-2017 13:02

Just got the email from Vodafone about my ihug account. Not really a big deal - I switched a while back to using outlook.com as a sort of front end to get active sync. Just have to deal with the parents email now...

yitz

1874 posts

Uber Geek

#1860868 8-Sep-2017 13:09

I do wonder how well their forwarding plan is going to work out... the receiving end spam filtering must be pretty robust as to not end up with false positives (I would expect Gmail and Outlook's filtering is pretty robust but you probably wouldn't want to forward to SMX/Xtra lol).

robfish

679 posts

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#1860877 8-Sep-2017 13:25

As the senior Geek in our family I decided years ago to set up my own domain ( surname.net.nz )

A few years later Google offered Google Apps free (for a limited time) so we now have the whole family (my Mum, my wife and I, our adult "kids" and our grandchildren) with Gmail addresses like firstname@lastname.net.nz

Well worth the effort and the cost.

Rob

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