Btmail vs Btyahoo mail.

[Mk11]

If I remember correctly, at some point everyone was on BtYahoo Mail and then a migration process began to Btmail. Unfortunately that seemed to abruptly stop, leaving some people including myself with BtYahoo Mail. Some people on this forum have only in the last day referred to BtYahoo Mail as “flakey”.  I recently discovered that my email  “auto forwarding” had vanished without warning. To cut a long story short Bt said that it was not their responsibility to deal with this as my email provider was Yahoo. However, whenever I have password issues with BtYahoo Mail it is always the Bt helpline that deals with them. I did take it up with the Ombudsman but their response was to ignore the details of the case and simply state that  a service provider could change its terms and conditions relating to the service it provides, at any time and that it was not an Ombudsman issue.  My main concern is that all sort of negative changes could be made to my email account, with no prior warning (“Auto forwarding” just went with no warning) and Bt, with whom I have a contract and who I pay, will refuse to accept any responsibility. Finally, some Bt customers were migrated to BtMail and others left with BtYahoo Mail, the second being inferior and occasionally being disowned by Bt when it suits them - surely this is not right? Any suggestions would be welcome.

[licquorice]

Unfortunately, as you found out from the Ombudsman, BT can do what they like.  I think you will find that BTMail is not any better than BTYahoo mail in any case. I'm still on BTYahoo mail, the migration stopped permanently in 2014. The answer is not to use either system and use an ISP independant mail system such as GMail, Outlook (Hotmail) or your own domain.

[Mk11 · Accepted solution]

Thanks, actually I started forwarding important emails to gmail and hotmail accounts (from the BtYahoo Mail) about two years ago as a backup, due to growing unease about the BtYahoo service and the awful Bt helpline service. It turned out that the two free services were incomparably more reliable! I would like to stop using Bt entirely for email but would then see no reason to stay with them for broadband either. In that case I would have to keep paying Bt about £7 month to retain an email address which has been widely circulated and is too important for me to abandon.

[Andy_N]

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@Mk11wrote:
Thanks, actually I started forwarding important emails to gmail and hotmail accounts (from the BtYahoo Mail) about two years ago as a backup, due to growing unease about the BtYahoo service and the awful Bt helpline service. It turned out that the two free services were incomparably more reliable! I would like to stop using Bt entirely for email but would then see no reason to stay with them for broadband either. In that case I would have to keep paying Bt about £7 month to retain an email address which has been widely circulated and is too important for me to abandon.

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Hi, welcome to the forums.

The migration to BTMail started in March 2014, but was permanently stopped in Sep 2014 - BT get very aggressive when challenged about the reasons and have never said why.

To keep your BTinternet address if moving to another service is currently £7.50 per month.

BTMail does provide a forwarding service, but as seen BTYahoo does not as the Yahoo system has removed the feature. However mosts systems will allow the user to fetch the emails.

For quite a long time now, a few of us recommend getting a different non ISP mail service, such as the free Gmail or outlook.live.com.

It might take a few months to tell all your contacts the new address, which can naturally be used immediately, as well as telling all online website accesses the new contact details. Once that's done, you might only get a slight trickle of emails that you may have forgotten you used as a contact - which can easily be rectified.

Then you will be free of BTinternet email address, and then if you wish to move to a different ISP, there will be no issue with email addresses - or paying to keep the BTinternet one.