How do I upgrade my profile, when BT will not accept my email?

[Elms]

On this page of the BT website: https://my.bt.com/s/apps/appsselfserve/index.html?/profile#/uplift-profile I am asked to enter an email for use with my BT account. A screenshot of this webpage below.

I don't know why BT is asking for my email, because BT already knows it, as I receive my BT bills via my email address. 

Anyway, when I try to enter my email address, I get the error message:

"This recovery email should not match with BT user name", which is shown in red in the screenshot below.

My current BT username is in the format: iiissss, where iii are my three initials, and ssss is my surname.

My email is in the format iii.ssss@gmail.com 

Clearly the BT website does not like the fact that my username and email start with the same text. But what can I do about this? I only have one email address, so that's the one I need to use.

This seems moronic. Didn't anyone at BT figure out that a person might use their actual name for both their BT username and their email?

Is it actually possible to contact a sentient being in BT support and have them sort this out for me? 

 

[licquorice]

It's not clear what you are actually trying to do. It would appear you already have a BTID and are trying to add a recovery email address. If this is the case, the recovery address clearly can't be the same as your primary address as there would be no point to it. The recovery address needs to be a different address. Simply create another Gmail address for that purpose.

[rbz5416]

It looks like @Elms has a legacy BTID when you could just have a username, & is now being prompted to update that to a full email address. I'm surprised it's not differentiating between the username & the email address with a "dot" in between.

Are you able to temporarily change the username first? I suspect not as that will probably also now require an email address, but worth a try.

Otherwise creating a backup Gmail address as @licquorice suggested is probably the path of least resistance. It's always useful to have spare anyway.

[NeilO]

Hi @Elms Thanks for posting, you need to update your username to be in the format of an email address.  This is also why you're getting the error message when trying to activate BT Virus Protect. When you're in the MyBT website please select 'Your details' then 'Edit Username' and enter your email. Your recovery email also needs to be a different email address from the one you're using as your BT ID.

Thanks

Neil

[Elms]

@licquorice, thanks for your reply.

Although the error message in red refers to entering a recovery email, I suspect this error phrase might be a mistake, as the webpage itself seems to want me to provide an email which I will in future use to log into the BT website, instead of the non-email BT ID that I currently have. There was nothing in the webpage about adding a recovery email to my account.

[Elms]

@NeilO thanks for your suggestions.

Using the top-of-page menu on the https://my.bt.com site, when I go to: My BT > Your Details > Personal Details, it redirects me to the webpage that I posted above as a screenshot (it redirects to this page: https://my.bt.com/s/apps/appsselfserve/index.html?/profile#/uplift-profile ).

I wonder if entering a temporary email address on that page would work, which I could then hopefully change later to my regular email address. 

[Elms]

@rbz5416

I could not find any place in my account settings which allows me to change my BT ID username. So I am thinking instead that I could update my account to a temporary email address, and then later update my account again to my regular email address.  

[DanielS]

Hi @Elms,

Ideally we need the recovery email to be different from your actual username. That's why it's preventing you from using the email as the username, from what I can see.

I'll send you a private message about this as I can help.

Thank you

DanielS

[rbz5416]

Try MyBT > Your Details > Personal Details. Should take you to your profile page with your name & DoB at the top & BT ID below that. To the right of that should be an edit option.

[Elms · Accepted solution]

Thanks very much everyone who provided suggestions above. 

I finally managed to fix the problem: and in case anyone else is having the same trouble, the issue was that my regular email address had somehow been entered as a recovery email for my BT account, and that's why the BT website did not let me enter my regular email as my BT ID.

Once I changed the recovery email address to a different email, I was able to enter my regular email address as my BT ID.

I was not originally able to observe that my recovery email was set as my my regular email, as I was not able to view personal details page (as when I tried to view this page, I got redirected to the webpage I posted in the first post as a screenshot).

So I first had to change my BT ID to another email address (it was cleverly suggested to me to use my regular gmail, but use @googlemail.com instead of @gmail.com, which is what I did, and it worked).

Having done that, and having changed my BT ID to another email address, I was finally able to view my personal details page.

Once I could view my personal details page, I discovered that my regular email address had somehow been entered as a recovery email for my BT account, and that's why the BT website did not let me enter my regular email as my BT ID.

Once I changed the recovery email address on my personal details page to a different email, I was able to enter my regular email address as my BT ID.