Cancelling BT Broadband, Social Tariff and being charged for basic email

[Mark141]

Hello folks,

I appreciate these questions may have already been answered, however I suspect the terms and conditions have now been changed, so older posts and their answers are out of date.

Even though I am registered disabled, this does not qualify me for the BT Essentials Social Tariff.  However, another ISP will grant me a social tariff at less than half the price of a BT regular service.  My contract expires in 5 days.  My one reservation for not moving ISP is I have been with BT since the days of dial up and I don't want to lose my ".......@btinternet.com" e-mail address and all the saved correspondence and documents in the subfolders.

I've now been given contradicting advice by different BT employees, including the webchat staff, Value Team and phone calls.  The answers were:

a) I can go to another ISP at renewal in 5 days and keep my email address for free, as the basic version

or another staff member said

b) I can go to another ISP at renewal in 5 days and keep my email address but pay £7.50 per month as basic email is no longer offered

or another staff member said

c) I can go to another ISP at renewal in 5 days and then have to inform BT I wish to retain my email address as a basic version and then maybe it's free or maybe it's £7.50 per month as they didn't really know for sure.

Is someone able to please give me the up-to-date definitive answer?

Additionally, because of the risk of complete loss of all my email history, is there a secure and reliable app I can use to download all my e-mail onto a portable hard drive? I recently used emails from 5 years ago to win a Small Claims Court case, so I really value retaining access to them.

Thanks in advance of your assistance.

[-Richie-]

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@Mark141wrote:

Is someone able to please give me the up-to-date definitive answer?

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Have a look at BT Email products 

Basic is free, it's webmail only, you can't create any new email addresses.
Premium is £7.50 per month, it's what you have now free with BT broadband.

[licquorice]

Thunderbird is the most popular free email client. Configure your account as IMAP and all mail that is on the BT server wil be replicated on your PC

[Mark141]

Thanks for the replies, most appreciative.

The link provided by Richie to BT Products raises another question regarding whether my email is linked or not;

"Please note: Some customers may still use an old BT email address that isn't currently linked to either of these services."

How would I know?

Thanks again

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@Mark141 

As advised by @licquorice 

Make sure you do download your mail, before you sign up to a new provider, as you will lose that ability once your BT service is ceased, unless you pay £7.50 a month for BT Premium mail.

Once you have downloaded your mail using Thunderbird, make a copy of the Thunderbird profile folder, as that will contain all of your folders and messages. Keep that copy in a safe place.