Moving email addresses between accounts

[jazznorthwest]

I have 5 email addresses on my account, two of which were set up for my children. My daughter now lives 120 miles away, and recently transferred to BT from Virgin Media. She thought it might be a good idea to transfer her email address to her own BT account, to which I agreed.  What a performance - I arranged to ring BT on a day when she was at home, and during her lunch break. I rang and suggested they could call her to complete the process, but was informed they couldn't do that, she would have to ring them.  I sent her a text and she rang and spoke to a lady who talked her through the procedure.  At one stage she was told that although she had my account number, she would need my account password to continue the transfer process, so my daughter sent me a text to this effect.  It seemed very odd to me that I had to give her my account password.  Giving someone else a password is not something I would not normally do, but it wasn’t a problem on this occasion. I guess I can see now why it would be easier if we were together.  Having got to the section where she was being asked to import an email address, the screen said, "This account has the following associated email addresses “listed below“, but in fact, nothing was listed. It simply asked if she wanted to import them all, Yes or No, and when she told the lady from BT, she was told to click “Yes”.   When my daughter later informed me, I feared the worst, and sure enough, all my email addresses were now gone and listed on her account!  I then went through the same process, this time needing her account and password details,  and also noting that no email addresses were listed I answered YES to import all. I was now back at square one!  

On the third attempt, I clicked NO to the question do you want to import all and was met with an error page suggesting that it wasn't possible to do it because, "If you do not already have a BT email address, you’ll no longer be able to create one; this option was withdrawn on 26th October 2022".  There is a page to this affect but I wasn't allowed to post the URL here.

Back to BT and George in Darlington was extremely helpful, but in the end had to escalate the problem. A day later he rang me back to say it had been done.  Logging into my daughter's account showed one active email address, and one she had given to 'friends and family'. The only snag was that the active one was the one I set up for my son, which I wanted to delete as he no longer used it.  He talked me through that but, although her email address was now associated with her account, it wasn't visible, and she had no active email accounts.  George has escalated this so hopefully, it will get sorted.   Thankfully her email address is still working OK, but if you think this was long-winded, it's only half the story!   

Fred

[gg30340]

I have moved you onto your own thread because the one you posted on was marked as solved and being on your own thread means any answers you get will be for you.

The correct procedure for moving an email account to another BT Broadband account needs to be followed in the correct order to allow it to work. It does not need BT staff to do this it can be done by the email account holder, you,  and the person, in this case your daughter, who is receiving the email account.

What you should have done first was to "gift" your daughters email account to her. The correct procedure to do this is set out in the following link.

This would entail you "gifting" the email account to your daughter and her accepting it or "activating" it and then setting up her own BTID and once she has done that she would log onto her own MyBT and be able to fully manage the email account from there.

Creating BT Email addresses? | BT Help

Once she has full control of the email account she can then move it to her own BT Broadband account as per the procedure set out in the following link.

Can I move my BT Email address to another account? | BT Help

In order to do that she will need to have at least one email account already set up in her BT Broadband account. 

However. If she has recently moved to BT after 26th October 2022 she will not have the option to set up a new email account on her broadband account. BT withdrew the option of email accounts to new customers after that date.

If she is unable to set up an email account because of this the above system fails. 

Has she been able to set up a new email account on her BT Broadband account? 

As your problem has been escalated there is nothing that can be done on the forum until the conclusion of the escalation so please keep this thread updated how you get on. 

[jazznorthwest]

Many thanks for your assistance.

Also thanks for the correct procedure. All I can say is that I rang BT to find out if it was possible to move my daughter's email address from my BT account to hers, and was in their hands from there on. It would appear that the people I spoke to maybe didn't know the correct procedure. When I spoke to George and told him that my accounts had gone back and forth, he took me through the same procedure, and as you point out, "if she has recently moved to BT after 26th October 2022 she will not have the option to set up a new email account on her broadband account. BT withdrew the option of email accounts to new customers after that date". She did in fact move to BT after that date. That was the stumbling block where we ended up.  George suggested there was another option, the one you say should be done first, so took me through that process.  When we came to the point of gifting it, I hesitated and asked if her emails were secure and would still be there after the transfer, and not reset and wiped out.  He wasn't able to confirm that and suggested I set up an additional email account, send it an email, and then gift it.  Seemed a good idea to me so I set one up, sent it an email, and then started the gift process. At some stage, I noticed that her normal email address appeared at the top of the page, and I was concerned that I was gifting the wrong one. It was also her BT Account ID, so maybe it would have been OK, but I aborted it.  I let George go and had another attempt, but for some reason I can't recall, I aborted that process as well.  As more than 2 hours had passed and I was getting tired I left the house to do some shopping.  When I came back, I don't know what happened, but when I logged into  my account, it showed I had no active emails but I had gifted email addresses (not shown), of which there were (2), presumably the new ones I had created, but as I  had started to gift them, where had they ended up, and more to the point where were my 4 email addresses previously associated with my account?  I only had one option it appeared, and that was to try and import them, which I managed to do successfully. I decided to import the two new ones from wherever they were, but the answer was that they were already associated with my account so I can't seem to get at them. Looking at my account today, I can see I have 3 active emails, my son's was successfully deleted yesterday, and my daughter's has been transferred.  I also have "Email addresses you've given to friends and family (3)",  but what they are could be anybody's guess, but I reckon will be hers and the two new ones.   Her account shows she has no active email addresses, and I'm hoping George will come back to me with her email address "active" on her account eventually.  As I said, the previous entry into the forum, was only half the story.  I have to say I'm more than happy that this is being sorted and appreciate the time and effort taken. Equally glad I am retired and have the time to deal with it.  Any ideas on how to cancel the gifting of those temporary email addresses?  Or equally, where I can see what they are?

Fred

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

There is nothing that forum members can do to resolve this.

I think it will take the BT email team to untangle the mess and move email accounts to where they should be.

With this in mind I have notified the moderators of the forum about your problem. Once they have read this they may be able to help or at the very least be able to find out what is on going with "George".  They will advise you by posting on this thread.

[NeilO]

Hi @jazznorthwest I'm really sorry, what a mess. I've sent you a private message so you can get in touch and we'll do our best to get this sorted. 

Thanks

Neil

[jazznorthwest]

Many thanks. I have to admit I think initially I was just sounding off in frustration, but readily admit that the problem is being dealt with, and I'm happy to leave it to George to come up with the answer. On the other hand, I was hoping it might lead to an answer for anybody else having the same problem, and it did, you kindly provided it, but I suspect moving emails between accounts, especially to any accounts set up after last year, will hardly be a daily event.  I'll be happy to report a successful conclusion when it happens.

Fred

[jazznorthwest]

Pleased to say that George has rung me and everything is now where it should be.  Thankfully IMAP access was never affected. Thanks to all who have helped sort this out, and anyone else trying to move an email account to another BT Acount, now have the proedure outlined in this thread.