Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim
I sympathize with Fastmail on this, and think the old Member accounts are quite impractical for any current real email use. I cannot really imagine why anyone feels strongly about keeping such an account. However, Fastmail may be on shaky legal grounds here if a few people want to be bloody-minded.
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Well, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, I think the issue for some is more the
email address associated with the account than the account itself — I believe that's what
Quilleron is suggesting above near the end of their post.
From that point of view, I can understand it, and perhaps the suggestion of a forwarding service isn't all that far off, although I can understand how that might be a pain for FastMail to maintain, I definitely think it's something they should at least
consider, as this is also going to be a nuisance for anybody who expected to sign up and get an email address that would
never change.
Now, that said, while I can understand that point of view, I've always been a firm believer in getting what you pay for. Personally, the only way I can guarantee an email address that will
never change is to register and pay for my own domain name — then I can host it at any service that I like (and have done so, over the years).
Again, though, I do feel their pain when it comes to the email address issue — anybody who expected that their FastMail address would exist in perpetuity is going to be forced to either start paying a regular fee or go through the headache of changing away from an email address that they've had for possibly a decade or more. It looks like there's a six-month transition for people to sort this out before the Guest/Member accounts go away, but it's clearly going to be a headache — I know it's something I wouldn't want to have to deal with, considering the vast number of places that have my email address — I
still occasionally get relevant emails to a domain name that I haven't used in almost a decade (I still own the other domain as I have some friends and family using it, but I switched away from it for my personal email about a decade ago).