[neoforum]

In a mere fraction of the time... they could have opened new accounts at the service of their choice, migrated all of their mail from FastMail to the new provider, and sent out notifications to all their contacts informing them of their new address

That doesn't solve the problem of people who had my address years ago who I'm no longer in touch with who might move back to town and try to write me.

About 10 years ago I stopped using a mail.com address that I had, and I *still* occasionally get personal emails there from friends who had that address, including from people I've told about my new address several times. Some people just aren't very good at keeping track of everyone else's current email addresses.

I never said it was *technically* difficult to change email addresses. If you really think it's so easy, you wouldn't hesitate to take me up on my challenge to do it yourself, or send me $30/year. I bet you could both change your own primary email address *and* send me $30 in barely more time than it took you to write that message. But you won't, not because it's difficult to do, but because it would be a big pain for you going forward.

I personally pay much more than US$30 per year for my critical email addresses. I understand email is not sufficiently important to you to consider stumping up $0.08 per day, but I rely on it.

Email is very important to me. Good job imagining what it's like for people who aren't as flush as yourself. And, you might consider that even for people for whom $30/year is no big deal, most wouldn't feel good about having to start paying again for something they already bought. If you consider $0.08 per day to be an insignificant amount, my wife and I would welcome your gifts of $30/year. But really I don't want your money, because I don't want to send it on to fastmail and reward them for breaking their promise. I want fastmail to keep their promise.

I suppose you don't mind when people break their promises to you and wouldn't mind paying money to people who had broken a promise? Hey, remember yesterday I offered to send you a cookie today if you you gave me $0.10, so you did? Oops, I got busy and decided I don't have time, so I'm breaking my promise. Sorry about that. But tell you what, why don't you give me $3 now, and then it will be worth it to me to send you that cookie that I already promised you. It's not like $3 will break your budget. Do you feel like sending me that $3? No? I can't imagine why.

This is pure emotionalism and nonsense.

I disagree. Dementia is a real illness and it's perfectly possible elderly people with dementia will not take up a new address even if given to them.

Thank you, samhu. My mom had dementia toward the end of her life and she (with my help) had been using a fastmail email address for around 10 years before she died. In her last couple of years, she was still able to log herself in and enjoyed reading her email, but she wouldn't have been able to remember a new email address. And unlike me, she definitely wouldn't have felt able to afford paying to keep it.