I’m about to leave a long-term relationship. It’s been a long time coming; years of forgiveness, years of ignoring major screw-ups, years of dysfunctionality.
It’s time to dump my household email address.
We’ve had the same address since the internet became a thing. It came with one of the earliest available providers of high-speed in our area. But that provider has been through three different incarnations with three different names in its lifetime, and it’s turned into a crochety, pain-in-the ass oldster who really has to give up the car keys and stop driving my email life.
Evidence that I should have put an end to this relationship long ago:
- Email through this provider is completely incompatible with Apple products. A guy at the Genius Bar told me three years ago I should dump this email if I want to use my iPad as my main device, but I kept it and limped along. I’ve never been able to send an email from my home account using my iPad, unless I’m actually sitting in my home.
- My laptop stopped recognizing my account three weeks ago. The only way to access my email is through the company’s website – not exactly convenient.
- Two weeks ago my iPad completely gave up on that account. Not receiving, not sending.
- The account comes through what has long been a crap internet provider. We consistently get1/100th of the speed we pay for. We’ve shelved the issue for years (with monthly phone calls to compain/insist on an improvement/demand reduction in fees) and fully intend to switch over to Google Fiber when it comes to our neighborhood in under a year.
Months ago I created a Gmail account for our household use, knowing this day was coming. It’s been sitting there, patiently waiting for us, ready to be our new, reliable, functional email delivery system.
So today I start the VERY long process of notifying important contacts of the address change. First I have to think of who all those important contacts are, and that will be no small feat. I’m wondering how long it will be before I notice that I’ve forgotten a vital utility, financial institution, or old friend. Since I can’t access my address book because the account is non-functional except on the company’s website, it all has to come from memory.
If you’ve got any tips, dear readers, for getting through this process I’d appreciate hearing them!
Mom Goes On 
When we moved across the states I was in fear of losing everything—that irrational side of me–anyway, I printed out my address book just in case. It helped because I was able to weed out the people I would never contact again.
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That seems very sensible. After four days with the new address (though we still have access to the old one) it’s going well so far!
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Are you able to set up an auto-reply message on your old account using any kind of out-of-office or vacation responder feature? “This email address is no longer used or monitored. My new address is ____@gmail.com”
It probably wouldn’t help with any financial institutions you forget since a lot of those senders don’t read responses, but would at least help with any personal friends or acquaintances your forget.
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That’s a great idea, and I hadn’t thought of it. Not sure if auto reply is an option on the website access but I’ll check. Thank you!
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This reminds me of giving up our landline. A big decision but absolutely no regrets! Good luck.
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Haha, I love this. Even though I want to delete my email, I still give it about a month after I send my notifications just incase someone I forgot emails me!
❤
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That’s a good idea!
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