Can anybody help my 90 year old father in law?

[#1]

Hi all,

Apologies if this is long and confusing but, in a nutshell, I'm trying to find a way for my 90 year old father in law to keep his Plusnet email address and not to have to go through the nightmare of having to update 500+ contacts and numerous online accounts. 

After moving his wife into a care home due to dementia, my father in law contacted BT to get the phone account transferred into his name.

He's got a bit of an odd set up - the BT landline in his house is their main phone. He also has a second landline and internet with Plusnet.  Finally, he also has a landline and internet account at a second property with Plusnet.

BT managed to persuade him to go full fibre on the main phone line without pointing out any of the pitfalls - they didn't even retain his landline number for him (I am currently writing a complaint on his behalf to them).

Unfortunately it's too late for him to cancel this so I told him that he would need to cancel his Plusnet account at his home address (no point in having two broadband accounts and he never uses the second line nowadays as he's now the only one in the house).  We assumed that, as he would still have the other Plusnet account at his other property, then the email account ie: xxx@yyy.plus.com) wouldn't be an issue.

He phoned up this morning to cancel and was told that there was no way that he could keep his email address.  Is this really the case?

He's had enough of a nightmare getting his new phone number out to people - the email account will be horrendous for him to have to sort out.  Unfortunately we're on the other side of the country so it's not as if I can just pop over to help him. 😞

[#2]

@ciderboy 

What BT is not telling him is that the phone number is in quarantine and can be recovered for 30 days after it was disconnected. I have also just read that you can cancel a BT service for 14 days after it goes live.

So my suggestion:

1. Set up a VoIP phone service with a third party company such as A&A, transfer the quarantined number to them. That should recover his phone number, it will then work on any Internet service.

2. Use the Plusnet service, connect the VoIP phone to this service rather than the BT one. This will keep his email service live.

3. Cancel the BT not the Plusnet one.

4. If necessary then update the Plusnet service to Full Fibre.

[#3]

Hi @Baldrick1,

I'll need to check out when he went live with the BT account but I've got a feeling that it might have been more than a month ago (he only tends to call me when he runs out of ideas of how to sort something).

The main thing at the moment is to keep his Plusnet email address alive - I would have thought that it could just be switched over to his other Plusnet account but I'm probably over-simplifying things.

[#4]

I would have thought that it could just be switched over to his other Plusnet account but I'm probably over-simplifying things.

The email address is inherently tied to the account in that the address is <mailbox>@<accountname>.plus.com and I'm afraid its just not possible to change an accountname.

[#5]

@ciderboy 

That’s a shame. You will have to wait for a Plusnet Agent to give an authoritative answer but I suspect that the only options will be:

1. Keep the Plusnet service going until all the email accounts are transferred

2. Keep the Plusnet service going until the end of the BT contract, then transfer out the new phone number and cancel BT.

3. Take the hit with BT cancellation charges, which will probably be the most expensive option.

[#6]

As far as I'm aware though, both properties are on the same account - he's certainly never mentioned that he's got a different account name for the second address.

If this is the case then is there a way that he can cancel his second account and move his original account to the second property?

[#7]

As far as I'm aware though, both properties are on the same account 

I didnt think that was possible.

However, if (as we suspect) they are separate accounts what should be possible is:-

Cancel the account at the second property, and then do a house move, of the account you wish to retain, to the 2nd property.

You would either need to pay the house move fee (£50 I think!) or recontract in which case the fee is waived.

[#8]

Would moving the email account to a different property cause any issues?

[#9]

I think this may be the solution we're looking for - thanks.

[#10]

@Baldrick1 It wouldn't cause any problems from my father in law's end

[#11]

@ciderboy one other thing to note, when sending email using the Plusnet server from the BT fibre connection, you will need to ensure that the email client is configued with authentication for the outgoing server ( relay.plus.net ). Use the same details as for the incoming server.