Cancelling PN But would like to keep email acounts

[#1]

Yes @Townman I fully understand running email services are a cost and equally understand Plusnet as a business no longer wants to do that; fair enough. BUT as I thought I'd made clear the way they are managing it is really poor, especially for some long-standing customers who probably don't know their options, how to avail themselves of them or how immediate and draconian the cut-off is.

[#2]

If I remember correctly, when I joined Metronet over 20 years ago, I paid for email.

What goes around, comes around.

It never ceases to amaze me how undisciplined some are in managing important emails, relying entirely on a freebie service, with emails residing on a third party 'cloud' server and with no local record. 

[#3]

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@Townman wrote:

Running these services does cost money ... and Plusnet does not have the billing system capability to bill for them.  This is why when the new billing system came in, paid for mailbox retention became a zero charge item.

I don't think the cost is significant - the marginal cost of an individual user's e-mail is tiny. Getting rid of e-mail altogether (eventually) will save real money, but deleting one users e-mail the instant they leave Plusnet won't.

What I see as more significant is the matter of liability - with a "free" (or rather "included" in the broadband price) e-mail service people may be forgiving of some rough edges and low mailbox allowances. With a paid for e-mail service any issues will bring down the ire of users demanding that they get what they are paying for.

I think that is why e-mail was never a separately chargeable service, and why no charge was made for mailboxes that continued after a user dropped Plusnet broadband.

From another perspective, maintaining e-mail for ex-customers does keep a connection with that customer going - arguably making it more likely that they would come back to Plusnet in the future, or recommend Plusnet to new potential customers (while probably costing less than advertising with an equivalent impact). Deleting e-mail without even a notice period immediately cuts all connection to the ex-customer - most probably forever.