Second mail box has vanished like it never existed

[#1]

I spent the weekend with an elderly aunt who uses plusnet email to keep in touch with family.  She complained that she couldn't log in to her webmail and when I contacted Plusnet I was told that her email address had never existed and can't be resurrected - but emails to her appear in the main account as a catch-all (including the contract renewal docs!) and I have saved messages to and from her that used her email.

I was then told that email is being phased out and new accounts can't have extra mailboxes, but the suggested solution, to use the main account email, would NOT be acceptable as that is in her late husband's name and messages to/from a ghost is creepy!

For now, I've created a gmail account for her but she isn't getting her head around the differences or how to communicate that new email address.

I'm slightly annoyed with myself that I only discovered this after renewing her contract and I can't believe it can just be cancelled, deleted and impossible to bring back.  Any ideas?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@macpherson That sounds very much to me that you spoke to a very dim agent.What errors/messages appear if you try to log into the webmail account? Is her email address a secondary one, as you mention the main one is in her late husbands name?

NEW accounts, as opposed to existing ones, do not have an email component, but there is, AFAIK, no current restriction on creating a secondary mailbox on current accounts.

[#3]

@macpherson John is correct, you should still be able to create an additional mailbox on an old account.

If you can log in to your aunts account and then go to Manage Account , there should be a 'Manage my Plusnet mailboxes' link towards the bottom of the page. On the 'Summary' tab there is a list of existing mailboxes and a link to create a new one

I can confirm , this still works, I used it only a few days ago.

There is another tab 'Mailboxes' which lists mailboxes and allows creation of new ones and changing of passwords for existing. There is a bug on that page which causes a 'balck box' to fill most of the screen. You need to zoom out of the page and then it should be ok

Let us know how you get on with that.

BTW Mail is NOT being phased out for existing users of it.

[#4]

Thank you both.  I have been able to go in and open a new mailbox using the same name/address details as before but have had to upgrade the password to include capitals, numbers, special characters.  Off now to explain that on the phone to an 84 year old who is slightly deaf!

The agent on the phone was lovely to speak to and seemed very knowledgable but plainly not as much as I had thought.

Thank you again,

[#5]

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@macpherson wrote:

I was then told that email is being phased out and new accounts can't have extra mailboxes

Any ideas?

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For the record, there are two bits of misleading information here...

1. Email is not being phased out for EXISTING users, though if a user changes ISPs they will lose their Plusnet email addresses
2. EXISTING email users can have extra mailboxes

The one bit of correct information is that new Plusnet accounts / users cannot use the Plusnet email service.