Switching provider from BT - email question or alternatives

[thepeoplespal]

My missus has a long standing email address on btinternet.com that has been used for many many signups and while we can try to move over to a different one, I think we will need to keep it for a year or two to allow password changes for various forums and shopping sites. BT used to allow use for £2 a month, if you were not a customer, but are now charging £5 a month for email (monopoly power if you ask me) which almost negates changing provider.

I've heard that the email address could be assigned to another friendly BT customer (it will be her mum's bt account) without incurring a charge. Although I don't think her mum has a bt email address, so that might complicate things.

Has anyone managed to do something like this to retain a Btinternet.com email address?

[Kenny6868]

I did this a few years ago. I left BT to move to Sky but spoke to BT about keeping my email address. They said they'd charge me £2.50 a month to keep it, but they never once took the direct debit.

Last year I moved back to BT and it was a royal pain in the ass getting the My-BT account configured because it still had me registered under the old email address. I eventually worked it out and am happy with the way it all runs. I still have the old email address, I've never lost any emails throughout the whole process and it didn't cost me anything while I was away.

Alternatively, sign up for a month, move everything to a Gmail (or similar) address and then cancel with BT.

[HantsRat]

Export all the email and import to Outlook.com or Gmail.

Then spend a couple of days moving over all subscriptions etc to new email address. Painful yes but will save you a whole load of hassle in years to come.