Pay up to use an old Talktalk email address

Talktalk is charging former customers £5 a month or £50 a year to continue using their old email address.

The ISP is emailing affected customers to urge them to sign up to a Talktalk broadband package in order to use Talktalk Mail “for free”.

From 21 November any former customers not paying the fee will lose many account features. Talktalk added that “a few months” after that deadline it will start deleting the accounts of former customers who haven’t signed up to a broadband deal, or who aren’t paying for Talktalk Mail.

The move will particularly impact customers who had a Tiscali email account in the 2000s. These accounts moved to Talktalk in 2009 when parent company Carphone Warehouse bought Tiscali.

Talktalk said its customers “benefit from a wide range of perks including webmail, calling and privacy features at no additional cost”. It added that Talktalk Mail is £2.50 a month cheaper than BT’S equivalent email service.

However, some former customers have complained about the charge on Talktalk’s forums ( www.snipca. com/32943). One customer called gazzawazza called it an “unexpected/hidden charge, which has been sprung on users”. He described it as a “ransom demand”, and accused Talktalk of “deceptive behaviour”.

Other customers came to Talktalk’s defence, saying that the company has supported old email addresses for many years. One customer, called ferguson, pointed out that old and lapsed email accounts have been hijacked by spammers, causing Talktalk “no end of trouble”.

One of the forum’s moderators, OCE-ADY, acknowledged that some customers think the move is unfair, but said it was unavoidable due to the “ever increasing costs” of maintaining millions of old email accounts.

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