Changes to Talk21 e-mail service

[Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 260
Forum Member
I received an e-mail from BT yesterday to one of my Talk21 accounts.

It states that as of February 2004, if you want to continue to have POP3 access (i.e. via outlook/outlook express etc) to Talk21 you will have to pay £1.50 per month.

Talk21 (Basic)will continue as a free WEBMAIL service ONLY.

The new paid service will be called Talk21 Premium.

Apparently this is BT taking advantage of facilities made available to us by Yahoo! to ENHANCE the Talk21 email service.

For ENHANCE read CHARGE PEOPLE.

Comments

  • Tumble weedTumble weed Posts: 8,200
    Forum Member
    Dear User,

    We are writing to you to let you know about some very important changes to your Talk 21 Service.

    As you may have heard, BT has recently announced that it has entered a relationship with Yahoo! to deliver a range of exciting new services to our customers. We are taking advantage of facilities made available to us by Yahoo! to enhance the Talk21 email service. This will result in some changes to the service as shown below. However, most importantly, you will continue to be able to use your existing Talk21 email address for sending and receiving email.

    At this stage you DO NOT NEED TO TAKE ANY ACTION. We plan to make the necessary service changes during February 2004, and we'll write to you again nearer the time with more details, plus information about any action you may need to take to ensure you can continue to use Talk21.

    What are the Service Changes?

    We will introduce two new levels of service for the Talk21 service, to replace the current single level: Talk21 Basic and Talk21 Premium. Both of these options will allow you to continue to use your existing Talk21 email address to send and receive email.

    Talk21 Basic will be a great webmail ONLY service which will offer you 6Mb of inbox space, up to 3Mb attachment sizes, and a range of great new features such as junkmail blocker, larger address book, full featured calendar and spell checker facility. Talk21 basic will also continue to support users who access Talk21 using the Easicom 1000, and users who access via Sky Interactive.

    Talk21 Premium will also provide POP/SMTP access (i.e. the ability to send and receive using email software such as Outlook) as well as access via webmail. In addition it will offer you 50Mb of storage space, a premium junkmail blocker, and a antivirus tool. For users accessing via webmail it will also offer a larger address book, a fully featured calendar and a spell checker facility. This service will cost only £1.50 per month (inc VAT), payable by credit card.

    SMS Alerts

    In addition, we know that many of our customers enjoy the SMS alerts service which sends text messages to their mobile phone when an email has arrived in their Talk21 mailbox. The good news is that this service will still be available with the new Talk21 Basic and Talk21 Premium products. However, the even better news is that the new SMS service will be more flexible - (ie allow you to configure when you receive alerts), as well as offering other payment options.

    Callminder alerts

    The call minder alerts service, which uses a modified dial tone to tell users that they have new mail, and the BT.com notification pop up service, will both be withdrawn when the service moves to the BT Yahoo! service in February 2004. Usage of these features are very low and it is no longer viable for us to provide them. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.


    Best wishes

    Talk21 Customer Services team.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 74
    Forum Member
    I personally think that this is discusting, the POP3/SMTP was one of the main reason that I signed up for a TALK21 account over a HOTMAIL account , so that I can use it with outlook (I Know now that hotmail can be linked into the latest versions of outlook but I think that it couldn't be in outlook 2000). I can honestly say that I will not be paying and hence will not be using my TALK21 account anymore and will have to use my NTLWORLD account.

    Sorry if there is anyone out there that emails me and I don''t respond I refuse to pay £1.50 to access my email using the way that I signed up for.

    Sparkster :mad: :mad: :mad:
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 260
    Forum Member
    The strange thing about htis is that I have two Talk21 accounts and only received the e-mail to the one I use least!
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 465
    Forum Member
    There are loads of free PAYG ISPs that provide both free webmail and free POP3 access. Why should anyone want to pay for this.

    Sign up for a free PAYG ISP and then use that account for incoming and outgoing mail while connected to your preferred ISP.
  • beekeeperbeekeeper Posts: 196
    Forum Member
    I'm not sure what to make of talk21, here's a paragraph from their OE guide

    "However, for security reasons, it is not possible to send from talk21 using SMTP if you use other ISPs such as Freeserve, AOL etc. If you are accessing the Internet using other ISPs and want to send email from your talk21 account you must use a WEB browser to access talk21 by logging on at www.talk21.com. "

    My ISP is freeserve and I send mail from my talk21 account using OE with no problems at all. In my talk21 identity in OE, properties, server tab, I have changed it to read:

    Incoming (POP3): in.talk21.com
    Outgoing (SMTP): smpt.freeserve.com

    Also, I recently tried to create a new talk21 account but was told it was not possible to do so anymore, but was offered a free btinternet.com or btopenworld.com account instead - I wonder if the POP3 restrictions will apply to them too.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 559
    Forum Member
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    I have limited sympathy for people who rely to heavily on free services. The cost of your own domain name has been tiny for years - I've paid around £5 per year for the last four years. So get your own domain, point it at the POP email account included with your ISP and if you want webmail access and the ISP doesn't support it, use something like mail2web.

    </rant>
  • beekeeperbeekeeper Posts: 196
    Forum Member
    @nigelnolan - It's not a question of "relying" on free services at all. There are a lot of utilities/programmes out there, many at low cost, many free. While individual utilities/programmes don't cost much, collectively, they can. That's why many people opt for the free version. You could argue that a pro anti-virus doesn't cost much or a pro firewall doesn't cost much, and you'd be right. However, add them all up and they do. Why pay for something when you can get a perfectly good free version? If the Black Horse was giving away free beer, would you still go to the King's Head cos "beer doesn't cost much?

    I've been on the net for 3 years and apart from my ISP costs have not spent a single penny on anything. I have all the programmes I need, and a wicked mp3/movie collection. I'm not relying on freebies, I just enjoy finding them - it's part of the buzz of being on the net
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 559
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    There's nothing wrong with getting things for free, but it's dangerous to rely on them being around for ever. I use Grisoft AVG and it's a great free service, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some point down the line they started charging. If they did it would be a trivial matter to change software and even if you had to pay for that software, the cost in terms of time and effort would be low.

    Changing your email address can be very high cost - you have to inform all your contacts and change the sign up address for a host of websites (that's the ones that even let you change email address). If you rely on email to do business it's even worse - I cringe whenever I see addresses like wigan_plumbers@hotmail.com on the back of vans. A quick search through any computing forum (including this one) will show you the number of times Hotmail goes down! Anyway, I never said there was anything stopping you from forwarding email to your own domain to a free email address because you can still swap it if you need to.

    Just my 2p.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 13
    Forum Member
    Originally posted by beekeeper
    I'm not sure what to make of talk21, here's a paragraph from their OE guide

    "However, for security reasons, it is not possible to send from talk21 using SMTP if you use other ISPs such as Freeserve, AOL etc. If you are accessing the Internet using other ISPs and want to send email from your talk21 account you must use a WEB browser to access talk21 by logging on at www.talk21.com. "

    My ISP is freeserve and I send mail from my talk21 account using OE with no problems at all. In my talk21 identity in OE, properties, server tab, I have changed it to read:

    Incoming (POP3): in.talk21.com
    Outgoing (SMTP): smpt.freeserve.com

    Also, I recently tried to create a new talk21 account but was told it was not possible to do so anymore, but was offered a free btinternet.com or btopenworld.com account instead - I wonder if the POP3 restrictions will apply to them too.

    I haven't tried it recently, but I remember that when I used to use another ISP (can't remember which one) other than BT, Outlook Express wouldn't allow me to send or even pick up talk21 emails. The only reason I signed up to BT Internet was to allow me POP access for my talk21 email address.

    I assume that if they are now going to charge £1.50 per month that it will be useable with any ISP. If that is the case I will be happy to pay £1.50 per month as I will save more than that by switching to a cheaper ISP option than BT.
  • BexTechBexTech Posts: 12,957
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    I assume that if they are now going to charge £1.50 per month that it will be useable with any ISP. If that is the case I will be happy to pay £1.50 per month as I will save more than that by switching to a cheaper ISP option than BT.

    Why not just as said previous purchase a domain, the can be done for £1.99 for two years.

    You choose the email address etc you want.

    Have a look here at OneAndOne.

    Then through outlook etc just set the incomming mail (POP3 etc) to the specified domain service, and the out-going mail (smtp) to your current isp. (Freeserve,Virgin, BT etc...)
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 559
    Forum Member
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    Originally posted by BexTech
    Why not just as said previous purchase a domain, the can be done for £1.99 for two years.

    Note that's £1.99 per year for two years, and the prices exclude VAT. Nominet charges its member £5 for two years excluding VAT so if you see someone selling domains for less that this, you need to look very carefully. A few years ago a couple of ISPs gave away domains for free but locked you into their service with very high (think £90) release charges if you want to transfer your domain elsewhere.
  • BexTechBexTech Posts: 12,957
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    Sorry yes it's £1.99 per year plus VAT (Min 2 Years for co.uk)

    Which works out at £4.68 for the two years. Which Includes all registration fees, 50 free email addresses, web & mail forwarding.

    I have three domains from OneAndOne and have been happy.
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