Well, I was blindsided the other day by good old Cox.

I usually maintain around 6 email addresses. I sell on eBay and it's good to have an email address related to what I'm selling at the time. Also, I like having multiple email accounts for different purposes. I'm in several groups and have many interests and it's convenient to be able to separate those interests with different emails.

Yesterday, I wanted to create a new email address and I couldn't. At first I thought I had to have an agent do it for some reason, and then I read that as of August 15th (I believe), you can no longer create any new email addresses.

The thing that pisses me off is they chose not to inform their customers. I have been with them for 30 years (although now only for Internet). Not only did they not inform us, they also neglected to inform their employees, because I spoke to Account Billing, Tech Support and Loyalty, and they knew nothing about this new policy! Loyalty asked what could she do to compensate and retain me as a customer, and I threw the ball back to her and she offered $20 off next bill which I accepted. I'll be writing to corporate as well.

I say we pile on and ask for some compensation. I understand email is a free service, but why be so sneaky and not inform a single customer? Why keep your staff uninformed and looking foolish when a customer has to tell them the rules?

The point is they should be held accountable and have some integrity. They might reverse this decision which they say they took because most of their customers have one or very few email addresses, so no need for nine. At the very least they should apologize and reinstate it, even at a lower number, even for the next 30 days, to give customers a chance to create/delete X number of addresses. BTW, you can delete an address, but not rename it. You can add User Ids, but not new addresses.

Comments?

parfoomgirl,

Just buy yourself a domain, you can have all the email addresses you want.

I was surprised to learn that there's still a combination of people who are old enough to use ISP-provided email, and young enough to post on 2p2, but then again, we have a Stud forum.

With a little luck, you might live a long and healthy life and still be cool enough to post here

parfoomgirl, try the + trick with gmail instead of relying on an isp email (which now doesn't allow new email addresses, so nothing you can do about it)

for ebay, these are just examples:

parfoomgirl+ebaybicycles @ gmail
parfoomgirl+ebayautomobiles @ gmail
parfoomgirl+ebaybuyeraccount @ gmail

etc., you get the idea. You'll receive the emails in your one main account, and you'll see the sibling (the +part) account's email.

read more: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/gmail-address-tricks

Thanks! That's a nice option I had no idea existed.

yw.

Also, you'd likely be new to gmail, so sign-in options and account recovery are a bigger deal. There's nothing to save you if have trouble signing in - there's no gmail customer service phone number or email address to write to, although there may be extreme account recovery methods that take weeks.

You can use security tokens (like yubikeys); use a smartphone as a token; use a smartphone authenticator app as a token; SMS phone text sign-in; printed backup codes (I highly recommend that); and recovery email addresses.

Keep in mind that sign-in options (which help secure the account) are different than account recovery (if you've exhausted sign-in options and have nowhere to turn). Most people probably just have the computer/browser/phone memorized by google, and then sometimes run into trouble when they get a new phone or computer but forget the password they haven't entered in a long time.