yourname@ourmail.co.nz Your email address for life!! Recent Telecom Xtra problems

The latest Xtra/ Yahoo fiasco has really brought home to many people the reasons why you must have an independant email address such as an @ourmail.co.nz address, to ensure that the same thing never happens to you again.

We've been reading and hearing all the comments from scores of people who so desperately want to change their ISP because of the recent fiasco, but don't feel that they can because it is too difficult and disruptive to their emails and they therefore feel trapped

Whilst what Telecom did was unforgiveable (changing everyone to a totally new service without any consent or consulation and without trialling it and debugging it first), the point is that similar problems can (and have) happen at any time with any ISP - its just that previous problems (with both Xtra as well as other ISP's mail services) haven't been as significant or long lasting.

No, the fundamental problem wasn't the technical problems that Telecom had, the fundamental problem was that so many people were using their ISP service name as their email address, so that whenever the ISP has problems they lose their email service, and furthermore can't change to another ISP because they will lose all their emails - in other words they are trapped into using an inferior or more costly service.

Would you buy a car is a fundamental part of the contract to buy it was that you could only get it serviced at the garage that you bought it off, and if you went anywhere else then the car would no longer work?

It is our firm believe that you should no-one should EVER have their ISP name as their email address, because if they do then they are trapped into continuing to use that ISP regardless of any technical problems or price-gouging that their ISP indulges in.

Companies know this, any self-respecting company will have its own domain name and that should be their email address (such as admin@yourcompany.co.nz) - but that said we are continually amazed at the number of companies that have their own domain name yet still have their publically listed email address using their ISP's name such as companyx@xtra.co.nz or companyy@clear.net.nz or similar!!

However, for private individuals who can't justify the cost of having their own domain name and having it hosted, the only two choices are to use the public free mail services such as Hotmail or Gmail, and suffer the disadvantages of the public perception of the fact that they are using a free email service and the time it takes to clear their emails every time (not to mention being deluged with advertising and spam), or for only $25 per year having an independant email redirection address @ourmail.co.nz.

For instance with the recent ISP fiasco, once the system was obviously down then anyone who was using an @ourmail.co.nz address just needed to let us know another email address that they had access to (whether a friends or company address, or even a Hotmail or Gmail account) and we could have temporarily redirected all their emails to that other email address so that they could have continued to receive their emails with no disruption, regardless of how long it took the ISP to fix the problem

And there wouold also have been no disruption or need for any changes to be notified to all their friends/ business contsacts etc whilst they sorted out another ISP that they were happier with and then changed to them!

Hurry, the sooner you apply for your @ourmail.co.nz the more likely you are to get your ideal name (such as John_Wilson@ourmail.co.nz rather than something like JW2368@hotmail.com).