July 31, 2025
What to do When Your Email Provider Fails You…(Or Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty)
Well, it finally happened. Something I’ve warned about for years – Optimum, a major email provider for many living in the Fairfield County area, failed big time recently. Most users were unaffected, but some were able to receive mail but not send; some lost the ability to send AND receive. And Optimum’s help desk was quick to shift the blame to anybody else but itself, including Apple, Microsoft, and the end user, telling them to change the password and they’ll be fine. Bad optics for a company that most people already dislike strongly.
This issue certainly doesn’t affect everybody reading this but take it as a cautionary tale: Unless you have a stable email provider, you’re at the mercy of some less-than-stellar company not providing the service you expect.
And it’s not just Optimum; last week, a client using a Yahoo! email account had a 24-hour outage. (It was an @snet.net account, that was originally SNET, but taken over by AT&T and Yahoo, a domain passed around like a hot potato.) Do you REALLY want an email provider that discards its service on to another company?
I’m talking about the “loser” email providers – accounts started years ago, before any of us knew better. These include the aforementioned Optimum, Yahoo!, AOL, SNET, Hotmail (if that even still works), Netscape, Juno, etc. If you can’t get hold of them, then you should seriously phase off of them.
Yes, I understand that all sorts of things (like bank accounts, Amazon, and more) are dependent on your email account to log on; furthermore, a lot of these use that address for two factor authentication. Don’t concern yourself with untying the knot for those accounts – that’ll be a task for another day.
So – you should establish an email address from a reputable company – Google, Apple, or Proton Mail. Once you do that, consider transitioning your bank (and other) accounts one-at-a-time (see next month’s blog for more deets on that!). But for now, go into your current (a.k.a. loser) email’s dashboard (or control panel) and have the emails sent to that address FORWARDED to your new email address. Every email account has that feature – Optimum, Yahoo, AOL, etc., so take advantage of it! And say goodbye to substandard email providers!
Oh, and don’t lose your Gmail password. IT’S a big pain if you do!
