http://tinyurl.com/ugqpf

http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2006/10/
cox_clobbers_co.html

October 31, 2006
Cox Clobbers Competitor’s Customers

***Begin Quote***

Any company that will only give customers 30-days notice that long-time e-mail addresses are being eliminated sure seems like one that thinks it can do whatever it wants. “From here it looks like a pure convenience and/or profit motive for Cox, and the customer can just live with it,” the reader concluded. “Where else do we have to go?”

***End Quote***

One doesn’t have to be held hostage to the whims of the ISP.

My current favorite WSP (Web Site Provider) “1and1” offers. A “beginner” package with a domain name; 5 GB web space; 500 e-mail accounts; and 250 GB traffic for 3$/month.

{{Use my referral code and they even give me a kickback! http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9113251 out your 3 bucks. Wonder how much it is? Three cents?}}

That beginner package is better than what most ISPs give you for “free”. It’s certainly better than what I used when I first got started.

I tell jobseekers (aka baby turkeys) that they never want to have their “stuff” held hostage to:

• their current employer (an absolute no no!);
• any free service (like gmail);
• any site with a poor “image” (like AOL or @pinkpussycat.com);
• “their” Internet Service Provider that they are currently using; or
• any Web Service Provider (even 1and1).

If you “own” your domain name, like I do, “reinke.cc”, (who really cares what country it nominally belongs to), then you are ALWAYS in control.

SO, in the case of the poor fellow ranting to Ed Foster about “losing his email address”, it would have been trivial to say go into 1and1 and re-aim your email from, in his case, from CableAmerica to Cox.

AND, that assumes you’d want to use their lousy email anyway. Most WSPs offer better.

If he followed the advice and bought say “poorfellow.za”, then he could have used a personally branded email address like poor.fellow@poorfellow.za. All the people, who had his personally branded branded email address (i.e., poor.fellow@poorfellow.za) would still have it, And never had to know about the underlying change from poor.fellow@CABLEAMERICA.com to poor.fellow@COX.com! Nothing would be necessary.

I used to mess around with redirectors like bigfoot and others until I just but the bullet and went “bigtime”. I think I paid 25$ for a three year take on the reinke.cc domain and 10$ for 1and1 to aim it where I want it to go. Now, it’s even cheaper and I see a rush to the bottom of the price curve between GoDaddy, Yahoo, and other WSPs.

I feel comfortable with 1AND1 because they are deadly cheap, they advertise in Network World and industry trade rag, and they’ve done well for my consolidation project. (I moved seven websites with various WSPs, each placed with the “best” at the time, to them and saved some pocket change. And, my sanity. No more remembering which WSP had “creative driving techniques” web site. That was a joke!)

I have put commercial enterprises on their facilities back when I was consulting and have never heard a gripe.

In summary, I don’t have sympathy for this fellow, (well I do; maybe he did realize it.), but it COULD happen to you. Do something NOW to avoid it.

Besides having your own domain is snazzy kool!