Verizon will "get out of the email business"

AB in DC

OG Football Writing
SoSH Member
Jul 10, 2002
13,632
Springfield, VA
...and will be migrating people to AOL Mail? Is this a bad April Fool's Joke or WTF?

verizon.com/email

We have decided to close down our email business. We will let you know when it's time to choose how to handle your email account going forward via email. In addition, you'll see a message from us when you log into your email from webmail.verizon.com indicating “Email service notice”. Click on “Keep verizon.net email address” or “Try any other email provider” to complete the setup.


  • Why is Verizon leaving the email business?
  • We have decided to close down our email business. Over the years we’ve realized that there are more capable email platforms out there. As a result, we’ve made a decision to get out of the email business, which will allow us to focus our energies in providing you with the best in Internet and TV experiences.
For customers choosing to keep their verizon.net email address, we are teaming up with AOL to provide our customers with AOL Mail, an enhanced email experience
 

pedro1918

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 5, 2004
5,139
Map Ref. 41°N 93°W
For real.

Verizon has, since last week, been notifying customers that it is giving up control of 4.5 million customer email accounts and will be migrating those accounts to AOL — a move that may give some flashbacks to the 1990s. (Those free CDs, we presume, are not coming back.)

Customers have 30 days to choose one of three options before they lose access to their accounts: Head over to AOL, transfer their email to another provider or leave their accounts alone to be deleted.

Verizon users who choose the AOL option will still be able to keep their existing addresses, which will carry the “verizon.net” ending. They will, however, have to let Verizon know that they want to hang on to their addresses and log in through AOL's system from now on, the email said.

Why the change? According to an information page on Verizon's website, the firm said it realized there are “more capable email platforms out there” — including AOL Mail, which has been owned by Verizon since 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/02/23/why-aol-yes-aol-could-get-a-new-crop-of-customers/?utm_term=.c8d792439cc4
 

foulkehampshire

hillbilly suburbanite
SoSH Member
Feb 25, 2007
5,099
Wesport, MA
Geeze, I didn't even know Verizon had an external email portal for customers, though I shouldn't be surprised. Every ISP/Telecom was in the mail game at some point of time.

Wonder how many suckers (or elderly) are still paying AOL for their late 90's dialup browser due to a billing "oversight".
 

johnmd20

mad dog
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 30, 2003
61,996
New York City
Geeze, I didn't even know Verizon had an external email portal for customers, though I shouldn't be surprised. Every ISP/Telecom was in the mail game at some point of time.

Wonder how many suckers (or elderly) are still paying AOL for their late 90's dialup browser due to a billing "oversight".
I used Netcom in the 90s, it was like 20 bucks a month and was a decent dial up service and it was my main Email address. Then broadband hit and trying to cancel Netcom took a ton of effort, so much work in fact that I kept it going until 2006 due to laziness. I finally took the time to close out the account and move to Gmail. I was paying that bill for a good 5 years longer than I should have and I'm sure I wasn't unique.
 

JimBoSox9

will you be my friend?
SoSH Member
Nov 1, 2005
16,667
Mid-surburbia
Wonder how many suckers (or elderly) are still paying AOL for their late 90's dialup browser due to a billing "oversight".
This is no joke. Anecdote: my father has been a successful accountant for thirty years, and yet it still 1) took him six months to figure out grandma's telnet bills enough to understand she's been paying $9.99 a month for internet for a computer she doesn't have, and 2) another six months of dealing with the ISP until the charge actually stopped showing up. I weep for the average user.
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,855
Mtigawi
ISPs giving folks email was just another dick way of locking them into their service early, early on. Back when people legit could switch between dial-up providers reasonably easy (grandmother stories aside :) )

Now with Gmail and the like, as well as ISPs acting near-monopolistically it's absolutely no surprise that this is happening.
 

Old Fart Tree

the maven of meat
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 10, 2001
14,029
Boulder, CO
Geeze, I didn't even know Verizon had an external email portal for customers, though I shouldn't be surprised. Every ISP/Telecom was in the mail game at some point of time.

Wonder how many suckers (or elderly) are still paying AOL for their late 90's dialup browser due to a billing "oversight".
Millions, literally. My old company had a partnership with AOL. The numbers are staggering.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
Wonder how many suckers (or elderly) are still paying AOL for their late 90's dialup browser due to a billing "oversight".
Millions, literally. My old company had a partnership with AOL. The numbers are staggering.

I'm not surprised. Until a few years ago, my parents still had the long-distance calling plan that they were assigned to when AT&T broke up in the '80s.
 

gtmtnbiker

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
1,725
I tell people with ISP emails to switch to MSN or gmail but some of them don't listen. One coworker just got the Verizon switch to AOL notice and went ahead and migrated his account. Still has the same Verizon email address. The nice thing about the switch is that he now has IMAP. Can you believe that all these years, Verizon only had POP mail support?
 

the1andonly3003

New Member
Jul 15, 2005
4,371
Chicago
I tell people with ISP emails to switch to MSN or gmail but some of them don't listen. One coworker just got the Verizon switch to AOL notice and went ahead and migrated his account. Still has the same Verizon email address. The nice thing about the switch is that he now has IMAP. Can you believe that all these years, Verizon only had POP mail support?
would you mind explaining the difference of POP vs IMAP?
 

SumnerH

Malt Liquor Picker
Dope
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
31,893
Alexandria, VA
would you mind explaining the difference of POP vs IMAP?
POP is a lot older. It sucks if you access your email from multiple computers, because it basically works by pulling down email from the server and working with it locally. So if you use your computer and your phone to access email, things can get out of sync--you read a message on your phone and it's not there on your computer, or you configure things to address that but now you delete it on your phone and it's still there on your computer.

There are a lot of workarounds to make things go more smoothly in modern POP implementations, but ultimately they're all attempting to wallpaper over a core architectural problem.

IMAP is designed to work with everything happening on the central server, and plays much nicer when you're doing stuff from multiple computers (or phones, whatever).
 

Suze

New Member
Nov 8, 2010
13
quick question: do you lose your Verizon e-mail address if you cancel internet, but keep the phone line?
According to a thread on DSLReports: No, you do not lose your Verizon address if you cancel internet, PROVIDED you migrate that address to AOL before you cancel. And you can keep your phone line.
 

the1andonly3003

New Member
Jul 15, 2005
4,371
Chicago
According to a thread on DSLReports: No, you do not lose your Verizon address if you cancel internet, PROVIDED you migrate that address to AOL before you cancel. And you can keep your phone line.
interesting...we canceled before they started their migration process...we're still waiting for our notice
 

InsideTheParker

persists in error
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
40,371
Pioneer Valley
Is this still ongoing? We transferred two weeks ago. If anything, the service is much better. But a friend of mine has not rec'd a letter from Verizon re migrating. Do you have to wait or can you go ahead on your own? (She is getting letters from random businesses saying she will lose her email unless she does something toute suite, and it's nearly impossible to get Verizon on the phone.)
 

DrBlinky

Member
SoSH Member
Jun 18, 2002
825
Cranston, RI
I tell people with ISP emails to switch to MSN or gmail but some of them don't listen. One coworker just got the Verizon switch to AOL notice and went ahead and migrated his account. Still has the same Verizon email address. The nice thing about the switch is that he now has IMAP. Can you believe that all these years, Verizon only had POP mail support?
I transferred my account recently. I was hoping to use IMAP after the transfer but it turns out that Gmail, which I had been using as a client for my VZ email, does not support connecting to other mailboxes with IMAP.