Second email change in four years for MTS

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This article was published 20/02/2015 (3919 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MTS customers who may be annoyed at having to move their email over to a new service provider can blame Bill Gates.

Sort of.

The Winnipeg-based telco is rolling out a new email service, called MTS Mail, and customers who want to keep their current email addresses (the ones with the @mymts.net suffix) as well as aliases, including @mts.net and @escape.ca, will need to migrate over to MTS Mail or risk losing them.

MTS is switching its email service away from Microsoft, four years after moving to the global giant. Prior to that move, the majority of MTS customers had @mts.net as their email suffix. Today, most have @mymts.net.

“Microsoft has stopped their carrier-partner program for email. MTS was one of the companies that worked with them,” said Melanie McKague, director of corporate communications and community investment at MTS.

“We’ve created a pretty slick move tool on the MTS website to help customers make the switch.”

MTS wants to complete the migration by the end of the calendar year. Within the next couple of months, it will send out emails to customers with instructions how to move to the new service. Those who aren’t quick out of the gate will receive “several” reminders.

In order to reduce the stress on the new system, McKague said customers will be asked to move over in blocks rather than all at once.

MTS hopes this is the last change customers will have to make for a considerable time.

“No more email changes are in the offing, certainly nothing planned,” she said. Customers who make the switch will be able to keep saved emails as well as their address book and calendar. None of the changes will affect customers’ MTS Internet service.

One MTS customer, who asked not to be named, questioned why MTS has had to change its email provider twice in the last four years while those of its competitors have remained the same.

“I don’t want to be inconvenienced every couple of years because MTS is too cheap to do it right. I don’t think other Internet service providers are forcing their customers to jump through this many hoops. It’s annoying, it’s aggravating and time-consuming,” he said.

“In this day and age with the competitive market for Internet service providers, inconveniencing your customers isn’t the smartest way to do business. The only thing that’s stopping me from changing (to a competitor) is I don’t want a new email address.”

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca