Retaining MWEB email - R39/month

S

SecretCode

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2005
Messages
998
Reaction score
2
Location
London
There have been various discussions about retaining your mweb email address when migrating to another ISP. ... For those of us who've had an icon.co.za, tiscali.co.za, worldonline.co.za, or any of the other many ISP domains that were bought out by MWEB at one time or another, for a long time.

I have managed to downgrade my icon.co.za address :D to a fee of R39/month. Still more than gmail ;) but at least it buys me some time to communicate change-of-address to hundreds of contacts.

How to do this:
If you get to the wrong part of MWEB, by phone or email, your call will be logged but it will probably not be followed up or passed on to the right department. http://www.mweb.co.za/help/contactus.aspx?pId=21611 lists various departments and contact addresses/numbers, but it doesn't seem to line up with what I was told. ("Call Client Services on 021 596 8480 or [email protected]") If you get through to business accounts you are in the wrong place. Although everyone I spoke to was friendly and professional.

021 596 8820 should be the number, but I was helped by 021 596 8480, who redirected me to 021 596 7091, where Nomfundo Gqawa [email protected] helped, and finally Andre Oliver [email protected] 021 5968679 contacted me. I don't really know which of these points is the best place to start.

You need to know:
* Your MWEB customer number - should be on your invoice, but if you don't have it your email address will enable them to work it out.
* You want to "downgrade". This is the key term! As I said, they are friendly and professional about it.
* They may try to offer a "R70 email option" but you want the "R39 mailbox option". Neither of these are actively promoted, it seems, so you have to know what you're asking for. The R70 option includes connectivity time as well - which you don't want if you have moved to a different ISP - whereas the R39 includes no connectivity, just the mailbox.

In the confirmation email it was described as "downgrade to the Icon R39.00 mailbox option", and they mentioned Icon a couple of times on the phone. It's possible they won't offer this for other domains, but as a last resort there's still the R70 option.

R70 email option, from an email sent to me:
We have one subscription rate for all of our members - R145 per month.

However, in the past we had an "e-mail" option that entitled a member to connect to our networks for three hours each month. If that connection was to send e-mail or surf the web, it didn't really matter. Once the three hours had been used, we charged a usage fee on a per minute basis thereafter.

We stopped offering this "e-mail" option in February 2000. If you are interested in this package, I would be happy to make an exception, and reinstate the option for you.

The "e-mail" option would cost you R70 per month, with the 30c per minute usage charge coming into effect once you have accessed our network for three hours.
...
MWEB Client Services
Tel: + 27 021 5968820
Fax: + 27 021 5968915
E-mail: [email protected]
Click to expand...
 
Thanks, this is really helpful as I'm seriously considering a move to another ISP. Do you know whether the R39 option would include a secondary e-mail address, or an alias, as well? I am using two iafrica.com addresses on my account.
 
I'm currently on the r70 option as we occasionally use iPass when we're abroad.
 
I dnt fully understand. I with mweb at the moment but going to openweb next month, so if I want to keep my mweb emaill add I must pay R30 a month to them?
 
@Secretcode
Thanks a lot! I'll consider going through all the trouble at the end of the month. I just hope they can retain the alias currently used which directs to the mweb email addy. The address my dad uses is an @pixie.co.za one which comes from the stone age. I'm happy to hear that it's R39/month! Moving over to webafrica is now cost effective!
 
so does this allow me so set up my outlook express to d/l my email as well or only to use thier airmail service?
 
Thanks for all the thanks ... I thought this would be of interest!

spellcheck said:
Thanks, this is really helpful as I'm seriously considering a move to another ISP. Do you know whether the R39 option would include a secondary e-mail address, or an alias, as well? I am using two iafrica.com addresses on my account.
Click to expand...
If you have aliases that go into the same mailbox (ie same pop account) there shouldn't be any problem *

Laanie said:
I dnt fully understand. I with mweb at the moment but going to openweb next month, so if I want to keep my mweb emaill add I must pay R30 a month to them?
Click to expand...
MWEB don't want to provide free email, not even advertising supported email. Pay something or lose it, I suppose!

Luke7777 said:
Do you still have the same "benefits" as a mweb member with the R39/70 option ? access to the mweb learning stuff etc.? Have kids.......need that :D
Click to expand...
This didn't come up when I spoke to them ... because I have never regarded these things as benefits ... but with the R70 I think it should still be there. With the R39 ... probably not worth their while blocking it, but you never know. *

DSTV schedules are something of value. But I pay DSTV for those ... years ago, MWEB blocked access to the DSTV site for customers of other dial-up ISPs (including me, at that time) on the grounds that DSTV content was premium content for customers of ... well, NasPers really. They backtracked on this after a few months but the mentality is still there, I suspect.​

silkman said:
so does this allow me so set up my outlook express to d/l my email as well or only to use thier airmail service?
Click to expand...
It has to allow pop3 (outlook express, office outlook, thunderbird, etc) access. Still working for me ... if it doesn't it's worthless. (GMail and webmail.co.za and yahoo allow pop3 access to their free email - it would be crazy to block it for a service you're still paying for.) *




* Since this is not a published and documented MWEB offering, it's hard to get concrete facts (even from MWEB staff). If the specifics are important to you, you might not want to take the risk.
 
Today I phoned MWeb and asked them about the R39/month option. I spoke to Nomfuno who said that only the R70/month option was available, and that the R39 option had been discontinued. She promised to e-mail me a document containing the terms and conditions of the R70 option (not received).

So I thought I would try another tack and e-mailed Andre, explaining what I wanted. Within about 15 minutes he phoned me to establish exactly what I wanted. He explained that the R39 option was available only for former tiscali e-mail addresses (e.g. tiscali, icon, pixie, worldonline, etc.), but not for iafrica.com. For that there was a R50 per month option.

The only problem with the R39 and R50 options is that they cater for only one e-mail address (and associated aliases). On the other hand, the R70 option caters for multiple e-mail addresses, as well as giving three hours of dial-up connection time per month, and all the other MWeb "extras".

So I went for the R70 option, which allows me to keep my two iafrica.com address and gives me the added advantage of having dial-up access to the internet for emergencies (such as failure of the Telkom DSLAM line card, etc.). My new ISP doesn't offer dial-up as part of an ADSL package. I'm not sure if I will still have the full-size 2 GB mailboxes - I'll see next month when the new service takes over from my present 2 GB ADSL Cap.

If all works well, I might just keep using the MWeb/iafrica.com e-mail addresses - this will allow me to changes ISPs from time to time if necessary. It is difficult to find a cheaper alternative with an ISP that is not "here today, gone tomorrow" other than registering my own domain name. That in itself seems to present a problem - if you do a WHOIS search on a domain name, all sorts of personal information is revealed.

More about the transfer and upgrade of my Telkom line to Axxess later, in another thread. (It took about 7 days).
 
Thanks for the update spellcheck ... I had a feeling the R39 option would not be available for everyone. But it looks like the R70 option is open to all.

(And we mustn't forget the R0 option, which includes no email addresses, no connectivity time and no special content ... you can combine MWEB's R0 option quite effectively with gmail's R0 option :D)
 
My email add is tiscali, so does this mean when I go to openweb, il just have to pay R39 per month?
 
spellcheck said:
He explained that the R39 option was available only for former tiscali e-mail addresses (e.g. tiscali, icon, pixie, worldonline, etc.), but not for iafrica.com. For that there was a R50 per month option.

The only problem with the R39 and R50 options is that they cater for only one e-mail address (and associated aliases). On the other hand, the R70 option caters for multiple e-mail addresses, as well as giving three hours of dial-up connection time per month, and all the other MWeb "extras".
Click to expand...

Yes, but only for one e-mail address. If that's all you use, then you're OK.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X