Tesco Finally Scraps Email After Broadband ISP Closure in 2015

The Tesco.net email service, which was retained after Tesco’s broadband customers were sold to TalkTalk in 2015 (here), will be closed down for good on 27th June 2018. Despite this the platform has promised to continue forwarding its emails to another address of their users choice until 10th October.

The writing has been on the wall since the ISP ceased its operations several years ago and we warned back then that email was likely to follow further down the line, particularly as such platforms cost money to maintain and they have become increasingly redundant in the age of freemail providers (Gmail, Hotmail etc.).

Suffice to say that we weren’t surprised when, during mid-March 2018, the first messages began dropping into Tesco.net inboxes to inform users of the platforms imminent demise. The official website has also setup quite an extensive FAQ page to help out.

Copy of Tesco.net’s Closure Letter

Hello,

We’re writing to let you know that our tesco.net email service will close down on 27th June 2018.

Your tesco.net email address is the one you got with your very first Tesco Broadband and Homephone package. After 27th June, it will no longer be in service.

If you need time to get things sorted, we’ll forward your emails to another email address of your choice until 10th October 2018. If you’d like us to do this, please make sure you set up forwarding before 27th June. See ‘what you need to do’ below.

Why is tesco.net closing?

We closed Tesco Broadband and Homephone back in 2015 but we kept the email service open to give customers a chance to create a new email account. As most customers have now done this, it’s time for us to close the email service too. Don’t worry if you haven’t set a new email address up yet, there’s still time.

What you need to do:

Set up a new email address – you can use your current broadband provider or a free webmail account like Gmail or Outlook.

Once you’ve set up your new email account, please set up email forwarding on your tesco.net account by 27th June – this will last until 10th October 2018.

Log in to your tesco.net email account and forward any emails you want to keep to your new email address as you won’t be able to access these after 27th June 2018.

If you use your tesco.net email address as a username to log in to websites (for example Tesco.com or BBC iPlayer), you’ll need to change this to your new email address.

If you need any more info, please visit our website.

Best wishes,

Your Tesco.net Email team.

As a general rule we’ve long recommended that broadband ISP customers should always try to keep their email and internet access providers separate, which makes it easier to switch suppliers and keeps you safe from issues like this. Nevertheless many people will understandably avail themselves of free email services when provided by their ISP, particularly if it has a strong brand name behind it.

Sadly a lot of people, particularly those who rarely ever change ISP, do come to rely on old addresses and they can often also be used as Usernames (Login IDs) for other online services. As such the sudden removal of that email can create quite a significant headache. At least in this case Tesco.net gave users more warning than most and even provided a temporary forwarding service.

As a side note we’d like to apologise for being slow to cover this news. Unfortunately I only began to become aware of it during the Easter holiday period and neglected to cover it upon my return from the break *slap wrists*.