posted on May 14, 2001 05:27:07 PM
I've been using one of those free ISPs (Homestead) for all of my Ebay-related email since day one and they've just announced they're suspending their email service at the end of June. Since that email address doubles as my Ebay user ID (I know, I know--I was a newbie at the time, what can I say?), I will have to change both my user ID and of course the email address some time in the next month, preferably sooner than later. Does anyone have any good suggestions for someplace I can shift my Ebay-related mail to, preferably a free service, or at least one that doesn't charge too much? (I also have a Hotmail account but I'm not wild about them.) Also, just how difficult is my life going to be while I make this switch, with hundreds of auctions in various stages of completion? I know it's fairly easy to switch Ebay IDs (and theoretically I CAN keep it as is and just change the email address, but I think that would confuse buyers), but I want to make this transition as painless as possible for myself and my customers. Hopefully Homestead will at least forward mail for a while after they shut down their service but I don't know the details yet.
posted on May 14, 2001 05:37:20 PM
Something that I never understand is folks who are running a business (and if you have hundreds of auctions, you ARE) who use free services and then are shocked when they go out of business with little notice. But setting this foolish decision aside...
An email account from email.com or bigfoot.com will forward your email to other accounts. So even if you change ISPs, you can forward your email to whoever you sign up with next and you don't have to change your ebay ID. But what happens when bigfoot or email.com go out of business?
posted on May 14, 2001 05:48:01 PM
Like I said, I was a newbie when I started (aren't we all?). Didn't know I'd end up doing this almost full time. Free email seemed like a good idea at the time. On the other hand, there's nothing to stop an email system that charges money from folding either, right? Thanks for the tips though--I'll look into them.
posted on May 14, 2001 05:55:26 PM
How about switchin' to AOL?....They are definitely one of the biggest ISPs, with a low monthly charge & and are highly respected in the Internet community....Just ask the people here, they'll tell ya all about AOL!!!.....
Seriously, your best bet is probably a local ISP, where you can get a decent rate & good customer service....
posted on May 14, 2001 06:00:27 PM
Thanks, rancher. I actually have an AOL account but I was kind of hoping to keep it separate from my Ebay life. I suppose I can devote one of the seven screen names to my auction correspondence if no other solution comes up.
posted on May 14, 2001 06:00:30 PM
Just some advice which I wish I had learned a little earlier, you can get your own domain name, web site and email id for $10 a month. On the net, the only impression you can make is through these. Since doing this a year ago, I am getting more orders off auction than on.
posted on May 14, 2001 06:07:59 PM
ultimato....I have used AOL for just about 5 years....I have one screen name for eBay & have never had a problem (with the exception of access problems a couple of years back)....I use ALL the accounts for storing my eBay pix, and dont' have any problems there either....If you are already payin' for their service, might as well just go with them...
posted on May 14, 2001 06:09:47 PM
You can change your ebay id as many times as you want but if you do it will have the sunglasses behind it for 30 days. You can also then change your email address that is attached to your id to your new email.
I am looking into ATT Worldnet, $5 for 150 hours, just because it will give me 6 email addresses, and I can always use friends or families AOL accounts to connect to the internet to post auction listings if I think I might go past the 150. I feel that sellers that use any of the free email services as being held in lower regard than those with paid email addresses. For buyers, free email addresses are completely fine as long as the buyers have at least a few positive feedback and no negs.
For $5, you can "buy" email addresses that build confidence for the buyers...
"In pioneer days they used oxenfor heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers." - Grace Hopper
posted on May 14, 2001 06:19:02 PM
Thanks, mikeselis. I have paid accounts with AOL and Earthlink--I just used this Homestead one for Ebay mail. Never expected to be getting 50-100 mails a day on it! Guess I'll have to do a little shopping around and figure out what will work best for me. I'm assuming that when you move to a new user ID your feedback moves with you, right? I have over 725 positives and 0 negs and I sure don't want to start from scratch!
posted on May 14, 2001 06:20:06 PM
When you're ready for your own web site, you should contact [email protected]. He's a consultant who sets up business web sites. When I was looking to set up my own web site, he handled everything and that included helping me with the html and javascript. Since then he has done the same for several of my clients and folks I met over the net and sent his way. It's the best $10 a month I ever spent.
posted on May 14, 2001 06:22:31 PM
I use yahoo, never have had any problems that were not taken care of in about 15 min. if your using outlook or outlook express you can set it up to send and received though their service, regardless of your ISP, you could change everyday and no one would know.
also they have an auto responder and an awesome spam catching system, I only get about one spam email a month that their system doesn't catch.
posted on May 14, 2001 06:48:04 PM
sasoony, thanks for the info. Is that true that AOL blocks those sites? That's incredible! Can you give me some examples? I'd like to see for myself. I do notice a very high concentration of ultra-conservatives in their chat rooms and polls but that's shocking if they're really blocking those sites. I'm all for blocking out porn and stuff like that but this is going too far.
posted on May 14, 2001 06:53:21 PM
This is slightly off the topic, but hopefully someone can help me. I'm taking an uplanned trip in a week or two for a funeral overseas. I use outlook express, but also have outlook '97 on my computer. I stopped launching auctions until I get back, but I saw you said something about outlook sending an automated response to people that email you saying that you're out of town and will email them back soon. I tried to set this up through Outlook, but I kept getting an error message saying that I need Microsoft Exchange to do it. Anyone know how I can set up my email to do this automatic response thing? I don't want a customer to have problems with a purchase and being ignored for a couple weeks until I get back. I use a cable modem for my ISP, so that may be a problem there, I'm not sure.
posted on May 14, 2001 07:05:21 PM
Many of the websites are dated, but if you do a search (not an AOL search) for "AOL" "Censorship" "lawsuits" etc. there is an abundant amount of imformation concerning AOL's underhanded tactics. You should find some current imformation at http://www.politicalamazon.com/aol-update2.html
I've been on Worldnet since it was first offered. I have the more expensive unlimited account but you might also check & see if you will also get the webspace w/the 6 email accounts. You can host your own pictures there.
In the unlimited account, you get up to 6 emails & 10 meg of space w/each account.
posted on May 14, 2001 09:09:06 PM
I DO NOT recommend using your AOL account for your email, since AOL does NOT support any mailboxes but their own, and their own mailbox is TERRIBLE (you can't sort mail AT ALL, messages disappear after you read them unless you remember to uncheck the box, and EVERYTHING scrolls off after 30 days).
If you're already paying for Earthlink internet service, you have an email account with them you could use. You might have some free webspace with them as part of your service, on which to host a website--usually 5 to 20 mgs. If you decide to register a domain name and if you use your Earthlink webspace for your website (it might be against their rules, so ask them), you'll need to call Earthlink tech support to find out what your name server(s) are, and have them put in a ticket to direct the web traffic of your domain name to your Earthlink webspace.
If you register a domain name, I would suggest godaddy.com ($8.95/year and less per registered name). You can have them host your 50 mg. site for $9.95/month--which includes free email accounts, or buy email accounts for your domain for $14.95/year. If Earthlink gives you webspace but won't let you put a DOMAIN on it, you can pay godaddy $9.95/year to forward the domain traffic to your Earthlink web address (which is probably something like members.Earthlink.com/~your-user-name). Godaddy also has web designing software you can download for a fee. For uploading to your site, ws_ftp works great and is a free download.
Once you choose your online email account, whatever it is (Earthlink, Bigfoot, Yahoo, your-domain-name, etc.), I would suggest you download Eudora onto your computer to work on your email. It's free (the Light version is also ad-free), and I find it MUCH MUCH BETTER than online mailboxes (especially if you want to compose letters or look through email while you're off-line), and is more versatile than Outlook.
When you change your eBay user name, you will keep your feedback but gain sunglasses for 30 days. Many sellers are now changing their eBay user names to their website addresses (at least, until eBay outlaws THAT, too!).
If you sell enough that you think people have bookmarked you as a seller, you might want to change your eBay ID to just the first part of your current ID (i.e. drop the "@isp.com" ). I think that would be simple enough for your customers to find you. Since the change won't happen until the end of June, you could put a statement at the top of your description for the next couple of weeks (in bold, red, italics, whatever) that your eBay ID will be changing as of June 15.
Find a new permanent e-mail address NOW and use that for everything (and change it immediately on eBay, too). If you change now and notify everyone you can, it will be very easy to see who is still using your old address--just keep sending out "change of address" notices as you get mail, and hopefully you'll have almost nothing in your inbox by the time your service ends. The longer you wait, the harder the switchover will be (in terms of people being able to e-mail you).
Good luck!
Without eBay, I might have a real life...
[edited to get rid of an errant smiley]
[ edited by mcbrunnhilde on May 15, 2001 12:48 AM ]
posted on May 15, 2001 02:19:16 AM
If you do not want to worry about changing anymore use a free mail service like Yahoo, or hotbot or go.com but why not utilize a screen name on AOL. It ain't going to shot down and they must have made improvements, I just don't like some of their business rules, but when my own business is going strong I can make the rules I want.
