Now I am mad. HELP! How can I keep my e-mail address?

[Kali]

Just opened my internet bill and read this great news! we are improving! oh yay!

They are getting rid of the domain name. I know this may be petty and unimportant in the grand scheme of things but I LIKE my e-mail address: [e-mail] cool huh? they want to change it to [e-mail] WTF??? How lame.

I need to know if there is any way I can keep my address - through some other service or something? I have seen lots of personalized domain names - how do you do this? If I can't keep my address I sure as hell am not going to keep paying these jerks $20 bucks a month for my woo hoo 24kbs hookup (not all their fault - on an old antique phone line in the middle of nowwhere, but still.... rnsmte???!!!!)

[bemildred]

1. I think you gotta buy the domain name: "theriver.com".

Or cut a deal with whomever owns it to handle your email.

You could try "[e-mail]" or "[e-mail]" or something like that.

I had to threaten to find another ISP once to keep mine when I changed to DSL.

[democracyindanger]

2. You would have to

buy the "theriver.com" domain name which, in all likelihood, your ISP is keeping so it can redirect mail with the "theriver.com" domain to "rnsmte.com"

Which, thinking about it, should mean that you'd be able to keep the 'river' domain address. They're probably not allowing it for business reasons, though. I think the only shot you have is asking the ISP. Maybe start a petition with other customers, or--and it's probably unlikely and/or incredibly expensive--buy 'theriver.com' from them, register as the domain owner and get your own server provider (i.e. Earthlink, but don't get Earthlink because it blows.)

[Kali]

3. The letter says they are only going to redirect until the end of March

I wonder how I could petition? I only know a couple other people with the addy - it was a small company. I can't believe they don't want to keep it - I will be contacting them for sure! I am mad!

I recently quit an Earthlink account I had, so they blow? dang cause that name isn't so bad.

[Berserker]

4. Never a good thing to put your

email addy on the net like that. Bots will pick it up and spam the hell out of ya.

[Kali]

5. prolly losing it anyway!

[karlrschneider]

6. I see that theriver.com is still answering DNS requests so it's still aliv

alive...did they specifically say they are retiring the domain? If so, you could probably buy it for yourself, maybe for cheap.

edit: I see some others mentioned this, should have read the thread first.
(I hate it when I do that ;-))

I had an ISP for about 3 years that just shut down one day a while back with no warning, no nothing. It just went away. I had one hell of a time getting my email back on track. Shit happens, we just have to deal with it; sorry I can't offer any better ideas.

[Kali]

8. They are keeping it until the end of March

I did find that one of the companies involved in the various transactions (Nationwide - anybody have any comments on them?) is offering some kind of "keep your e-mail" forever for a fee, of course. Might give that a try for a year.

[achtung_circus]

7. What do you think of gmail.

You could probably call yourself kali.the river AT gmail DOT com, or some other handle close to your current addy. I have a gmail account I use for miscellaneous stuff and haven't had any problems.