123india.com, an average multi-purpose portal, was very good for e-mail purposes.
The site downloads quite fast and mail service was very good. Free mail gave you 6 mb storage, and they claim to have a 2 million membership.
One fine day they have decided to discontinue free e-mail and they have locked all the existing mail accounts. You can’t access your mail account anymore! Eother you pay or get lost seems to be the philosophy which is nothing but blackmail. They should have given enough notice to the users, keep the access open so that people access their folders, retrieve and transfer their files and then take a decision whether to become a paid member or discontinue the membership.They havent done anything like that.
This step of theirs has spoilt all the goodwill and prestige the portal had. I for one, would not like to continue my mailbox on the site even if offered free now, there is no question of payment when there are hazaar sites offering free email facility.
This has taught me one lesson which I would like to share with all my fellow MS members.
Dont keep any mail in the folders which you may need for reference. Take it away in your own account through MS Outlook express linkage, or copy the same in a folder or floppy.
Dont have only one account under the same name. Under the same name you should always have 2 or more accounts on different portals.
Dont submit only 1 mail id to various sites or friends etc. Give 2 or 3 e-mail ids, so that if some cranky fellow like 123india, suddenly decides to lock up, you continue to get your mail on other addresses.
Now that netaddress has done it, 123 india has followed suit, and sure enough, many others with mob mentality too will follow, and in the process loose membership base.
Well anyway we, users will have to formulate our own strategy of combating this blackmail tactics.
Any ideas?