From 31st March the former State owned telco will charge customers €5.99 a month for its Eircom.net email service.
Eir has been in the news a good bit of late these days for a variety of reasons. Its name never seems far away when discussing the much maligned and delayed National Broadband Plan and back in October it launched its new TV service with Apple TV, and although not without its faults, it has certainly helped shake up the broadband and TV market in Ireland by offering something genuinely different.
However today Eir is back in the news for entirely different reasons after it announced that it’s to start charging customers €5.99 a month for its email service.
What’s happening?
From 31 March 2020 anyone with an Eircom.net email account will be charged €5.99 a month for using the service. Eir is understood to be bringing in the charge as its email service is thought to be loss making and it follows similar moves by BT and TalkTalk in the UK.
A spokesperson for Eir says: "the charge will be used to invest in the maintenance and improvement of the service going forward".
After 31 March, customers will have up to 60 days to start paying the new monthly fee. If they haven't got in touch with Eir by this time their accounts will be permanently deleted.
Can I avoid the fee?
Unfortunately not. Even if you're already paying for any of Eir's other services such as broadband, phone or TV, you'll still have to cough up the money for the new email charge.
And if you don't want to pay the new charge then the only alternative option is to close your Eir email account and open up a new one with someone like Yahoo!, Gmail or Hotmail instead and port over your contacts.
How many people will be affected?
Eir has kept mum on the number of likely people affected but it's thought that tens of thousands of people still use the email service, in particular local businesses, schools and community groups who may have been using the service for decades and previously would have resisted moving to newer services like Gmail due to the hassle involved in communicating out a new email address. However now these groups and organisations will have to either pay up or move email provider and deal with the hassle that that entails.
What do you think?
Are you an Eir email customer? Do you think it's fair this new charge has been brought in? Will you now be moving email provider? Let us know in the comments below or else get in touch with us over on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
