Anyone else affected by Vodafone disabling demon.co.uk emails after May 2020

[Adtadt]

Vodafone own the domain demon.co.uk which I've used for my email address since the mid 1990's...

... when they purchased the company that owned it they didn't want to continue with the domain name. For the last 5 years or so they leased the domain to names.co.uk who have taken on my emails.

Today I was advised by names.co.uk that Vodafone will no longer lease the domain to anyone or use it themselves. So during the current virus pandemic I face losing my email address from the end of May 2020. While I can change my email address I will obviously face losing access to some services, companies and friends that I miss. Further, some websites etc don't make it easy to change.

Anyone got any ideas...?

[VoDemon]

Well i have just sent my last (souvenir) messages to and from my DEMON e-mail address(es) that have served me well for over 20 years.

Ironically Office365 deemed one of them as "Junk Mail"!

I'll try again tomorrow, just to capture any rejection message, as a reminder NEVER to enter into any dealings with Vodafone, EVER - even if my very life depended on it!

Take care everybody - you all seem like the most decent of people,

Cheers,

mb

[xdmn_083]

Not gone yet!

It's making me want to play a sort of email game of chicken  😁 

[Prestel_Person]

Many readers of this site will have moved on from Demon or Prestel by now on the understanding from Vodafone/Namesco that September 2020 was to be the final month for these domains.

A quick search on whois.net (info provided by Nominet UK it says) suggests that the demon.co.uk domain will be around until until 5th May 2021 ?! - see info below in italics (pasted from whois .net):

Domain name:
demon.co.uk

Data validation:
Nominet was able to match the registrant's name and address against a 3rd party data source on 12-Dec-2013

Registrar:
Vodafone Limited [Tag = VODAFONE]

Relevant dates:
Registered on: before Aug-1996
Expiry date: 05-May-2021
Last updated: 04-May-2020

Registration status:
Registered until expiry date.

Name servers:
ns0.demon.co.uk 158.152.1.65
ns1.demon.co.uk 158.152.1.193

(Former Prestel customers will see on whois.net that the prestel.co.uk domain is still due to expire later this month - on 21st Sept 2020).

Can anyone who is better informed on domain related tech issues shed any further light on these dates in whois.net - especially in relation to what people have been told previously by Vodafone/Namesco?

[xdmn_083]

The domain expiry date is an annual thing and I don't think anyone does registrations for shorter periods than that.

Vodafone's decision to kill off demon/prestel had an arbitrary date stuck on its deadline which as far as I can tell was not set with any reference to the domain registration. Or any of the users for that matter  though I think we might have covered that aspect of it.

edit: and I use this, my first post in my glorious promoted rank of 'Helper' to assure people that I decided not to go with my utterly childish immature suggestion of playing 'email chicken' and instead have been playing email ping pong like a proper grown-up.

[xdmn_083]

That's it, game over

Between 13:07 (the last Ping) and 13:14 (the first falied Pong) on 2020-09-01, the demon domains became unavailable, long may they live in our hearts.

Memorial service TBA, to be followed by finger buffet, all donations gratefully received.

[Prestel_Person]

Thank you Adtadt and xdmn_083 for your replies and helpful clarifications.

Sadly, Demon and Prestel seem finally doomed to be entries in the annals of glorious lost causes - despite the efforts of so many.

Shame on you, Vodafone.

[SRatVP]

Live long and prosper.........................................................🖖

and vodafone.......🤘

[Adtadt]

Bye folks...

I created this forum post to try and retain demon.co.uk email addresses for all of us... some 6000 I understand.
Like others I protested to Vodafone U.K. up to the CEO, Ofcom up to the Group Director who was replaced a short while ago, Nominet U.K. who registers co.uk domain names, Trading Standards, my MP and several IT/Computing related bodies and magazines. While some responded positively to my concerns others did not for some reason. Most just quoted Vodafone, stating that Namesco knew the leasing of the domain was temporary - even if this lasted over five years, we thought it was permanent and we owned the sub-domains. Soon all contacts seemed to back off from Vodafone’s actions...

I think a lot of us tried very hard to retain our decades old email addresses and at least we got an extension past May, when it would have been even harder to migrate away.

I miss my old email address already and I’m sure I’ll lose contact with various friends, ex-colleagues and companies - probably even incurring material and monitory loss. Other ISP companies that tried to deny access to email addresses, even if only them being redirect, seem to have been prevented from doing this. If Ofcom, or whoever, are trying to make email transfer/redirect a right for all customers, as we can do now for mobile phone numbers, then hopefully denying access will not happen to others in the near future.

Good luck all...

[luckythedog]

Well I opted to move my email service to another provider and so to disconnect all services provided by names.co.uk and vodafone.   Come 1st Sep disconnect, now emails sent to the demon subdomain apparently generate no error message back to the sender's server and so the sender is unaware that I haven't received their email... this is a big problem and is not a proper disconnection in my opinion.  It would appear those emails are still being received by a server somewhere even if I can't retrieve them.  Worst is the sender doesn't know anything is wrong.  Anybody else affected?

Does email forwarding from old demon subdomain to a new names.co.uk email account held domain still work perchance?  Thx.

[Stilt0N]

I have had the forwarding from my demon.co.uk domain to a new domain administered by namesco. 

I've just tried sending an email from my other email address (a Gmail address) to the old demon address. It hasn't arrived, which is I would have expected, but no message has gone back to my gmail account to say that the message was undeliverable.

This is unhelpful, to say the least.