I just learned Telus is migrating webmail to Gmail!

Well, I've just gone through the migration and WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU ONLY MAKES YOU MADDER!

I did my best to educate myself ahead of time. I went through their website and got a little more confused on some things and less on others. Then I spent over an hour on the phone asking questions and was reassured at every turn that they would be there through it all.

Then I got an email saying that I would be migrated on May 5. I'm not at home. I'm 12 hours away and I'm not going home soon. I don't have internet where I am, except through my cell phone. So I spent the evening on the phone with a very kind, nice patient agent in the Philippines who again assured me that everything should work including my server settings. Am I allowed to say "BULL**bleep**!" on here?

My email migrated some time shortly after midnight today. I was awakened by alarms saying my telus email login failed on my cell phone. Sure enough! I spent  ALL DAY on my cell and laptop trying to figure it out. If you don't want to use the Gmail app on your phone or webmail on your other devices, you are well and truly screwed and pretty much on your own. Darren Entwistle should have put together a proper transition team of experts in both email and cell apps just to handle this project. But instead, half the support folk I spoke with had no idea what I was talking about when I said "Gmail migration".

I use the Samsung email app on my phone and Thunderbird on my laptop. My telus email was set up on the first Samsung when I got it from telus and continued on subsequent phones. Now they say it's not theirs and they don't support it. I can't get it off my phone, so....? I already have another Gmail account and I HATE  the Gmail app. Because I have had telus email since the beginning, it was originally [email protected] but at some point it became xx@telus with the xx@telusplanet as an alias. Again, not something I requested, something telus chose. Both apps were configured with the telusplanet extension, but of course Gmail was set up for me by telus as [email protected]. The server names absolutely have to be changed in both apps. the POP setting in Gmail with Thunderbird insists on putting your sent emails out on the Gmail webmail, so when I do download I will have doubles. In order to download emails sent from the cell via POP I have to go into the Gmail web settings, make a change, save and then get messages. Feels kinda like grabbing a chisel, pounding into stone.

The Samsung app won't allow you to edit the email information, so you have to add a new account and have the guts to delete the old one even though it warns you that it will delete all emails, contacts, etc. if you do. So first I disabled permissions and then deleted the old one.

The last agent I spoke with told me that telus has already learned a few lessons and now lets you choose which will be your primary email address.  they apparently also let you choose when to migrate instead of just dumping it on you. Apparently the first ones like me are former employees (I'm a retiree). I've had telus email for 28 years. Nice.