Why you should never use a free email address for business

Many of you have heard?me trying to convince you to not use any email address except for one that is on your own domain name. Such as joe@joerealtor.com and not joerealtor@hotmail.com or aol.com or earthlink.net etc, etc…..

One of the main reasons I have tried to beat this into everyone’s head is because it is unprofessional. It doesn’t portray a professional business image. The example I give is say you were at the BMW dealer and the sales rep told you to email him at salesguy1234@mercedescardude.com would you wonder a little bit at least to where he works? Is it BMW or Mecerdes or some fly-by-night operation?

Besides the above reason there is also an even bigger reason. What if you are using an email address from your ISP such as earthlink.net (there is a story along with that company). And say you decide that you want to cancel your earthlink internet access because they are a crappy, sucky, POS internet provider. Well if you are using realtor@earthlink.net as your main business email address you will loose that email address unless you pay earthlink an on going yearly fee even though you don’t use their internet services anymore. So if you don’t pay your email address is null and void and people will think that you are out of business. NOT GOOD.

Side Story – Begin Rant (I’m not holding back)

The reason I use earthlink here as an example is because of the horrible useless tech support this company has. I was with a customer at their house last monday to swap out their old flaky DSL modem with a new one provided by earthlink. I know from experience that when setting up a new DSL modem for earthlink-sucks that you will need to input your earthlink email and password during the setup process.

Before I turned off the old, working but flaky DSL modem I confirmed that his username and password worked by logging into the earthlink website. Confirmed, it works. So I swap out the modems and start by opening the configuration web page of the modem and enter his info. NO DICE, password invalid.

So I called earthlink and what do you know I get some wanker that can’t speak english very well but has an american name (made up i know). What do they say? Of course they read from the script and tell me they don’t know what to do except send me to the Installation Department. When they pick up it’s sounds like another off-shore idiot who instead of trying to fix the problem instead says he can’t do anything and routes me back to support. I get another f##king moron who can’t support the opening of a paper bag. He tells me to hold because he doesn’t understand and then hangs up on me. This happened 2 more times with same result. Stuck on hold and then the line goes dead. At this point I gave up.

EARTHLINK HAS SH!TTY CUSTOMER SUPPORT AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED LIKE THE PLAGUE.

End Rant

Now unfortunately this customer is between a rock and a hardspot. What should they do?

The first thing to do is create an email address under their domain and start using it as their main email address.

Next have all your earthlink email forward to your new email and at the same time setup an auto-responder that replies automatically informing senders of your new email address.

Now wait about 1-3 months until everyone is aware of your new email address and then CANCEL your EARTHLINK account and get a new internet provider.

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology

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