Sky's GMail migration nightmare

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 26 Nov 2007 at 09:50

Sky is suffering a deluge of customer support calls after the planned migration of its webmail system to GMail didn't go as smoothly as expected.

Sky announced its intention to move to Google's system earlier this year, and switched a million users over at the start of November. Sky has asked these customers to make many changes to settings themselves, but instructions sent out to customers were too complicated for some, leaving many without access to their email. This has led to criticism for not planning the migration more carefully.

"So why didn't Sky give its customers the tools to help them out rather than leave them on their own?" asks one blogger.

"Shouldn't they have given customers much more notice by enabling the Google-style settings on their previous platform and have customers slowly migrate to them?"

The botched transfer isn't bad news for everyone, though. "This problem has so far earned me £70. I am a freelance computer repairer for home users. I have been to two homes to enable POP and alter the mail client settings. Enabling POP was a struggle because the Sky website didn't seem to want to work properly," says one comment on Slashdot.

"For the small percentage of customers who access Sky Email using a POP based desktop program, a further change of system settings is required in order to reactivate their accounts," says a Sky spokesperson.

"We were aware this issue would affect a small number of customers and emailed each customer in advance to advise and provide step-by-step instructions of what they needed to do. For customers who use a POP based program rather than a web browser the migration can not be done remotely, as the customer needs to manually change their settings so their computer recognises where to find their emails."