Anne Holland

@attbi Transition to @comcast Goes Badly

June 30th, 2003

The Comcast ATTBI email address switch took place today, and although they told me in interviews that they were going to carefully transition one section of the US at a time, slowly making sure that each worked properly before moving on to the next, it appears that they switched the whole darn Nation (about 1.3 million users if I recall correctly) all at once.

They did email everyone lots of notes prior to with links to a “Transition Wizard” which if you clicked on the link would supposedly set up your PC to start accepting email in the new system in a lovely flawless easy fashion.

You know technology, the Wizard only worked for Outlook Express (although it wasn’t altogether clear in the copy that was the
case) so anyone using regular Outlook didn’t get email today. Plus, I’m now hearing from some Mac users that although there as a Mac-specific Wizard, it doesn’t appear to have worked either.

I’ve heard from users on both sides of the Country that the transition is very bumpy.

If you are an email list owner, expect lots of bounces, lower opens and lower clicks from ATTBI addresses for the next few days until stuff gets sorted out.

P.S. Noooo, do not simply switch the @attbi names on your list to @comcast. There is overlap in between the addresses on two lists and you will end up sending mail to the wrong people.

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