The Ireland.com domain was sold this year by the Irish times to Tourism Ireland for almost half a million euro. The domain was heavily used by people for the @ireland.com email address and as a result of the sale this email address service is being shut down on December 7th. If you use this email service now is the time to move your emails to another service provider. Do it as early as you can as the closer it gets to the closing date the busier the server will get and the more likely it’ll experience down time thus frustrating users even more. The Irish Times released the following statement:

Discontinuation of ireland.com email service

The Irish Times and Tourism Ireland today announced an agreement to promote Ireland as a tourist destination. The agreement spans a number of areas, including the sale of the ireland.com domain name to Tourism Ireland. Tourism Ireland will use the ireland.com url to attract more web traffic and enhance the promotion of Ireland overseas.

As a result, we wish to inform our @ireland.com email subscribers that the service will be discontinued from November 7th, 2012. From midnight on this date, you will no longer be able to send or receive messages. You will, however, be able to access your account until December 7th for the purpose of transferring any data (i.e. emails, tasks, documents, appointments and/or contacts) currently saved on your account. We are writing to advise you of this change and to ensure the transition to a new service provider is as seamless as possible.

To aid the transition, we have provided a step-by-step guide and FAQs on ireland.com and a helpline has been established to assist wherever possible. The helpline will operate between 8am and 8pm weekdays on telephone 1890 876 666 or 01 685 6999 or email customerservice@digitalworx.ie.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to our valued customers.

 

John O’Shea

Head of Online, The Irish Times

There are a myriad of email service providers out there at this stage and if you dont want to use one of the free providers like gmail, yahoo or outlook then get yourself your own domain so you can stand out from the crowd (no to mention have a “normal” email address).