OK, now this sucks

[Shake-Man]

I use Pegasus Express, which is a satellite internet service that transmits and receives data between my dish and a satellite. It's owns by the folks at DirectTV, but it is liscensed through Pegasus Communications. Pegasus, because they are losing money faster than I lose potential girlfriends, has sold their license to Earthlink, who will effectively take over operations on August 13. OK, that's all fine and good. I really don't care as long as the price stays the same.

Here comes the "but". Yeah, there's always a "but", and sometimes hemorrhoids, but that's another story. Anyway, my @pgtv.net (Pegasus) email addresses went down over the weekend. I use the Pegasus addresses for personal, sweeps, and Ebay/Half.com email. Today I find out that Pegasus isn't even going to bother to fix it. They're just going to wait until Earthlink takes over on August 13 and let them handle it. That sucks!!! That means I've lost all three of my email accounts with absolutely no advanced warning.

I swear, if this causes me to miss out on some spiffy prize because I didn't reply to a win notification in a specific amount of time, I'm going to go Deliverance on somebody at Pegasus's behind.

OK, enough ranting. I feel better now.

Gist of this email: Pegasus sucks. They screwed me. I hate them. I'm a redneck...and boobies. Come on, you know I've got to mention boobies somewhere. the end.

[lynettecw]

Hi Shake Man, that is really bad. I'm not sure if this helps at all: http://www.returnpath.net/

Their pop-up ads are always in my face, but that is all I know about them.

[Shake-Man]

Thanks for reminding me of that. I get those pop-ups, too. I'll have to check it out.

[topper]

I know how you feel-----when that happened to me I went to iwon email, hoping they might exist for awhile, I use yahoo for personal in case I change isps or isps change me--lol--I am so sorry you got the boobie prize!!!!!!!

[gcomstock]

The email conundrum is multi-faceted, with no clear-cut solution. Ok, I've used all my vocabulary "words of the day"...but it seems all of us are are fighting the email issue on all the fronts...the two primary of which are:

1. spam...and the apparent loss of some emails from the spam blocking technology that providers are trying.

2. outages...several of us lost email from excite and iwon.com for a couple weeks. Others have had their accounts frozen for various reasons, including having them exceed the storage limits (often thanks to spam).

In general your ISP's email is "most likely" gonna be the most reliable. And since you access it with your email client (browser), you have more flexibility with folders, and unlimited storage. But many of us have changed ISP's, or had them pulled out from under us, so their reliability is relative.

For this reason, I really think that we're better off segregating our email, and using only virtual addys for contest entry, and saving our ISP email for personal and business purposes.

Obviously that doesn't help for all the contests you've already entered...but if you kept a record of each entry...at least you can visit each of the dang sites and see if there isn't *some* provision for changing and updating your info. Others have posted several email forwarding type sites that potentially can solve the disappearing email addy problem...but I haven't checked them out, and suspect that once the cow is out of the barn that they couldn't be too helpful...

Sorry Shake Man, maybe it's time to move to somewhere with more internet choices...and indoor plumbing?

[karplemons]

The way gcomstock refers to indoor plumbing (outright disparging the GREAT OUTDOORS) he obviously hasn't experienced the joys of outdoor "relief"

[hairyleggs]

about earthlink is that you can have mutiple email addresses.....designate 1 for sweeps....I don't think earthlink will be going anywhere soon....but then again..you never know.:grin3:

[gcomstock]

No, I was mainly joshing Shake Man about backwoods Bama. He's already won all the prizes, so he deserves some rib poking to balance the fawning accolades recently heaped on him.

And sure, as a guy I can readily appreciate standing next to a mighty pine tree, or in a meadow with a fresh coat of snow, and freely dispensing bio-degradable grafitti.

...maybe it's just cuz I'm an old guy, but when trying to combine a seated constitutional with a thorough perusal of the sports page, I find those same alfresco amenities are somewhat...lacking. Maybe I don't know squat...but...that's just my (number) two cents, LOL.

[karplemons]

I'm afraid my humor is a bit dry sometimes. Bama/Southern humor isn't offensive to me. I too am from Alabama, though not as good looking as Shakeman.:D

[Shake-Man]

OK, my Pegasus email seems to be working again, so forget everything I said in the first post...at least until it goes down again, at which time you can forget that I told you to forget and remember it again.

I take offense at the indoor plumbing remark, George. My dad told me that if a girl ain't good enough for her own relatives, she ain't good enough for me....wait, that's a different Alabama joke. Disregard that.

[jcns]

Just think of all the "spam" that you're missing out on!

[keetah2002]

Here's one for you Shake-man. About a year ago after a furious round of sweeping on my part ( and before I found sweepstakes on-line and this wonderful and might I add intellectually challeng...Ur, I mean gifted group), I was ensconced (Is this spelt rite?), with one of those free ISP's. Well, one day out of the blue--they start sending out fast and furious e-mails asking for members to "Donate" in order to keep things free. Well, I didn't donate. Then, a few days later---they said "YOU HAVE TO PAY IN ORDER TO KEEP YOUR SERVICE". THey offered different packages with discounts for signing on for longer terms. So, I sent in my 60 bucks. Soon thereafter, couldn't log on. Zero, zilch, nada!! They filed for bankruptcy in Seattle. Never did get my money back as did a lot of others that they scammed. Also probably lost on some wins because they couldn't contact me. I'm still p*****!
:mad: