The long-time Alaska telecommunications provider GCI has changed course on an earlier decision and now plans to keep its longtime email service. The decision was announced last week on Mar. 20 when the company posted publicly that they were making the decision in response to the volume of feedback from customers who want to keep their email.
“We have received a lot of feedback letting us know just how much our customers want to keep their gci.net email addresses,” the statement posted to GCI’s website said. “We value your feedback and have decided not to take any action that would discontinue the use of GCI-hosted email accounts.”
The company will continue to operate the tens of thousands of accounts, but for the same $4.99 fee customers have been paying since last year.
The decision to keep the email service comes as a surprise, especially after the GCI publicly said a change of course was highly unlikely.
“It would have to be extremely compelling and a data point that we haven’t already examined,” GCI spokesperson Heather Handyside said in August of last year when the company first announced it would discontinue the service. “Again, anytime we make a big business decision like this, there are dozens of people involved. It’s months of decision-making. There is data that we collect on it and so we don’t come to the decision lightly. So I would be surprised if there’s any information that someone could bring to our attention that would change our mind.”
What about those who have already canceled their accounts since the August announcements? They’re out of luck. The company says it will not reinstate accounts that have been canceled.
Although the company stopped offering the service to new customers in 2015, more than 40,000 people still use a GCI email.