A few years ago, I wrote about my issues updating my email address with some website.

Now, a secondary problem has come to light, and all within a few weeks – despite some website allowing me to change my email, they’re retaining my old one in their system and using that for important emails. Let me explain.

And, for this, I can give 2 examples.

1. Vans shoes recently had their security compromised, so needed to inform users that this has occurred
2. Sainsbury’s had an issue which meant that some deliveries didn’t turn up – the CEO messaged all customers to apologise and offer recompense

In both cases, the companies emailed the above to my OLD email address, despite me no longer having an account with that email.

And, in both cases, I emailed them to let them know and to ask for to be corrected. Weeks later, despite numerous responses from them, I’ve got nowhere – neither company seems to understand the issue. It’s lucky, in this case, that I can still access my old email account, but I don’t plan for to be the case forever. How many people, for example, who have been affected by the Vans issue, have been contacted via a email that no longer exists or is simply not looked at any more?

The thing is, I don’t care how your “internal systems” work with regard to storing and passing around of emails. If I change my email address, that new one is the one that you should use, and you shouldn’t use the old one anymore. Certainly if the email is an important one.