Moving shop (5)

For sentimental reasons

Almost forgot to write down the considerations for not saying goodbye to Euronet, the business arm of the Dutch affiliate of Wanadoo, turned into Orange. Most likely we forgot to take it into consideration as this would mean giving up our e-mail address, which I have since 1995.

Euronet was founded in 1994 by Arko van Brakel and Simon Cavendish. From the start the service made quite some impression, especially as it marketed internet to the masses. It was in fact a text book example for the later ISP services like Planet Internet and World Online. One day Amsterdam woke up with a monkey in every bus stop. In 1998 the company was sold to Wanadoo, a subsidiary of France Telecom.

We got into touch with Euronet or better Euronet*Internet in 1995, when our principal consultant started an assignment for the newspaper publisher Wegener. He was introduced through Peter Bloemendaal, the internet pioneer within Wegener. From that time dates back his e-mail address, simply with his first name add euronet dot nl. Presently they do not give out e-mail addresses with first names any longer. It is 11 years now that the e-mail address in use.

So in the consideration of giving up this subscription, history and sentiments play a part. And this does not mean that we are not critical of Euronet. One of the major differences we have with Euronet about their services is their unbelievably slow web mail service. It is not just slow; it is super slow. After a command you can go and have a coffee, come back, put in another command and go for another coffee. Whenever I am abroad and use the web mail I preferably use the service in the middle of the night; but this is not a guarantee either. If you complain about this super slow service, the helpdesk people will tell you that they will pass on the message; of course you will never get an answer that they will improve the service. Besides for Euronet our soho operation is too small and not really interesting.

When looking for fast internet Euronet did not make the short list by a mile. Their ADSL offer is not really competitive in the Dutch market, not in terms of facilities (telephone, internet and television) nor financially.

But despite the super slow web mail service and all the spam (about 200 items on average daily) the e-mail address still attracts; we will stick to the service for sentimental reasons, at least for the time being.

Tags: broadband, triple play

Blog Posting Number: 453