SNET.NET email account stopped working

I have 3 snet.net accounts that I have not been able to get into since this past Saturday (12/9/17) and have been desperately trying to get the issue resolved.  AT&T says they can't help, that it's a Yahoo issue, and, according to Yahoo, it's an AT&T issue, and if AT&T can't help, AT&T will escalate the problem to Yahoo.  According to AT&T, they don't do this.  As for Yahoo, there's absolutely no way to get in touch with a person about this on the phone, via email, chat, etc.  If you go to Yahoo's forum it's amazing how many people can't get into their accounts and can't get any help.  I could write a whole book on what I've been going through since this past Saturday, and all the work involved in getting my email changed everywhere possible, which is a huge task considering that I've had one email address for 21 years, and it's tied to everything!!!  This is truly a nightmare.  Someone sent me a link in the Yahoo forum to an interesting article about the snet.net domain.  Yahoo and AT&T have parted ways.  AT&T owns the snet.net domain, but Yahoo hosts the accounts (this actually is one thing that doesn't have anything to do with Frontier).  There's are issues with this, and we may be caught in the middle.  I'd put the link to the article here, but it will only get stripped out.  So go to the Yahoo forums and look for the post titled "Discontinuation of email hosting for snet.net domain".  It was posted nearly a year ago, but it gives some great details.  Now we just need to find a way to get back into our accounts!

Update to my 12/13/17 post in reference to my 22 year-old snet.net email address that I have not been able to access since 12/9/17:  I have made numerous calls to the various AT&T support numbers, including Digital Assistance and ConneTech (AT&T’s paid support service). No one can help me. Though my email address exists, they all tell me my account has been deleted/disabled which is why they can’t help get my access back. No one can tell me how or why it was deleted.

When I login to myAT&T (where I can see my active wireless account), if I go under My Profile I can get to the section for my “linked accounts”. Here I can see my email address/account (and 2 snet.net sub accounts, that I also can’t access). Next to my main email address there are 2 links: “Check email” and “Delete”, and next to “Account Status” it says “Active”. This page has a message that there is no phone number associated with my email, but when I try to provide that info I can’t because I also need to provide an “alias email”. I have no idea what email address it wants in this field, as nothing I’ve tried is valid.

When I try to login I get the message that my AT&T/Yahoo Mail account (then it states my snet.net email address) can’t be accessed because my AT&T/Yahoo Mail services have been canceled, but that I can get back into my (snet.net email address written out), I re-establish my AT&T DSL service.

All of us in CT know that we have had no AT&T phone/Internet/TV services for more than 3 years, when we were all switched to Frontier. Not having the internet service through AT&T wasn’t supposed to affect our email accounts, and mine worked fine until December 9th.

If I try to create a new AT&T account using my “deleted” snet.net address, I can’t because that email address is already in use. If I try to create a new Yahoo email account with the option of using my own email address, and I enter my snet.net address, I can’t use it because Yahoo says it’s already in use. So where the heck are my emails (I know they’re on a server somewhere), and why can’t anyone get me in?

Yahoo’s online help tools are of no help, and there’s absolutely no way to get in touch with an actual person at a Yahoo. If you peruse both the AT&T and Yahoo community forums it’s unreal how many AT&T/Yahoo customers can’t access their accounts.

I can still see many of the snet.net emails on my iPhone and iPad. So if I can see them, where are they? I’ve been searching for a way to download the important emails that I can still see, but so far have not found a way to do this. The only thing I have found is how to save them as PDFs, which will be very time consuming, but at this point it seems to be the only option.

This is one of the most frustrating and stressful things I have ever been through, as my entire life was connected to that 22 year-old email address and there are some very important emails I need to get and preserve.

Does anyone out there have any solutions or encouraging news to share?

I'm having some of the same problems you are, but not as bad.

Did you ever link a Yahoo account to your snet.net email address?  If you did you might find your saved emails there.

Years ago I linked my Yahoo account to my old snet.net address.  Like you, everything has my snet.net address.  Also last summer I had linked my snet.net account (and as a result the yahoo account too) to Outlook.com as a connected account.  I did this after reading about all the issues with Yahoo and that yahoo would let you do mail forwarding anymore.  It worked fine for a while and I was able to get new mail in Outlook.com that was sent to snet.net and I also had all my saved mail.  

Well in mid December I lost my sub accounts just like you did, though I didn't use them much so it wasn't a big deal.  But I also lost all access to my older saved mail.  Turns out that new email to snet.net was still being forwarded to my Outlook.com email but all the saved email stayed with my Yahoo account.

I haven't yet figured out what I want to do and what email I want to use going forward, but at least they are all on Yahoo.

You might want to try checking your Yahoo account if you have one as you may find your old emails there.

The only email account/address I ever had was my snet.net email (plus my 2 snet.net sub accounts), but access to the accounts was through Yahoo Mail (I think this change happened during the sbcglobal days), so I don’t think I can say I ever had a “Yahoo account”. Unless, of course, I’m missing something here and how the snet.net email is related to a Yahoo account.

You’re extremely lucky that you can still access all your old snet.net emails through your Yahoo account. I’m certain all of my emails are sitting on a Yahoo server somewhere, but I can’t get to them and no one can help me access them. It seems to be boiling down to the fact that I no longer have “AT&T Yahoo Mail Services” but could get my access back to my snet.net email account if I re-establish my service. I’d do this in a heartbeat, but those of us in CT don’t have the option to do this, so I’m basically screwed.

On the native email app on both my iPhone and iPad I can still see many of the emails. I’ve been trying to find out where these live and if there’s a way I can at least export them so I can save them somewhere. I can’t get any answers to this question. For now it seems that the only thing I can do is save the mails as PDFs one at a time. Not convenient and very time-consuming, but it’s better than nothing. My fear is that I could somehow lose the ability to at least see the emails on my iPhone and/or iPad.

I've spent several hours today reading lots of threads here plus trying to work my way through AT&T and Yahoo myself.  I'm still not clear at all on whether I'm in the ATT account or my Yahoo account.

Anyway, one of the things I read today was that you should be able to log in to the old ATT or the Yahoo using either account.  So I suggest you try to log in to the Yahoo mail using your xxx.snet.net email address and password.  Sorry if this is basic and you may have already done this.  I understand how frustrating this all is.  I'm doing all this research so I can decide if I want to dump ATT and Yahoo totally and go elsewhere.................but like you, I've had my snet.net account for over 25 years so I hate to leave it.

Good luck to you.

I know have two versions of Yahoo mail that I can reach, and I can reach both from the same screen.  One is the att mail which I think is the nome of my snet.net email, and the other is my yahoo mail which has all my saved emails.  I changed the theme shown on each so I can tell them apart.

@manddstock, thank you for your past two posts. I have seen the article to which you provided the link. Unfortunately, those scenarios don’t apply to me. I’ve only ever had an AT&T account (snet.net), but Yahoo is who has been “servicing” our accounts for years. The way you can tell if the account is an AT&T account is by the domain name, which includes any companies that AT&T acquired, or ended up acquiring through acquisitions, over the years (so for us snet, then sbcglobal, then AT&T). If I try to login to my snet.net email through the Yahoo mail website, it doesn’t recognize my password. If I do “Forgot Password” on the Yahoo login page, I get redirected to AT&T. Here I can update my password, but that’s now only to get into the myATT site, but no longer updates the password to get into my email account (which still exists and is marked as “active” under the “Linked Accounts” section, which is under the “My Profile” section).  

The error message I get when I try to login to my snet.net email account is that I can’t access it because I no longer have AT&T Internet/Yahoo Mail services. Well, none of us in CT have had those services since we were switched to Frontier in 2014. None of this was supposed to affect access to our email accounts, and mine worked fine until 12/9/17. No one at AT&T can explain to me why/how I lost my email access on that date, and now they can’t get me back into my email account because I no longer have service with them!!! I don’t understand the technically behind any of this, but it just doesn’t seem right. It’s not like I was the one who changed my service from AT&T!

This has been an absolute nightmare to deal with. My entire life was connected to my snet.net account, The amount of time I have needed to put into changing my email on all my accounts, along with the stress, has been unbelievable. I’ve changed my email address in probably close to 200 places, and I still have more to do. Then, of course, there are all the places I haven’t thought of where it still needs to be changed.

Again, thank you so much for your suggestions, as I’m hoping that perhaps someone will have an answer, or path that I can peruse, to get this resolved. I continue to call AT&T tech support (though not as frequently) in the hopes that I will get in touch with someone who will be able to get my problem fixed.  In the meantime, consider yourself very lucky that you can still access your snet.net emails!

No one at AT&T can explain to me why/how I lost my email access on that date

I'm sure the "why" is because of the poor way att and yahoo decided to do the unmerging process putting the burden on the att users to figure it out. 

...the account was being serviced by Yahoo, so there was nothing to unmerge.  I never had any other email address or opened any other account through Yahoo (the only other accounts I had were 2 snet.net sub accounts).  This would tend to explain why Yahoo can offer no help because they have no ability to reset the password to my AT&T account.

I think it was a merged account.  You are an att paying customer.  I never understood how the att/yahoo account machinery worked but I get the impression that all the legacy accounts (accounts not in the @att.net domain) where considered merged.  Even today, and even though I do have an @att.net account (the only account I ever had since starting with uverse), yahoo still lets me into my att/yahoo webmail from its www.yahoo.com or mail.yahoo.com webpages (just tried it to verify).   So what is or was considered "merged" is as confusing as ever.  But I think something extra needed to be done in the accounting for legacy accounts of which you are one.  And that "something extra" is what screwed everything up.  Also I don't how much of that "something extra" needed to be done on the yahoo side vs. the att side.  But it looks like the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing (as usual).

As this point all I can suggest is to try calling the Att Digital Assistance Center (877-267-2988) and send a PM to @ATTU-verseCare.   By now they must have gotten many calls and PMs on this problem.