keep my e-mail account if I cancel my e-mail account?

Wait...am I reading this right? You want to change internet providers yet keep one of their services for free? It doesn't work that way!

Well considering cox says they won't credit us for downtime since the email service is "free"...

You could certainly create a .pst archive of all your cox emails up to this point.

However, there is no way you can cancel their services and still use the same email address. That would be like me quitting my job and asking if I can still use my work email since I was a good employee.

You want to switch to what? A boatload of headaches? I had Verizon internet at one time. They have internet PROBLEMS all the time as in every other day. They want you to trouble shoot and solve the problems!  Plus, if you could not accomplish it and you asked them for help...they would help but, also charge you $20.00. $20.00 once per year would be find but, the internet has issues all week long. I really would rethink going over to the "other side." Cox is wonderful. Be patient as they are really trying to work the kinks out.

Tobysunny

Cox is NOT wonderful.  Half the time I can't access it or it's so slow I have to set it to load and go do something else.   I'm thinking AT&T.  And can someone explain to me how the .pst archive works?  Changing over would be  a pain but no worse than when I closed down my banking account to go with a credit union.  But first they need to get it back up and working so I can access my mail.  Not getting my mail is horrible enough but not even being able to access what has been saved off is another. 

whaleyf,

If you install Mozilla's free Thunderbird email program on what I assume is your Windows system (don't know anything about Macs myself), it will store your email from whatever service you use on your pc.  So the email is yours forever and you never have to worry about this type of situation with moving to a different email provider again.

thunderbird once its running should (once cox's email servers are running) automatically download your cox email to your pc.  (That will also cause the email to be deleted from Cox's website.)

You can backup your thunderbird email on Windows by:

(1) going to Start -> ControlPanel->FolderOptions->View. and setting Show Hidden Files and Folders, and then

(2) finding the Application Data folder, which seems to be in slightly different places in various systems.  In my current system it is at My Computer -> C:->Documents and Settings -> myusername.  In Application Data you will find thunderbird.  Just copy that entire thunderbird folder off to a USB flash drive or whatever you choose.  I do it all the time and have restored 2-3 times from that over the years, mostly when bringing up a new laptop.

As far as keeping your cox email address after you stop being a cox customer, you're out of luck, but it is actually not that hard to change email addresses.  I did it twice.  Get your new address working first, then email everyone you can think of telling them your new address, then monitor the old account for a month or so to pick up the senders you forgot to tell.

Thanks for the info.  Sounds great.  Now I can just hope it works with a mac.  If not I'll give apple a call and see if they can tell me what to use.  If it's out there for a pc there should be something for a mac too.  Either way this is a big help,