Transferring email accounts

@poit57

No changes to your primary should be necessary to accomplish this. We would need to verify both accounts as you were told but from there it may be easier to simply delete the emails from the closed account and let you add them back to your account as secondary emails. This procedure however would not preserve any of the contents.

ChrisL said:
@poit57

No changes to your primary should be necessary to accomplish this. We would need to verify both accounts as you were told but from there it may be easier to simply delete the emails from the closed account and let you add them back to your account as secondary emails. This procedure however would not preserve any of the contents.

I'm the original poster, but I'm now signed in under my personal account instead of the secondary user ID from my parents' account. I finally got together with my parents to decide how to handle the email addresses on the cancelled Cox account, and this transferal process has been an awful customer experience because support agents keep contradicting each other.

My mother contacted Cox this morning to authorize the transfer. We are starting with just my secondary email from her account while the rest of the family makes sure they have all messages downloaded and backed up. She was informed that she would not need to contact Cox again because the account was notated granting permission for me to transfer all the email addresses into my account, but she did explain that the email addresses would be cancelled from one account and reactivated similar to how the process was described in the quoted reply. All that was left would be for me to contact Cox myself.

Agent#2: I contacted Cox and the support agent first told me that this task was impossible because I already had a primary email account set up - the same as what the first agent told me in the original message above. After I explained the deletion and recreation of the email and asserting that I was informed that this is possible, this agent put me on an extended hold. She finally came back and said that this would be possible, but that she would have to submit a tier 2 support ticket.

She then asked me to verify the account information (name, address, phone, PIN) from my parents account. After I did so, she refused to help me because I was not an authorized user on that account. She refused to review the account notes that the previous agent had assured us were added to the account and would not assist us any longer. Now I have to bother my mother to have her call back into Cox again to add me as an authorized user of a cancelled account.

Agent#3: My mother contacted Cox again. After explaining the situation, my mother verified both hers and my account information. This agent also explained that my existing primary email address would have to be deleted. After explaining what I was told about deleting/recreating the account, she put me on hold to check some information. She said that one of the previous agents had already deleted my username that I want to transfer, but when we tried to activate it under my account, it says the username is already in use.

I can no longer sign in with this email address from my parents' account. After more checking, this agent confirmed that the email address has been completely deleted from the system and said, "Give it a couple days and try to recreate the email again." Agent#3 cannot explain why the system is giving that message even though she sees that the email has already been released from the system, and she cannot give a better estimate than a few days for when this could get resolved.

Agent#3 seems to think it was Agent#2 who deleted the secondary email from my parents' account even though she said she couldn't provide any assistance because I'm not an authorized user. She apologized for the previous agent's premature action and said we can escalate this issue if the username is still unavailable in a few days.

For now, I just hope that I don't miss out on too many emails that are sent to the deleted account. It's what I use for nearly all my online accounts.

Update to this situation: I noticed that even though I could no longer sign into the Cox website using the deleted email account in question that email was still syncing with my phone and with Outlook without any errors, so I chatted with another agent.

This time, the agent clarified that the deletion process takes 24 hours to complete through the system. I should be able to tell when the process completes because my email should top syncing with client software/apps.

I then asked for a clarification on the best way to ask for assistance to avoid the pushback I keep getting that this task is impossible with a current primary email set up on my account. I then got that exact same pushback where the agent gave me the explanation that this can't be done unless there isn't already a primary email account established.

I was shocked at this response after our previous conversation. It turns out that in seeking clarification, I phrased my request so incorrectly that the agent thought I was asking about a completely different process. I referred to it as deleting the username from my mother's account and then "reactivating" the username as a secondary on my account. I was told that "reactivating" could only be done on an account with no primary email. What I was trying to do is "create" the username as a secondary email after the deletion is complete, and "creating" and "reactivating" are completely different procedures.

@ToddN

Perhaps the confusion is in understanding of the terminology being used. The easiest way to accomplish would be not to transfer the emails but simply delete them from the previous account and create them new on the desired account. Once they are deleted you can actually create them yourself by signing into your http://www.cox.com account and adding them as additional emails to your primary.

I chatted again with another agent this afternoon after 24 hours had passed. The username from my mother's account is apparently still pending a complete deletion, and still says it is in use when I try to add it as a secondary user under my Cox account.

It has now been about 36 hours since the username was deleted, and I still continue receiving messages through Outlook without any errors validating my username and password, but I still can't log into the Cox website with that username.

The agent I chatted with today stated that this should be a seamless process where the support agent can delete the user from one account and add it to the second account at the same time. Is there a way to get this escalated for technical assistance if the deletion process has failed?

@ToddN

It sounds like the username needed to be added to the current account, there are a couple of ways to do that depending on the status of the login. I will check on that status of the username for you, please email us at cox.help@cox.com; include your account information (name, address, last four of the SSN) and a link to the forum post so we can reference the issue.