IN THIS digital age most of us are adept at coping with constant change – new software, apps, websites, computers, or other new devices.

How odd then that the energy company E.ON, which presumably has a substantial technical department, says it can’t “absorb the cost” of adapting its accounts system to accept a .scot email suffix.

Andy Anderson tried to register his .scot address with the company to allow him to access his account, but met with such resistance that he ended up seeking the help of the ombudsman.

That too proved a dead end, with the ombudsman reporting that E.ON said there was “a significant cost” involved and not enough demand to absorb this.

The investigating officer added: “As this is a commercial decision, it is outside of our remit,” which left Anderson feeling as if he had been discriminated against.

Now, we are no technological masterminds, but we feel we could offer E.ON a pointer or two to save them some money.

We went to Mr Google and typed in an eight-word search string (which the techies will have to work out themselves) which returned more than 74,000,000 results. Another, more specific string returned only 250,000 results.

Many of those we examined were virtual idiots’ guides to accepting new domains and suffixes on a mail server. We are sure E.ON’s techies could find among them simple instructions to completing the task for little, or no cost.

It could send out a simple but powerful message that the company was not discriminating against anyone because of their email address.


MSP attacks E.ON over refusal to accept .scot email suffix because it would cost too much