EIRCOM E-MAIL users who do not log into the web version of their in-box once every nine months risk having their accounts closed.

The telecoms company has instigated the policy following the upgrading of its service over four days last week.

Eircom has confirmed this deactivation policy will apply to its own subscribers and to those e-mail account holders, who get their broadband via another carrier such as Vodafone, but who continue to use their old eircom.net e-mail address.

Eircom has some 300,000 e-mail account holders, 90,000 of whom do not have any billing relationship with the company.

It said it would give seven warnings in total before someone’s e-mail account was cut off – three e-mails at the six-month juncture warning the account will be disabled in three months, three more reminders at nine months and one final reminder.

Last week Eircom moved its entire customer base over to a new e-mail platform, Zimbra, a Danish company that supplies Yahoo and Ireland.com among others.

It offers vastly increased memory – the old service offered just 50Mbytes of storage forcing users to delete e-mails to make way for incoming e-mail.

The migration was not without its problems – many customers were locked out of their accounts and told their passwords were no longer valid. Some former Eircom customers vented their frustration online in the company’s support forum.

“I don’t have a landline now either and I have had this account for 12+ years. Does this mean that we can’t get any specialist help? Will the problem be sorted out for everyone soon or will we be forever left high dry?” asked JackieOh.

Eircom said it had received “approximately 140 password queries” over the week and that otherwise the migration had gone smoothly.