Did I lose anybody?

After having having the local phone company since I opened my business and having them as my ISP since I got online about 12 years ago I have switched to Cox cable for business. This is a big switch for me, I am old enough to remember the phone company owning everything including the phone and there were no options. My record for utilizing new technology is mixed. Of 5 living siblings I am the oldest and I was the first to have a home computer and the last to get on the internet.

Changing ISPs was something I fought for a long time. Once I got on the internet I became active in several wood working forums and gained several customers and the online link was my email address which was tied to my ISP which began as @uswest.net. It later changed to qwest.net and eventually to qwestoffice.net. Things went fine until they stopped forwarding the previous versions about a year ago. During the years I was visited by several sales folks that could give me a small cost savings at the expense of losing my email address. After Qwest did that to me anyway I started exploring how to solve the problem for the long term. Over a year ago I got a domain for my business and started posting that. When I first got online a domain was fairly expensive at around $50 month but over the years it has kept coming down and when I finally got a domain through Godaddy it cost me $150, including registration, for 3 full years. Last month Cox came in and stated they were installing cable in my complex and gave me a quote about $50 less than I was paying and the billing is a lot simpler than the 8 pages I have been getting from Qwest. In the interim month until they got it installed I have tried to get everything important changed over to either my personal (shrpscott(at)gmail dot com or business stuff at scott(at)scottssharpening dot com. I hope I haven't lost anybody.

That brings up another point. Back in the day when you moved you filed a change of address with the post office and filled out the change of address section on all of your bills and at Christmas you made a point of getting your cards out early so your friends and relatives had your new address. Now with so many things tied to the internet trying to make sure all the stuff you do on line is updated is a real chore. And there is no forwarding address thingy for the internet. Again I hope I haven't lost anybody but I know I will have. :-(

I think the next step will be to jettison the white and yellow page listings which for years have only gotten me calls for work which doesn't fit the B2B makeup of my business.