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An astonishing email from Hornby CS


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A couple of days ago I wrote to CS asking them to change my email address as I am soon to be changing my internet provider. I have just received a response saying they are unable to change email addresses and that I would have to open a new account and lose my club membership and order/pre-order status. That is frankly rubbish since less than two years ago I needed to change my email address which was accommodated with no problem.

I suspect certain employees at Hornby are making it up as they go along.

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No, Bee, no way to change it in Account settings. As I said, I had cause to do this around two years ago and they willingly obliged. Hornby aren't the only ones. Since having to perform this exercise I've found several sites that do no allow you to change email in settings. Bizarre!

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5 minutes ago, Rog RJ said:

I've just looked in my account settings  and it looks pretty simple to change if I wanted to.

I think you'll find that the email field is grey out and won't allow change.

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2 minutes ago, LTSR_NSE said:

@Rog RJ it is easy to change your Forum email address but not possible to change your Hornby email address - they are 2 different accounts!

Yes, that's correct and I've done that. It's interesting that the person who responded saying that it could not be done said that Club membership and order details could not be transferred to a new account but Reward point could. Well that's plainly ridiculous. If one can be transferred then surely the rest can be. Not that I want them transferred, I just want my email address changed

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24 minutes ago, Brew Man said:

I suspect certain employees at Hornby are making it up as they go along.

If they’re anything like some former work colleagues of mine - “if I don’t know how to do it, it isn’t possible” - a complete refusal to accept fallibility & ask anyone how.

However to put the other side - Hornby’s web provider has changed a couple of times in recent years, so it could be that no Hornby employee has  the access rights to make this type of change now!

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Posted (edited)

I sincerely hope not, though plainly they are able to change other things such as transferral of Reward Points. It's not as if changing email addresses is unheard of, in fact it is quite common.

Edited by Brew Man
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I made sure my email address isn't tied to any internet provider 🙂 The vast majority of  logins for different services make use of the email address as the user name.

 I do also have an inbox with the provider but I never use it.

Edited by ntpntpntp
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Posted (edited)

It's probably wise counsel in hindsight. My new address is a Gmail one, so hopefully no further requirement for change.

Unless of course Google goes down 🤔

Edited by Brew Man
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48 minutes ago, Brew Man said:

probably about a month.

Plenty of time for the moderators to get an answer and maybe to get this sorted.

And like NTP, I also use a Gmail account.  Three of them in fact.  We got caught out by this nonsense years ago and made the deliberate decision to decouple the email account.

Bee

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11 minutes ago, Victor-K2 said:

Why the fuss.

Because, as has already been stated above,  it's the email address of the main Hornby (shopping)  account that's the problem NOT the community account 🙂   You can't change your email address on the main account, it is not editable.

Edited by ntpntpntp
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8 minutes ago, ntpntpntp said:

Because, as has already been stated above,  it's the email address of the main Hornby (shopping)  account that's the problem NOT the community account 🙂   You can't change your email address on the main account, it is not editable.

I don't have a spare email address to swap to so I can't follow the change thru to the end.

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From a technology perspective the difficulty (or not) most probably comes down to the unique ID field.

• Most systems will use an alphanumeric string based upon order of account creation (that serves no other purpose than being unique.)  Any personal data can easily be changed as desired.

• Some less sensibly designed systems use a piece of personal data (email address, phone number, etc.) as the unique ID field.  In such a system only an administrator or designer will have the necessary access rights to make a modification to the unique field.

Therefore given how much Hornby have outsourced their web, ordering, warehousing & logistics operations it seems equally plausible that they:
• no longer have an employee with the access rights.
• have an employee (perhaps a senior manager) with the rights - but nobody is actually aware of the fact.
• have an employee with the rights - but that person doesn’t even realise it themselves & has no idea how to use them anyway!

Edited by LTSR_NSE
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Posted (edited)

Well I've had a response from CS and she's digging her heels in, still claiming that a change of email is not possible. Not wishing to continue banging my head against a brick wall I have done as she suggested and opened a new account. Actually I'm not losing much and I do get my Reward Points transferred. Other than that there is only my orders history which I have made a flat file copy of, so at least I've got them should I need to refer. I do find it staggering though that there is not a web admin person there who can, (or is willing to) sort this out. You can change pretty much everything else in your account settings, including your name!!! During this exercise there have been about half a dozen sites with a similar system, i.e. non-editable email fields and not one of them has had a problem changing my email address upon request, except that is for Hornby. Thankfully it hasn't affected my forum account.

Edited by Brew Man
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1 hour ago, Brew Man said:

...... still claiming that a change of email is not possible....

Can I formally request that the moderators confirm the assertion?  Perhaps during one of the meetings.

I do understand that the Hornby business website is different from the Hornby community website.  Yet changing an email  account seems like a reasonable thing to be encountered.  Not out of the norm.  That Hornby would actually make this an unchangeable field seems .... odd.

Thanks in advance

Bee

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I forgot to mention in my previous post above that apparently I would also, in opening a new account and relinquishing my old account lose my Club membership, a membership I have paid for. I have asked the CS person I was dealing with how Hornby would resolve that issue. I am waiting for a response to that one.

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