96RAF Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 (edited) Your Hornby base account is keyed to the email address you first registered with. According to Hornby this key field value cannot be changed. You can have an auto-update that changes your forum email once the base account ID has been changed (see image) but as stated that is not possible without dumping the account. The current change email address system is flawed and as Rog said is being looked at. In the meantime you are strongly advised not to change your email address. Edited August 28 by 96RAF Advised changed and underscored Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveM6 Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 When I finished with BT (slowest and most unreliable broadband ever encountered) I ran into the same issue. Solved by paying a monthly fee to retain my BT email address. The unchangeable address is not unheard of elsewhere. Same problem with my dental insurance - typed the wrong address when I registered. Five years later and I still can't get it changed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
What About The Bee Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 (edited) I can see why Hornby are bringing the web pages back in house. Absurd decisions like this can play havoc with a business. How difficult would it have been to make the unique field a 40 digit number (more than the number of persons on the planet by far) instead of their email address. Hornby could reconfigure their database to provide that unique number to every customer and make the email address a dependent field, instead of the independent (key) field. Instead, Hornby has this awkward system that requires Customer Service establish a new account and then manually transfer all of the associated fields, like club membership, reward points, pre-orders & etc. That seems efficient. This is a great way to lose a customer. Bee Edited August 28 by What About The Bee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 1 hour ago, What About The Bee said: How about pre-orders at the original price @Brew Man? Bee Well I would lose those too. Fortunately I don't have any pre-orders in, so no loss there. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 47 minutes ago, 96RAF said: Your Hornby base account is keyed to the email address you first registered with. According to Hornby this key field value cannot be changed. You can have an auto-update that changes your forum email once the base account ID has been changed (see image) but as stated that is not possible without dumping the account. The current change email address system is flawed and as Rog said is being looked at. In the meantime unless you really have to do not attempt to change your email address. This situation is relatively recent, within the last two years at least. At about this time in 2022 I changed my address after getting rid of a previous address, and although I had to request it, Hornby obliged with no problem. So this draconian approach has happened since that time. Regarding the Forum account, I have changed that to my new email address with no difficulty. I can't imagine the idiocy in choosing an email address as a user's unique identity, or any other personal detail for that matter. Most if not all modern databases have an index key, and that is the unique identifier to each and every record. Changing one's email address for one reason or another is a very common practice. What are Hornby thinking of! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 15 minutes ago, What About The Bee said: I can see why Hornby are bringing the web pages back in house. Absurd decisions like this can play havoc with a business. How difficult would it have been to make the unique field a 40 digit number (more than the number of persons on the planet by far) instead of their email address. Hornby could reconfigure their database to provide that unique number to every customer and make the email address a dependent field, instead of the independent (key) field. Instead, Hornby has this awkward system that requires Customer Service establish a new account and then manually transfer all of the associated fields, like club membership, reward points, pre-orders & etc. That seems efficient. This is a great way to lose a customer. Bee Not quite, Bee. Apparently only the Reward Points can be transferred. The rest is lost. Go figure, as you folk on that side of the pond would say 😂 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 Well I had a very fraught hour or so just. Having changed email address in my forum account I thought I'd log out and back in again to test it. The result was I got locked out as the forum needs to be linked to a Hornby base account and the only linked email was now with the new Hornby account if created. This meant I would have to create a new forum account to get back in, losing my id and post history. Fortunately I remembered I was still logged into the forum on my phone so was able to change my email address back to what it was. Phew! So the message is for the moment, don't change your forum email until this nonsense is sorted out, even though you are able to do so. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LTSR_NSE Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 Hang on, that doesn’t make a lot of sense… (the forum account is separate & sensibly does have a separate unique ID field.) Why would the email addresses need to match? The forum account’s unique field should be matched to the Hornby account’s unique field! That sounds like there is a whole lot more layers of incomprehensible setup involved than merely an unchangeable email address! 🤦♂️ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
96RAF Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 You can chin-wag and speculate all you like, but the fact remains Hornby Towers IT is on the case and some sort of fix will be deployed. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 (edited) 19 minutes ago, LTSR_NSE said: Hang on, that doesn’t make a lot of sense… (the forum account is separate & sensibly does have a separate unique ID field.) Why would the email addresses need to match? The forum account’s unique field should be matched to the Hornby account’s unique field! That sounds like there is a whole lot more layers of incomprehensible setup involved than merely an unchangeable email address! 🤦♂️ The forum account only works when linked to a Hornby base account. I'd unwittingly linked my forum account with a Hornby account that has no associated forum account. If you get my drift. I'm guessing/hoping that as long as I don't delete my old Hornby account my forum account will continue unhindered. The logical outcome will be when this ridiculous situation is resolved. There is no need to use user-defined fields as unique identifiers when each record of a database has it's own. Edited August 28 by Brew Man Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LTSR_NSE Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 I understand what happened to you @Brew Man - I was attempting to agree that it seems poor system design. However I accept @96RAF’s reminder to avoid unsought technobabble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
What About The Bee Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 46 minutes ago, 96RAF said: Hornby Towers IT is on the case and some sort of fix will be deployed. That's all I ever wanted or expected. Thank you for using that shield next to your avatar. 😉 Bee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 5 minutes ago, What About The Bee said: That's all I ever wanted or expected. Thank you for using that shield next to your avatar. 😉 Bee I'm afraid that as the reality of this mess comes to light I am doubtful that the authors of this system could write a shopping list, let alone a database. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
What About The Bee Posted August 28 Share Posted August 28 Let's give them enough rope ... er, time to resolve the situation. This was the genuine reason I asked after your timeline @Brew Man, I expected some sort of fix or corrective action. They will need time to implement this. I wanted to be sure you were covered during this phase. I have confidence that Hornby will sort this. Therefore, I say 'give them that chance'. Bee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 28 Author Share Posted August 28 I largely agree with you, bee. I fear though that in order to properly fix this, i.e. shifting the unique identifier from user-defined fields to database incremental index is not a trivial task, or at least a time-consuming one. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
96RAF Posted August 29 Share Posted August 29 9 hours ago, Brew Man said: I largely agree with you, bee. I fear though that in order to properly fix this, i.e. shifting the unique identifier from user-defined fields to database incremental index is not a trivial task, or at least a time-consuming one. From memory of a past life, there are databases that do not use a key field, but unfortunately this doesn't appear to be one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brew Man Posted August 29 Author Share Posted August 29 1 hour ago, 96RAF said: From memory of a past life, there are databases that do not use a key field, but unfortunately this doesn't appear to be one. I should think most if not all reputable modern databases use a key index, and even if they didn't, one can be configured in the table structure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
What About The Bee Posted August 29 Share Posted August 29 If it were me, I would not change the database, whatsoever. If changed, then all of the functions which use the key must be checked. Individually. And since this is revenue affecting, it would have to be letter perfect. This is a large scale coding and massive testing effort. The juice isn't worth the squeeze (hopefully that expression translates). I would write a function that 1. Locks the original account 2. Creates new account. Locks it. Copies all fields except email address. 3. Installs the new email into the new account. 4. Confirm all fields are correct. 5. Delete old account. 6. Unlock the new account. This has exactly the same affect as simply changing the email address. User uses the account as before, except with new address. Even the password is the same. Rewards, Preorders, club memberships, are just as before. Its a transparent change. From the Hornby perspective, there is minimal disruption and testing. This is a simple stand alone routine to code and debug. It has virtually no affect on business. But.... that's just me Bee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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