**If hundreds of Peak email clients want to continue to use their email addresses, it will cost them $5 a month a month beginning July 1.**

By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com

Free public email has been around since the 1990s, but some central coast residents could be paying for the service if they want to keep their current address.

Under a move announced by Pioneer Connect, a Philomath-based provider of Internet and phone service, hosted email will no longer be offered as of June 30. For “a couple hundred” people in Yachats, according to a Pioneer executive, that means choosing one of three options:

Keep the “@peak.org” address for $5 per month per email address, billed directly from PEAK Internet of Corvallis.
Subscribe to another email service, such as Google or Yahoo. PEAK will forward messages from the old address to a new one for $5 per month per email address, to give time to notify contacts.
Disable their Peak.org email address.

In a letter that went out to PEAK email users in March, Pioneer advised that their email address will be automatically deactivated June 30, unless Pioneer or PEAK have been informed otherwise.

“A little over one year ago, we took over the internet service provider server from PEAK, but the email continued to be a PEAK offering,” said Virginia Tucker, Pioneer’s customer relations manager. “At that time, we reduced our Internet rates by $10-$30 per month, and PEAK outsourced their email to another company.”

According to general manager James Rennard, since Pioneer acquired PEAK’s ISP business, “We’ve had very few people taking our email addresses; most of them are going with Gmail or Yahoo.”

Tucker said “about 400” people have called Pioneer to ask about the change, adding that “the complaints have been minimal.”

PEAK, which is based in Corvallis, raised its prices for hosting the email, and providing a call center and support.

“We were already subsidizing the cost of email services to our customers,” said Rennard. “As a cooperative, it was a confluence of circumstances where the costs just passed a threshold that we couldn’t absorb any longer.”

The notification letter to “@peak.org” email users included a guide to popular, free email options, and a list of contacts important to keep current — such as the Social Security Administration.

People with with questions about the transition can call Pioneer at 888-929-2014 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, or visit the PEAK “email migration” web page.

“The decision wasn’t made lightly,” said Tucker. “It’s definitely something we struggled with, but the most important thing is bringing value to all our customers.”

She acknowledged that there is some confusion about the relationship between Pioneer and PEAK. The two firms were partners until August 2020, when Pioneer Connect became a single-source vendor for Internet, video, Wi-Fi and phone service from the mid-Willamette Valley to the central Oregon Coast.

Contacted for comment, PEAK President Rick Petersen deferred to Pioneer “as this is under their jurisdiction.”