In recent months iiNet/Westnet have decided to no longer offer email as part of their service. They have moved this service to a place called The Messaging Company (TMC). It was free for a while but now if people want to continue using their old iiNet or Westnet email address they must sign up with a subscription with TMC.

A very large number of users have had their passwords compromised around this time and had their email addresses hacked. Almost all users have reported a massive increase in spam email. It seems to me that somewhere in the move process the email addresses of customers were leaked or sold to third parties for marketing reasons. Even worse would be passwords being sold or leaked to a third party.

Many people are therefore experiencing problems with the setup of their new system such as;
Accounts getting hacked and unable to change passwords for various reasons.
Upgrade on storage purchased but that upgrade not taking effect until the next renewal period.

Contacting TMC always seems to be extremely slow or impossible with multiple message requests not being replied to at all. It's quite possible that TMC was not prepared the massive increase in users coming over from iinet/westnet etc. It's

The bulk of my customers are choosing to not deal with TMC and move to a free email provider like Gmail or Outlook or Proton.

Yes it's a pain in the butt to lose an email address that you've had for possibly 20+ years but it's not really that difficult and it's definitely less difficult than dealing with TMC.