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ajfhodgson's avatar
ajfhodgson
Tuning in
7 months ago
Solved

Another virgin.net Cancellation Victim

Hi,

I'm another victim of the unilateral cancellation disaster. Like many others, me and my wife got our @virgin.net email addresses in the 1p/minute dial-up ISP days of 1997.

Reading all the threads, it seems I'm actually fortunate to have got 30 days notice that my identity on the internet for the last 27 years will be summarily deleted.

I'm also fortunate that I set up forwarding/delete-from-server from @virgin.net to an gmail.com account back in 2008, so there isn't any email I need to download from their servers.

The main issue is that I've been using @virgin.net as my login and/or communication identity for many, many websites, including government gateway, utilities, banks, the council, pension providers, etc etc. The painful part is not informing human correspondents or organisations that my email is changing - that's just sending an email to them. It's changing the identity/contact email on 186 different websites, each of which has a different approach. Some, if you can log in, just let you change it, others send a verification email to the new address, some to the old address, some cannot do it online, you need to talk to customer service. It's a time-consuming nightmare!

I've currently spent over 12 hours working through this, and am about halfway through.

Which brings me to my three questions for you knowledgeable people:

1. I acknowledge that Virgin is getting no revenue from the service it's offering me, But many places (Google, Yahoo, etc) offer email for free - the cost is negligible. If Virgin Media is doing this to save that negligible cost, could they not have offered a paid service, a buy-out? I for one would have been happy to pay £100 for life-time service, even just to avoid the 12 hours spent so far and at least 12 more to come.

2. I have to help an elderly friend who has NOT been forwarding mail to gmail who is facing the same thing. What is the best way to get a csv file download of all email addresses that have sent him email - to make a list to pivot table and work through? Does @virgin.net still support IMAP access, so Thunderbird can suck out all the email (I understand it can generate a csv file)? Does Virgin offer any kind of 'take-out' feature?

3. I got on livechat with Virgin Media support when I first got the email, and having fought through the chatbot "Terri BOT", and then through first line support "Gwyneth Chloe" who didn't understand the question as said "Based on I can see here on your account, we cannot be able to access since it is already disconnected.", I finally got through to second-line team "dedicated team to help you regarding on this matter" member "Sneha" and then got the following reassurance: [MOD EDIT: PERSONAL INFORMATION REMOVED]

Question 3 - are we absolutely, positively sure that Sneha is talking nonsense, i.e. sure that the virgin.net accounts will be deleted when 30 days are up (and I'm not wasting my entire weekend)?

Many thanks, sorry for the long message and multiple questions, but I'm quite worked up about this!

 

[MOD EDIT: Personal and private information has been removed from this post. Please do not post personal or private information in your public posts. Please review the Forum Guidelines]

 

  • Graham_A's avatar
    Graham_A
    7 months ago

    ajfhodgson You will need to generate an app password for the virgin.net account.  You do this via the My Virgin Media account for the email address concerned so if you don't have access to that it could be problematic.  Have you responded to the PM from Daniel_Et 

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  • ajfhodgson's avatar
    ajfhodgson
    Tuning in
    6 months ago

    Finally, one more source of website logins you need to fix: If you use Chrome browser and its password manager feature, chrome://password-manager/passwords ,  you can go in there, and put your virgin.net email address in the search field - you'll find another few 10s of websites that you probably have to change the login email address for.

    You could say, well, I'll change them if/when I ever need to use them again - that's fine for many sites that only send a verification email to the new email address, but a fair proportion send a verification email to the old address, which would fail once virgin.net is rotting in hell.

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta
    6 months ago

     

     

    @ajfhodgson

    I can just imagine your sense of relief at having got away to a more reliable email service.  There is also an incidental advantage in dropping the old address - you are also leaving behind the spam senders that have attached themselves to it over the years. 

    I trust you will not mind that your posts will be linked to others who have been affected by VM email closures, both now and when the next tranche of closures happens. 

     

  • ajfhodgson's avatar
    ajfhodgson
    Tuning in
    6 months ago

    NOTE - This is my speculation, not insider knowledge, but may help understanding what's going on:

    It seems pretty clear to me that someone in virginmedia has noticed that they are running email servers and storage for (?)hundreds of accounts for people who are not virginmedia customers and not bringing in any revenue. Originally they brought in revenue (e.g. 1p/minute of virgin.net dial-up isp). 

    They have the contractual right to close them down, and are now exercising that right, at whatever cost, pain and outrage it inflicts on the people who've been using this service for years. It would have been better for everyone to have closed them down when the dial-up isp closed down, 20-odd years ago, before people built their full, rich, digital lives on them.

    They are making an exception for any mugs who happen to have a broadband contract with virginmedia (i.e. who are still customers, thus bringing in revenue), who can attach one email address to their broadband account (but presumably they will close it if you go to a better supplier next year).

    I believe it's not just the web mail interface that's closing - I believe it's the email server behind it - so no further IMAP/POP3 access to historical mails, and any future mails to that account will bounce/be undeliverable.

    So, unless you have virginmedia broadband, my advice is to start the painful withdrawal process asap.

    If anyone has knowledge that contradicts the above, I'd be pleased to hear it!

    • Adduxi's avatar
      Adduxi
      Very Insightful Person
      6 months ago

      For what it's worth, personally I think you are spot on.  I moved my old NTL mailboxes away some time ago, as I was intending to leave VM, and they would have been purged after 90 days.  Best thing I ever did and as you say "painful" but so worth it.

      As VM for the past nearly three years have not given new users mailboxes, and historically they have a high churn rate, who's mailboxes "should" be purged after 90 days, there will come a time when VM have zero mailboxes to support?  

      As for "digital life", I've always stated no one should rely on any ISP email as long term storage, but should keep at least one offline copy, if not two in separate storage.  But I suppose not everyone is an "IT Geek" and never give this sort of thing a thought.

    • smf4122's avatar
      smf4122
      Up to speed
      6 months ago

      Whilst I appreciate you are correct in that they are trying to cull the dead accounts but they surely also have a duty to establish whether or not that person is actually no longer a virgin customer and/or not send this email from a no reply address so it's almost impossible to get the message thru that I am still and always have been a virgin customer and just bc the main account holder is my husband, there has never been an issue with me being on the same account. The lady I spoke to today basically said if I was the one who does the technical stuff I shd be the main account holder but as my husband pays the bill, I feel that wd confuse matters further. She also said the email wd not be deleted but I'm not convinced. I do have VM broadband it just happens to have my husband as the main account holder...as it has been for 30 years! I asked on here if they meant to remove the servers altogether bc then I would lose complete access but I have not received any answer. I hope that much at least is not true. I understood that you wd not be able to access the emails thru the website but you wd thru third party apps (as I do on my ipad) and if that's the case then we need not panic. 

      • ajfhodgson's avatar
        ajfhodgson
        Tuning in
        6 months ago

        I think you are holding on to a false hope. Everything I have seen and read and heard is that there is no mercy, the whole thing is toast not just web access.

        A few weeks ago people had their accounts toasted with no warning. Now people are getting 30 days warning. They will retain one email address with each active broadband customer, but only until they eventually leave virgin like all sensible people. 

        Don't be lulled into not taking immediate action to safeguard your valuable identity and assets. 

        I don't think they have a 'duty' to do anything. Read the contractual terms of service - you have no rights at all. They have done us a favor giving 30 days warning! There is a difference between what they are obligated to do, and what they would do if they valued their customers.

         

    • smf4122's avatar
      smf4122
      Up to speed
      6 months ago

      why?😂 why on earth wd you want to torture yrself lol. Tho I've long been aware that I am talking to someone with substantially less technical knowledge than me. I also realised I'm probably talking to sone who potentially wasn't even born when I first had this email account so I even more resent being told this is just how we do things now. I was even told that I might have forgotten about an account bc I moved when we've been in the same house for over thirty years and when we moved here the internet barely even existed! How do you explain to someone nowadays there was a world before internet and computers 🤣

  • smf4122's avatar
    smf4122
    Up to speed
    6 months ago

    I've just had a call from VM and she admitted they've just sent this email out to everyone with virgin.net addresses. Oh and she wdn't talk to me without the permission of the main account holder (even tho she acknowledged I am the secondary account holder)  bc I wanted to discuss an email address....YES MINE! So now I can't even discuss my own email address that doesn't have his name on it! We never had a dial up account either so for them to say that email is not attached to the only cable broadband account we've ever had is ridiculous. 

    Does anyone know if there's an ombudsman service we can direct our anger to? 

     

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    6 months ago

    GDPR binds VM to only talk to the account holder, so even if it is "your" email address, the VM account is not in your name.  It may be frustrating, but that's the law I believe. 

    You can certainly go to the Ombudsman and file a complaint, but you need to have had an unresolved complaint lodged with VM for 8 weeks previously before they will step in?

    I sympathise with your predicament, but I would strongly recommend you move to another email address, one that is not tied to any ISP.  Depending on the access to your mailbox at the moment, you might be able to use something like Mailstore Home, to retrieve all your emails from VM to your local device at home.

  • NeedHelpNow2's avatar
    NeedHelpNow2
    Tuning in
    6 months ago

    I empathise totally - it's been my email since the year dot and only stopped broadband with them as they dont do it where I moved to when returned to live with elderly dad to support him....ALL my services like you are with this and I've been 6 days trying every end up to get answers, to get help, to move things to a gmail ( not where i want it but told it was easiest  hahahahah), to change contact/access info to all the services......exhausted and at stage where if it all goes and I have to start life afresh then that seems at present an easier option - goddness knows what it'll take to do but got to be better than where I am right now.....So, wishing you and all the thousands of others the best of luck - for what it's worth you are not alone