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Anna8's avatar
Anna8
On our wavelength
10 months ago
Solved

changing user names for two email accounts

Hi I've received an email from VM to my virginmedia email account asking me to change my user name to another non-Virgin account for authentication purposes.Should I just change this one, or should ...
  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    10 months ago
    Anna8 wrote:

    I've received an email from VM to my virginmedia email account asking me to change my user name to another non-Virgin account for authentication purposes.

    For some time now Virgin Media have forced you to supply a non VM email account before you could reset your VM password. That non VM address then becomes your VM username and is also the email account they use to send your verification email as part of the password reset process.

    However, I am a bit suspicious of that email because this is the first time I have heard of them sending out emails asking customers to update their accounts.

    "should I also change my ntlworld email account's user name?"

    Well, you will eventually be forced to do it so you might as well do it now.

    However, I would not use any links in that VM email in case it is a scam. When you sign into your "My Virgin Media" (MVM ) account to make that change you should either use this link https://www.virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media   or the bookmark in your browser that you usually use when you sign into your MVM account.

    By the way, unless VM have made a recent change, you will need to use a different non VM email address for each of your VM email accounts.

    Coenoby

Anna8's avatar
Anna8
On our wavelength
10 months ago

Thanks very much! I didn't know that about gmail accounts and dots.
I'm actually a bit confused by what I've done or haven't done so far! I thought I'd followed all the instructions and changed my user name on my virginmedia account to a gmail account, but when I sign in, the virginmedia address still appears as an option, and the gmail account now appears as an additional account! And I didn't create a password for it so I can't sign in with it, unless perhaps I use the password for the virginmedia account. Do you have any ideas on what's happened?
Thank you,
Anna8

Anna8's avatar
Anna8
On our wavelength
10 months ago

I've just spoken to a very helpful VM person, and it seems that basically the new user name doesn't replace the old one - you have it as well and sign in through it. VM don't send you a code to your non VM address - which is what they said they do in their email. It's all a bit confusing but hopefully it will work!
Thanks again for your help, Coenoby.

  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    Very Insightful Person
    10 months ago

    Anna8 wrote:

     when I sign in, the virginmedia address still appears as an option, and the gmail account now appears as an additional account!

    I'm not sure exactly what you mean there but I am thinking that you are talking about the list of email accounts that come up when you start the sign in process. So this screen:

    If so, then as far as I am aware, it is just a list of VM email accounts that you have recently successfully accessed /signed in to.

    So for example the top Gmail address and the third ntlworld address could actually be for the same email account.

    I seem to remember that when I set up my first non VM username I was always picking the old ntlworld address from the list and trying (unsuccesfully) to sign in with that. I was unsuccessful because that VM username was no longer valid despite still being listed as an option at the sign in stage!

    You can just ignore the line with your old VM email address and sign in by clicking on the new non VM address since that's now the username for your VM  account.

    The password will be whatever you changed it to when you specified the new non VM email address. If you did not change the password when you updated your VM account, then my assumption would be that it remains what it was before but I have never tested that myself - sorry.

    Coenoby