Forum Discussion

hakwright's avatar
hakwright
Joining in
2 months ago

Emails sent to NTLworld email address not being received

Hi,

My father is a VM customer, and has been using an ntlworld email address for many years. From the end of February he has not been receiving any new emails to his ntlworld address. He was able to send emails for some time in March (and these were being delivered OK), but as of about 10 days ago he can neither receive emails, nor send them.

He has telephoned VM to make them aware of the issue, but after a week his email is still not working.

I also noticed that when I was sending emails to his address, I was receiving an odd response about mail being undelivered to a completely unconnected gmail address. This was a direct (automated) response to email messages I had sent (and another family member had the same responses). This indicated that the account(s) linked to his ntlworld email address had been misconfigured in some way.  

Could somebody please give an indication of when the issue with his ntlworld email address will be resolved? I see that there are many recent messages with similar symptoms, have the problems been diagnosed and is there an idea of when email support for the ntlworld addresses will be working again?

16 Replies

  • Graham_A's avatar
    Graham_A
    Very Insightful Person
    2 months ago

    From what you describe it would seem that a forwarding rule has been set to forward all your father's emails to another account.  This may indicate that the account has been compromised.  Log into the account via VM webmail and check for rogue forwarding and/or filters and remove them as appropriate.

    Then log into the My Virgin Media account for the email address concerned and change the password.

    • hakwright's avatar
      hakwright
      Joining in
      2 months ago

      Thanks for the feedback. That's an interesting (and concerning) possibility. He has tried to reset his password during a VM support call, but he is no longer sure what his current password is. Perhaps if I can resolve the password situation, I can try as you suggest and check for unwanted forwarding rules/filters. 

    • hakwright's avatar
      hakwright
      Joining in
      2 months ago

      I have tried resetting the password for my father's VM account, but was unable to.

      With the main ntlworld email he uses, after entering this in the reset password page (https://www.virginmedia.com/identity/forgotten-details/password) it says: "Please ensure you provide the email address you use to sign in to My Virgin Media".

      This is his main email address. He doesn't have any email addresses other than VM (ntlworld) addresses. There are two other ntlworld addresses linked to the same account (one for my Mum, who passed away several years ago, and another "joint" email they occasionally used). 

      Entering these other two email addresses does allow me to get to the next page, where I can enter a new password. But whatever password I enter, it is rejected with a "prohibited word" error. I can enter things like abc-123-jkl-789-pqr and it still says "prohibited word". The reset facility seems to be fundamentally broken. I have tried on several web browsers (Edge, Chrome) same issue. 

      How can I reset the VM account password for my father?!?

      (I understand that the email app password will be different, but at the moment I'd like to at least be able to log in to VM for my Dad to possibly figure out why he hasn't received any email since end of February).

      Really poor behaviour from Virgin.

      • Daniel_Et's avatar
        Daniel_Et
        Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
        2 months ago

        Hi hakwright 👋 Thank you for your posts and welcome to the Virgin Media Community 😀

        We're sorry to hear about the issue your father is having and that you feel this way 😔

        Just to confirm, is your father the holder of the account to which the e-mail address in question is linked?

        If so, in order for us to be able to support him fully on this, would it be possible to get him to create a separate profile on here and contact us directly?

        Please pop back to us at your earliest convenience.

        Thank you for your support Graham_A and Adduxi 👍

        Regards,
        Daniel

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

    Is he using Webmail via My VM or a mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird?

    Does he have his 3rd party email address setup for accessing My VM?

    Does he have a four word password generated for access via a mail client, (or "app" in VM speak)?

    https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/manage-email-account

    • hakwright's avatar
      hakwright
      Joining in
      2 months ago

      Thanks for the feedback.

      He's using the free Windows 11 email client, not webmail. He doesn't currently have a 3rd-party email address, his ntlworld address is the only address he's used for years. 

      He has contacted VM to ask for help to resolve things, and I believe he reset his password - but unfortunately he is no longer sure what the correct current password is. The password issue itself clearly needs to be resolved, but before this emails were not being received for many weeks and it was this issue I was trying to understand, in terms of how it could be resolved.