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Drew3's avatar
Drew3
Joining in
2 years ago
Solved

Lifetime Emails at Risk

Hi,

 
A man from Virgin rang me and said that all my emails and content that go back for decades will be deleted in 90 days time even though my email address is active and I have an account with Virgin. I said many of my emails were too important to lose. He promised to ring back but that was three weeks ago, and the 90 days is ticking by.
 
Deleting my emails is a drastic solution to what he said was the problem, which is as follows:
 
I vacated my previous address and told Virgin that my next permanent address wouldn’t be ready for a year or more. I couldn’t install Virgin at the interim address, so to keep my account open Virgin suggested and arranged a ‘ghost’ install at a friends address, moving this forward until an actual install at my permanent address. When I registered the new install it wouldn’t accept the original email address; I thought because it was an old Virgin legacy address. The guy who rang me recently said it was because it was already registered to the ghost install, so he was going to cancel that install but also my original email address, which I’m still using, and all my emails that go back more than 25 years.
 
He said his task was to close down installs that had been repeatedly rearranged. I reminded him that the ghost install had been a Virgin solution and asked why he couldn’t cancel it as per their plan, and keep my original email open. He didn’t have an answer. I told him many times that my original email was still active, with emails going in and out. He was clear that the 90 day deletion was still his action plan but that he would investigate further and ring me back - that was three weeks ago and I haven’t heard.
 
I’ve tried to resolve this twin account problem of ghost and actual, but no one at Virgin took ownership. Then someone from Tyneside, unaware of my previous attempts, rings with his nuclear approach to an internal task, and never mind the customer.
 
Can someone at Virgin please contact me for detail of the two accounts and email addresses so this can be resolved.
 
Drew.
  • ravenstar68's avatar
    ravenstar68
    2 years ago

    Drew3 

    Check at the top right if the page, next to your profile icon there is a picture of an envelope.  This will take you to your private messages.

    Tim

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

    Drew3  Sorry to read your situation.  The first thing that you should do whilst you still have access to the email account is to make sure that you have backed up all your email history so that you can still access it if/when your VM email address is closed down.

    Here is a link to one way of creating a backup: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Backing-up-your-Emails-One-of-many-solutions/m-p/3539542#M1787627

    A fundamental condition of using a VM email address is that it has to be attached to a current VM broadband account.  Your post suggests that this isn't the case since you moved to an area not serviced by VM broadband.  In all my years of helping on the email forum this is the first time I have read about the idea of moving the email address to a ghost address.

    • Drew3's avatar
      Drew3
      Joining in
      2 years ago

      Thanks for answer Graham. You mention the fundamental condition of a VM email address being attached to a current VM broadband account. In this case my VM email had been attached to the broadband account in my previous house. When I moved Virgin attached it to a future install.

    • Drew3's avatar
      Drew3
      Joining in
      2 years ago

      This was at a friends address which Virgin moved forward several times over a couple of years until I could move into my new address for real. At that point Virgin systems required a different email address to get my new install account working because my primary address was associated with the ghost install at my friends address. So I now have two accounts each with an associated email address, but I can't get into the one with my primary email address because the Virgin system thinks it hasn't been installed yet. My emails are going out and coming in fine BTW. Totally separate to all the above, a guy tasked with clearing up delayed installs rings me, and I explain why Virgin suggested and set it up that way. He says he understands, and indeed even knows the person in his department that did it. The problem is this new guy wants to cancel the ghost install (which is fine, it has served its purpose) but he also wants to let my primary email address and decades of important emails be cancelled with it. When I said it can't be impossible to close that install and reallocate my email to the current account he agreed to ring me back. He didn’t!

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

        Drew3 The VM Forum Team will need to look at this for you to see if a 'move & transfer' of the email account can be done.  They should respond here in due course.

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta
    2 years ago

    You really, really need to move your email history to a secure repository under your own control while you still can.

    VM do not promise secure storage for any email accounts, and with your particular account history you are in constant danger of losing everything.