Resolved
Hi,
We are aware that some customers are experiencing issues with their email service and are very sorry for the inconvenience this is causing. Our teams are working flat out to fully restore all emails as soon as possible.
ModTeam
Update 13/07/23 - This has now been resolved. If you are still having issues, please make your own separate post giving as much detail as possible.
please can we have an idea when all our emails will be restored back into our folders ( I can see m6 folders but everyone is empty ) and will we get compensation for loss of service ???.
DAY NINE, Files and Folders still missing.
WHAT'S GOING ON Virgin Media?
WHEN can we expect to get on with our lives?
I have important information from my Emails I MUST HAVE.
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
WHAT ARE THE UPDATES on this CATASTROPHE?
Hi have you had your historic emails returned yet ? I am still waiting for mine two and a half weeks later, thanks.
Ive just checked my webmail and Im so happy....all of my historic emails are back!!!!!.....Im so relieved. Ive since made a gmail account and will never rely on the webmail again for all my important documentation. As I was told earlier today, be patient a bit longer and hopefully you will get them back too.
When I go to my email account on the Virgin media webmail, all the sub folders for my inbox have now disappeared. When I open a sub folder in Outlook, the contents is there for a second and then disappears. Why are things getting worse not better?
Try via webmail to see if your imap sub-folders are subscribed. Put a tick in the boxes, they'll probably appear in your local email client but likely that they'll still be empty.
That won't make any difference I'm afraid. All folders have gone from the Webmail page. They've been gone for 9 days now.
You have not restored the ability to send or receive Emails on my account fullstop!!!!
I can now send/receive my ntl/virgin mail, but had to have my computer man visit and repair my Outlook which was not able to communicate with Virgin since the outage. No idea why Virgin outage upset this communication. Can I get get reimbursement for his fee I wonder?
Somehow all of the emails sent to/from my Outlook email a/c have also disappeared. How, I ask? The only common thread is that I use Outlook as my email client to view all of my email a/cs but an outage at Virgin should not have any effect on emails in other, non virgin, a/cs. Just what have they done and how have they apparently accessed my Outlook a/c. I'm watching carefully but if there are no explanations and no 'historic' emails by next Monday I'm going to the Information Commissioner and taking legal advice. This behaviour has to be accountable in law.
'We have now restored the ability to send and receive emails for all affected accounts'
This is just another 'cut and paste' from VM 'staff' the same as they have been doing since the beginning. there are many customers who have STILL not got the ability to send/receive emails.
Despite customers REPEATEDLY posting that they haven't got full email back, VM STILL persist in 'cut and paste' telling us otherwise. Sticking your head in the sand VM doesn't work!!
How many people have to tell you, before you actually admit you haven't fixed the email problem??
VM need to GET REAL!!!
Any News on old emails coming back .
Need an update this is taking too long !! When will we have our old emails?
Come on Virgin! What's the plan?
When will historic emails be restored? How can we best prepare for it? Please, someone who knows the answers give us an update. If it's taking a long time because it's difficult, then say so. We might have some sympathy and optimism. The silence implies you don't know what you're doing or don't care.
It's looking like they've destroyed the data (or never had ait backed up in the first place) and are hoping to ride out the storm, i.e., hoping we'll go away if they just say nothing. There may need to be a mass law suite brought. It should not take this ammount of time to migrate back up data into the live domain.
While sympathising with those whose Emails have been lost, I don't know on what basis a mass lawsuit would stand up. It is up to individual users to back up their own data. But I do think that VM should make this clear when one sets up a new Email account. I certainly don't recall seeing such a warning, but I routinely back up my own Emails and have done so since the 1990s.
Hi VM
Below is a copy of the text received in an email last Friday 23rd June.
Are there any further updates on the retrieval of historic emails and folders.
I remain optimistic and patient.
Many thanks
Trevor Buesnel
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Looks like at this point the press has pretty much moved on from this, and are no longer reporting it. Which might be what virgin media are waiting for. If they are indeed working flat out on this, i would assume 24 hours a day , 7 days a week. then prove it, show us the work logs of your staff working on this and what they are doing everyday for the last 8 days to solve the issue. For example what did they do for the whole work day yesterday to solve the problem. It doesn't make any sense.
I have recovered email inbox in the past from systems such as exchange, it's not that complicated, unless you don't have the data off course. The only issue would be how to do you keep the users current data and import the old emails, since overwriting would wipe out the inbox and reset it back to the last backup they made. In which you could give us the .pst or .ost files (from your backup) and we would could import them into outlook. I would be happy with that. I do hope your raid hasn't been corrupted and you are waiting for a expert to come in to try to repair it. gulp 😞
Good points. I think VM would have to restore Email folders up to 19 June while leaving anything after that date untouched (assuming the affected users have been busily sending and receiving Emails since then).
But the idea of presenting most users with .pst or .ost files would be hopeless. Apart from not knowing what to do with them, I suspect the majority of users anyway just use the VM webmail interface.
Of course, now that IMAP users suddenly realise they need to back up their own Emails, I would hope they are now already doing this - in which case, no problem. But are they??
The problem does seem to be with IMAP. I use POP3 and, although locked out for a few days (invalid password etc.), I sat tight and didn't try to change my password or anything. When I did get back in, My Inbox and other folders were still there. But I had a backup anyway if they hadn't have been.
Moving to a different provider (e.g. Gmail) doesn't really help. It could happen there as well. And if one isn't backing up ones Emails, it would just be the same issue all over again.
@HenryQ
Hey there Henry.
Personally, I think it is a very good idea for all VM email users to either migrate to (1) Google services for their email, or (2) a paid-for email provider such as Proton Mail. I have done both.
I now run the following, all accessed via the Outlook 2019 client:
* 3 x Proton Mail IMAP addresses. Proton Bridge required for this. I have it setup in "Split Email Address mode", so I can get separated emails into distinct and separated folders in the Outlook client.
* 1 x Google IMAP address. Auto-setup on Outlook 2019 available for this.
* 1 x Google POP3 address. App password required for this. This was hard to find inside the Google Account I am using for this. It was quite hidden away among a series of options.
It has been a painstaiking process to set everything up and update all my online accounts. Indeed, I'm only about one-third of the way through updating all my online accounts. I use two password managers (on which I keep identical records), and am working my way through every set of credentials. The two password managers I recommend are 1Password (paid-for, cloud based), and KeePass (free, local machine). If you use these, make sure your "master password" (the one you use to open your password vault) is long, but easy to remember. I like to use a phrase interspersed with numbers instead of spaces. You'd be surpised at how quickly you can type-in a long master password, with practice.
Despite the hassle, I feel that separating myself from VM email provision is worth-it.
I see you noted that there is a possibility that such problems, especially with IMAP setups, could, hypothetically, occur with an alternative provider, such as Google. While, of course, this is possible, the chances are dramatically less. In my opinion, Google are a world-class provider, and their down-time has been negligable over the past 5 years. In my view, the same applies to the paid-for service of Proton Mail, who are another quality provider, with a strong track-record of negligable down-times.
I hope this provides some food for thought for some folks.
One final comment:
If I am no longer "tied in" to VM via their email services, then it will be easier for me to move-on from VM in the future. For instance, CityFibre has just installed cabling/hardware in my street and have mail-dropped all the houses. I am sure I am not alone in this regard.
