Lost access to Virgin.net email
My virgin.net email account recently stopped me using an alias (without warning), & my efforts to sort it out, combined with several DEF01 errors, have left me with no access to around 20 years' wort...
Forum Discussion
Snip…for many years I have not been a paying subscriber to Virgin & was never asked to be - my virgin.net emails just kept on working….snip
And therein is the issue.
Being a paying VM broadband customer is a requirement to keep using any of the VM branded email addresses.
The history of the virgin.net email addresses is somewhat convoluted, but it is absolutely nothing to do with TalkTalk, way back in 2015/16, VM terminated their dial-up and ADSL service, confusingly also referred to as virgin.net, all existing users were given a choice but basically, the only way to keep the email address was to sign up as a VM broadband customer, otherwise, their email accounts would be deleted after one year.
Except, for various reasons, VM didn’t always keep to the timescale and, as you said yourself, ‘it just kept working’! But it was always on borrowed time, eventually, VM would realise that the address was not associated with a paying broadband customer, and kill it!
In a day or so a member of the forum team will get to this thread and offer to contact you by direct message to gain further details and see what can be done.
But, alas, I do have to say, that it is very, very likely that the email address, mailbox and all the mail within it has been deleted, and from their perspective, you aren’t paying them anything, they really aren’t going to do much about it!
"... & was never asked to be ..." is the issue. I do remember an email from Virgin, many years ago, stating that virgin.net & other addresses were due to be discontinued. I assumed (reasonably) that Virgin would let me know when my time was up, so I could copy off my content for transfer to another provider. I don't remember being asked to subscribe to Virgin.net to continue using it. It just continued to be available for several further years, until suddenly, WITHOUT WARNING, it was stopped, without any allowance given to take out a Virgin subscription, or copy off around 20 years' worth of my emails.
I realise Virgin expect to be reimbursed for any services they offer, so why didn't they simply tell me "subscribe now or your service will cease on xx days"?? I would then have compared the benefits of doing so, or transferring my emails somewhere else.
This is no way to treat ANY Virgin user, whether fee-paying or not.