For some reason our main virginmedia email address has been locked for over three days now. This email address is vital for so many things including healthcare. The other virginmedia address we use is still working ok. I spoke to an agent on Monday who confirmed the email address was locked but couldn’t help so he referred it to the IT team. I have a support ticket number. I’ve used our only working email address to register here. We must have the locked email address back please, it’s been established for years and linked to so many things.
Yeah, join the club! No access since Monday 14th July and yet, it's an issue so trivial to resolve within minutes! Not just that, it's a clear breach of contract on their side, check out the Terms & Conditions on your contract and should warrant an escalation to higher regulatory bodies overseeing this sector.
You may well find that email is not included in your contract, because VM regard email as a free add-on for older broadband customers only.
They stopped issuing email addresses altogether over three years ago, and there have been constant problems with it for a long time. VM haven't promised that they will keep it going indefinitely.
You need to look into moving your contacts to a different email provider. You'll need to do so anyway if you do leave VM broadband, because they stop email 90 days after you leave.
Contractual or not any supplier of any service should inform users if support is going to end and when it will end. Microsoft do it with previous versions of Windows. Phone manufacturers and App developers do it with older handsets.
My issue and that of many others is that support for email problems is now non-existent, but there has been no communication about this from Virgin Media. They may have quietly removed email from renewal contracts and are probably just hoping that customers will give up and make alternative arrangements for email.
What will happen though is that long-standing dissatisfied customers (this one included) will leave Virgin Media completely.
Thanks for posting and welcome to the community. We're sorry to hear of the email issue and especially the importance of it as you've said with the healthcare stuff.
If as you say it's been logged with IT, their timescales are 5 working days and they'll be in touch with you when they have an update or fix.
Our only working VM email address now is my wife's, who is going through chemotherapy. We can't risk losing this one too so we are in the process of setting up new email addresses and informing people.
The email address that has been locked is the account email. We can still log in to our My Virgin Media account using the locked email account, but this only tries to sell additional products and services. When we try to go to email it tells us that the account is 'locked' and then refers us to instructions that just repeat the same process.
We now have two active tickets with IT. The first was seven days ago and the second was initiated yesterday. To be fair to the agent I spoke to yesterday, he completely understood our problem, but told me there is no way for a customer to communicate with IT.
Our contract is coming to an end and we will be able to make a very substantial annual saving (circa £500 per annum) by switching.
I agree , I am also a long standing customer and will need to consider leaving as I am not getting the consistant and reliable service I am paying for and these people have become totally unproffesional (I never used to have problems ) My health cannot tolerate coping with far away call centre "service" either ! Best of luck anyway ,we all need it .
Our only working VM email address now is my wife's, who is going through chemotherapy. We can't risk losing this one too so we are in the process of setting up new email addresses and informing people.
The email address that has been locked is the account email. We can still log in to our My Virgin Media account using the locked email account, but this only tries to sell additional products and services. When we try to go to email it tells us that the account is 'locked' and then refers us to instructions that just repeat the same process.
We now have two active tickets with IT. The first was
seven days ago and the second was initiated yesterday. To be fair to the agent I spoke to yesterday, he completely understood our problem, but told me there is no way for a customer to communicate with IT.
Our contract is coming to an end and we will be able to make a very substantial annual saving by switching.
Regards
Steve
Hi John,
Thank you for coming back to us.
Our only working VM email address now is my wife's, who is going through chemotherapy. We can't risk losing this one too so we are in the process of setting up new email addresses and informing people.
The email address that has been locked is the account email. We can still log in to our My Virgin Media account using the locked email account, but this only tries to sell additional products and services. When we try to go to email it tells us that the account is 'locked' and then refers us to instructions that just repeat the same process.
We now have two active tickets with IT. The first was seven days ago and the second was initiated yesterday. To be fair to the agent I spoke to yesterday, he completely understood our problem, but told me there is no way for a customer to communicate with IT.
Our contract is coming to an end and we will be able to make a very substantial annual saving (circa £500 per annum) by switching.
Our only working VM email address now is my wife's, who is going through chemotherapy. We can't risk losing this one too so we are in the process of setting up new email addresses and informing people.
The email address that has been locked is the account email. We can still log in to our My Virgin Media account using the locked email account, but this only tries to sell additional products and services. When we try to go to email it tells us that the account is 'locked' and then refers us to instructions that just repeat the same process.
We now have two active tickets with IT. The first was seven days ago and the second was initiated yesterday. To be fair to the agent I spoke to yesterday, he completely understood our problem, but told me there is no way for a customer to communicate with IT.
Our contract is coming to an end and we will be able to make a very substantial annual saving (circa £500 per annum) by switching.
Thank you for the update and we are so sorry to hear about this.
When an IT ticket has been raised this means it has been escalated normally there is a 5 working day limit on this however sometimes it can take much longer.
The IT team will be working on this, we cannot speed this up either sorry.
Thank you fMatthew for your reply, it is appreciated.
I'm new here and thought that I had joined something that would have some influence over Virgin Media to get some help with a serious issue. The impression I have now though is that the helpers, moderators and most frequent posters are supporters of and are scripted by Virgin Media.
I now understand that no matter how helpful and friendly the customer service agent is the IT department are the real controllers of customer experience.
I will post this elsewhere too ... "My warning to any existing Virgin Media customer relying on their longstanding @virginmedia.com email address is to switch provider now because Virgin Media are actively discouraging email use by a total lack of support"
After speaking twice to customer service who confirmed that the email had been locked and raising IT tickets that were not responded to I made a complaint using the formal procedure.
Although it took some time to get a response from the complaints team they came back saying that the main email account wasn't locked (despite the on screen messages and customer agents saying that it was) The complaint team email gave a much clearer explanation of how to deal with their new ID and email system. It was a plain english explanation that I have now managed to follow. It's not a particularly easy process though.
The bottom line here is still the same ... email is not a service that VM want to support going forward.
Hi Steve, did you manage to get back into your email? My severely disabled father is experiencing the exact same issue. All of his data involving his care is in his blueyonder email account. We have been fighting with virgin for 2 weeks but no luck!
Sorry to hear that your father has been unable to access their email.
Are you please able to advise what is happening on their side? Do they see any error messages or codes at all?
If not done already, they will need to register for a Virgin Media O2 ID by following the steps here:
Until a Virgin Media O2 ID is created, you may find that they're unable to access their emails and apps that use the Virgin Media sign-in details to access. More information on Virgin Media O2 ID can be found here.
