Forum Discussion

baronmccarron's avatar
baronmccarron
Settling in
25 days ago

Repeated Issues With Email

I've been with Virgin since 1998; since when it was NTL. My ntlworld.com suffix email account has a large archive of important emails. Last year, in reply to a query, I was told by an operator that my emails had all been deleted and my account closed. This obviously wasn't true, it just seemed like spitefulness on behalf of the operator ,and another operator and a 2 hour phone call restored them. Now my "ntlworld.com" suffix required me to use a hotmail suffix to access my virgin emails.

A week ago, I received an email full of grammatical errors telling me I would no longer be able to use this means of logging in. The grammatical errors made it look like a hoax email and I reported it to the Virgin O2 phishing email.

It wasn't a hoax and once more I'm locked out. Since then, I've spoken to 3 different operators and done exactly the same thing, each time; each time exhausting another external email's power of proxy.

Once I even tried to set up an alternative o2.com suffixed email on my own and guess what? I got locked out again. Anyone would think that Virgin/O2 want us all to abandon our email accounts. 

I'm persuaded to leave Virgin/O2 entirely

12 Replies

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person

    My ntlworld.com suffix email account has a large archive of important emails

    I hope you have all this securely backed locally?  Once you get access back again I strongly suggest you archive off this mailbox and move to a non ISP tied mail provider. 

    • baronmccarron's avatar
      baronmccarron
      Settling in

      I'm left feeling that providing a reliable email is an expense that o2 wish removed from their balance sheet, and providing a poor service the modern means to achieve this. This is how bus services and train routes get cut

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta

    Regardless of the status of this particular email, an email account is intended for the exchange of messages. It is not intended or provided for "a large archive of important emails", and you should always keep an off-line backup of important data. 

    VM stopped issuing new email addresses several years ago, and have not given any assurance of continuing email indefinitely, only that they have no plans to close it at the moment.

     

    • baronmccarron's avatar
      baronmccarron
      Settling in

      If the service wasn't intended to act as a depository why offer folder systems and archives? Virgin/o2 are running down the service, so that they can turn it off

  • Graham_A's avatar
    Graham_A
    Very Insightful Person

    baronmccarron​

    It wasn't a hoax and once more I'm locked out. Since then, I've spoken to 3 different operators and done exactly the same thing, each time; each time exhausting another external email's power of proxy.

    When you say you are locked out what happens when you follow the information given in the email that you took to be a hoax?  Following the change explained in that email you now need to use the original ntlworld.com email address as the sign in username in place of the third party one.

    • SamJB13's avatar
      SamJB13
      Just browsing

      I have been having the Oops cant do this right now for nearly a month and have spoken to numerous people regarding this and for many hours. I mentioned this email regarding revering back to the original ntlworld email address as the sign in username and they said they were not aware of any email sent and that is not the case and we still need to use third party email as user name?? I am getting no where with the cause of this error and am fed up of being told different things, did you change back to the ntlworld usernames? and did they work?

       

      • baronmccarron's avatar
        baronmccarron
        Settling in

        I'm being asked to use 3rd party email addresses, and still the problem persists. The next time I get access, I plan to archive or save everything that I want and then shut down the account. Whether I stay with VirginO2after that? I'm not decided. Where will they send my bills ;-)

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person

    Because AFAIK mailboxes are not backed up by VM?  They have also stopped giving new customers mailboxes for over 3 years now. Leavers mailboxes are purged after 90 days.  Old non paying users mailboxes are also being purged.  With normal churn of customers the VM mail system is only heading one way IMHO.  Personally I suggest you move elsewhere and use something like Mailstore Home to archive off your old NTL mailboxes.

  •  

    I spoke with an operator whilst composing this reply. Once again, I was told that everything would be lost, but after repeating my story of how I'd been told that before, only for everything to still be there, it seemed that all my emails would still be there, I just to wait for an engineer's ticket 5 working days.

    FYI I've followed all the directions given me by switchboard, and I've been led through by an engineer/back office and still the problem persists. The only working solution, and it isn't practical, is to leave my email logged in,  forever with the temporary password supplied by VO2. That's typically media123 or virgin123 etc

     

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person

    The email you are referring to was indeed sent to a small subset of users, it was not VM wide. I’ve no idea why these particular users were chosen.