Forum Discussion

gymreject's avatar
gymreject
Joining in
2 years ago

Virgin.net email

Hi,

since 29/06/23 I have lost all my @virgin.net emails. An email account I have used since virgin.net started. When virginmedia.com became the new email address VM set my virgin.net account up so I can maintain access and use of my virgin.net account. This was achieved by virgin maintaining a balance on my virgin.net account.

I have had a virgin & virgin media account continuously throughout the last 20+ years. 

I have lost access to 1000s of emails dated prior to 19/06/23. I received an email dated 19/06/23 from VM customer service sent to my virgin.net account saying there has been a technical issue. (Copy bottom of this post)

I contacted virgin media customer service yesterday to as what is the timeline for my historic emails to be reinstated. Only to be told virginmedia is not responsible for loss of emails and there is no record of my virgin.net account (even though I can connect to it online via virginmedia.com)

they also said that Talk Talk is responsible for my virgin.net email account. I have never had any type of Talk Talk account…this means I have no access for contacting Talk Talk.

what is annoying and making me angry is there is no way of talking to someone at virginmedia who for some reason does not understand (or wants to) my problems, the customer history or the ability to talk to someone in the UK.

under DPA and GDPR rules my data is supposed to be stored in a safe way yet Virgin has clearly breached this rule. Luckily GDPR has teeth when it comes to fining companies who breach data security rules and lose data through security issues or negligence. 

hopefully someone from VM will have the common sense to pass this post to VM’s legal team in light of potential GDPR breaches and loss of customer data.

 

Subject: Important message regarding your Virgin Media email service

Hi,

This is Virgin Media. We are getting in touch with you to provide an update in relation to your Virgin Media email service.

What has happened?

Due to a technical issue, Virgin Media email services were disrupted for most of the day on 19 June. We want to sincerely apologise for the frustration and inconvenience this may have caused you.

While our teams have been able to fully restore most email services, work is still underway to completely resolve the issue for some accounts which includes yours.

What does this mean for me?

You are now able to send and receive emails as you normally would. However, you will have noticed that any emails received on or before 19 June will not be appearing in your inbox, sent items or any other folders.

We want to reassure you that your emails and data are safe and secure; there is currently nothing to suggest your account has been compromised; and that all emails will be fully restored once the relevant system repair has been completed. Any emails sent to you on 19 June when this problem occurred, but not received, will also be delivered to your inbox once this issue has been fully fixed.

For any urgent emails you are waiting to receive, we suggest that you contact the original senders while we move all your backed up data to your mailbox.

What are you doing to fix this?

Our focus now is on working around the clock to ensure your emails are restored as quickly as possible. You do not need to take any further action and we will provide further updates as soon as we can. If you do need further assistance then our customer service teams are on hand to help wherever they can.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Kind regards,
The Virgin Media team
  • Hi gymreject 👋🏼 Thanks for reaching out to us and a warm welcome to the Virgin Media Community Forums. 

    We have now restored the ability to send and receive emails for all affected accounts. Our teams are continuing to work flat out to restore historic emails into the inboxes of a small proportion of accounts. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

    Kind regards,
    Ilyas.

  • Exactly same thing has happened to me! I have had a virgin.net email address for over 30 years. 2 weeks ago I went to login and got a login error. I could not reset my password without entering a new email address so they could send a verification code. I did this but somehow this new address became my default VirginMedia login but it too hit a login error. After hours (and, in fact, days) of working my way through an automated support system setup to only deal with VirginMedia customers/account holders (which I am not), I got into a chat with someone who said they had fixed the issue and I should be able to login to my virgin.net email after 24 hours. This was not true. Still could not login. 

    My virgin.net email account is my main account. I have a backup btinternet.com address which I hardly use. My wife is severely disabled. I receive important emails regarding doctor and hospital appointments for her as well as invoices for her carers; I also receive all my own health and financial related mail to my virgin address. 

    Due to a medical emergency I was unable to pursue the issue for over a week, but when I resumed I hit the same problems - I could not get access to anyone who could help specifically with my virgin.net email access. Eventually I tried going through the same process as before when they said they had fixed it. I was much firmer this time but was finally rebuffed when they said they could no longer help me the virgin.net email domain was not being managed by BT (apparently this happened a couple of months ago!) and I would have to take up the issue with them!

    I was quite angry at this point. How could VirginMedia do such a thing without first informing the virgin.net users? How could it be done without my noticing some change? If VirginMedia no longer wish to support the .net domain then they should at least give users the opportunity to move their data out to gmail or another provider first, not just cut them off. If I cannot get this resolved then I am seriously considering contacting the Ombudsman and also going down the GDPR route.

    Can anyone help? Are there others suffering the same as me?

    • allanwall's avatar
      allanwall
      Tuning in

      Correction:

      'they could no longer help me the virgin.net email domain was not being managed by BT' should read

      'they could no longer help me the virgin.net email domain was now being managed by BT'

      • Matthew_ML's avatar
        Matthew_ML
        Forum Team

        Hey allanwall, thank you for reaching out and I am so sorry to hear you having some email issues, also a warm welcome to the community.

        What error are you getting when you are trying to login? 

        Who has advised this email is now run by BT? 

        Please provide some screenshots of the error cheers 

    • Sololobo's avatar
      Sololobo
      Superstar

      You stated in your original post that you are not a current VM customer/account holder, and therein lies the root of your issue.

      Have a look at this "sticky post" which should explain all you need to know: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Orphan-Email-accounts/td-p/3492073

      I doubt you'll be able to have your email account reinstated to full working order. VM staff may be able to grant you temporary access to back-up your emails and migrate to another email address, but that's a big "maybe"!

  • AK222's avatar
    AK222
    On our wavelength

    I had the exact same issues with my ntlworld.com and virginmedia.com email addresses, around the same time.

    • Ashleigh_C's avatar
      Ashleigh_C
      Forum Team

      Hi there AK222 

      Thank you so much for your post and welcome back to the community forums, it's great to have you back.

      I am so sorry to hear that you are facing this issue with your service and thank you so much again for posting, can I just confirm, do you have an active and current broadband account that this email is linked to?