Virgin.net emails gone. Still a paying customer. Now involving Communications Ombudsman

I have been using a virgin.net email address for 20 + years without any issues. It was originally linked to an old virgin account. However I have a newer virginmedia account which I've also had for years and the virgin.net email was registered as a second email under this new account together with a new virginmedia email address. The virgin bills were sent to the virgin.net email address. I was accessing this all fine until Sunday 13th July.  However that night I had notification of site maintenance. Learned since that this was the O2 merger and I have not been able to access my emails at virgin.net since. I have tried everything but it initially stated the password was incorrect. I've tried multiple passwords, password resets and have tried the email app password. I had also linked the virginmedia account to a gmail account and have logged in with this but can't see my virgin.net emails. I have contacted customer services multiple times in the last few days and have just been blatantly lied to. They have said I should still be able to see the virgin.net email account when i log onto my virginmedia emails using the gmail account associated with the virginmedia account. I can log on to my virginmedia account and can see my virginmedia.com emails but my virgin.net email has completely GONE. I was told yesterday it would all be sorted within 48 hours and now realise that is another lie, as I sent my virgin.net email a message this evening from a different email account just to check it didn't get rejected and it got bounced straight sent back saying the virgin.net doesn't exist. 20+ years of emails just GONE.  I have had no notice nor any notification that this was going to happen else I would have downloaded them and taken action to download my contacts and swap over bills etc. I have now read multiple cases on here and online about people losing all access to these accounts in the same way. I assume the same has happened to me. I am totally and utterly disgusted and appalled at this. Especially given that I have been a virginmedia customer for years and pay a fortune for the services. Is there any way that the virgin.net email could be temporarily reinstated so that i can at least quickly download my historic and sentimental emails? 

If not, I will be making an immediate  formal complaint to the COMMUNICATION OMBUDSMAN Ombudsman and also calling the ICO in the morning to discuss data protection. This is extremely distressing and I have spent HOURS trying to rectify this in the last week. I get that the emails are not supported to non paying customers but I am still a paying customer and have been for years! Just disgusting customer service from Virgin.