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Blueyonder - failed authentication - linked emails

doctorx
Joining in

I am trying to help my cousin who has lost access to her Blueyonder email on VM. Failed authentication using IMAP or POP3/SMTP and even trying another email client on a different PC.

Her husband is the primary VM account holder and she has a secondary email account. He has occasionally lost email access and resetting the password usually fixes it.

She cannot reset her email online as it fails to recognise her email as a legitimate VM email.

She has spent a long time with VM support. A variety of excuses were given, some of which were nonsensical. However, a few of the tech support tried hard to sort the problem but the didn't seem to have the system access or technical knowledge.

Her situation is unusual. Her working email is in the form john.smith@blueyonder.co.uk This does not appear as secondary email on the VM account. However, there is an entry j.smith@blueyonder.co.uk which she has never used for email. VM can't find the john.smith@blueyonder.co.uk form on their system either.

At one point, VM said they had succeeded in changing the john.smith@blueyonder.co.uk password but it seems they changed the password for j.smith@blueyonder.co.uk. Using this combination, allowed her to log on to the VM portal but not to see any emails.

The impression we were given is that the j.smith@blueyonder.co.uk and john.smith@blueyonder.co.uk emails are linked somehow,  and she receives her email routed through one of the accounts. It isn't something she would know how to do and must have been done by VM or Blueyonder for some reason.

II have run out of suggestions. She is naturally very upset. Surely this is something that could be easily fixed by the backroom tech staff at VM?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Graham_A
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

The normal advice for that message is to change the password and wait an hour to see if the account unlocks.  However as you say that has already been done I think it is best to get the VM Forum Team involved.  They have a better understanding of email issues than the telephone support people.

They should respond here in a day or so.

________________________________
Graham

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media, I'm a VM customer. There are no guarantees that my advice will work. Please read the FAQs
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See where this Helpful Answer was posted

15 REPLIES 15

Graham_A
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

The most likely explanation is that the john.smith address in an alias of the j.smith address.  Back in the blueyonder days it was possible to create aliases in this way.  The alias address uses the same password and mailbox as the address of which it is an alias.  The alias address would not appear as a separate email when looking at the email accounts listed in the My Virgin Media account.

If you access VM webmail  https://mail.virginmedia.com/ using the j.smith email address and password can the emails to john.smith be found?

________________________________
Graham

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media, I'm a VM customer. There are no guarantees that my advice will work. Please read the FAQs
Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

Thank you for your quick reply. I get this '

Your Virgin Media Mail account is currently unavailable

This is either because your Virgin Media Mail account is locked, or because you don’t have an active account with us anymore.etc etc

Graham_A
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

The normal advice for that message is to change the password and wait an hour to see if the account unlocks.  However as you say that has already been done I think it is best to get the VM Forum Team involved.  They have a better understanding of email issues than the telephone support people.

They should respond here in a day or so.

________________________________
Graham

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media, I'm a VM customer. There are no guarantees that my advice will work. Please read the FAQs
Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

Carley_S
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi @doctorx 

Welcome to the community forums 

Sorry to hear that your cousin has lost access to their email. 

Just to confirm, do you know if they've set up an App Password directly in their My Virgin Media? This might stop access to any 3rd party/secondary mailboxes. 

If this is not the case, we will need the account holder to post so we can support further and to be able to discuss the account. 

Here to help 🙂
Virgin Media Forums Agent
Carley

They wouldn't know how to do that. I will get them to post something. I guess you mean the main account holder not the secondary email holder?

Graham_A
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@doctorx Yes, it will need to be the account holder.  Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier.

I didn't suggest setting up an app password yet as the account will need to be unlocked first.  An app password will be needed to access the email address via an email app such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

________________________________
Graham

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media, I'm a VM customer. There are no guarantees that my advice will work. Please read the FAQs
Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

Hi Carley_S. I am the account holder. If you can help us with this we would be so grateful.

Thank you Graham for getting involved. We have been going round in circles.

Natalie_L
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi foodie, 

Thank you for reaching out to us here on the Community, we would be happy to do all we can to help. 

I will just need to take some details for the account so I am going to pop you over a private message now. This will be available via the red bar at the top of the page. 

Speak soon, 

 

Nat