Deactivated account

[Lexy_gill]

Hello.

My mum's NTL email account was deactivated last week without warning. 

Apparently this is due to her no longer being a Virgin Media customer and is normal protocol 90 days after account cancellation (She left Virgin Media 4 years ago). 

She has no access to the account so cannot access important information which is causing her a great deal of stress. 

I've been told a locked account can be recovered but not a deleted account so we're trying to find out which hers is. 

Any help or advice in this situation would be hugely appreciated. 

[coenoby]

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@Lexy_gill wrote:

Any help or advice in this situation would be hugely appreciated. 

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Your can get a good indication of that by entering your mum's ntlworld email address as the username here; https://my.virginmedia.com/forgot-details/password 

1) If it comes up with an error message that the username cannot be found, or it simply flashes back to a blank screen that means the account has been deleted.

You can double check that by sending a test email to her ntlworld address and seeing if you get an error message back saying the username does not exist. If you haven't had an error message back after say 5 minutes, 10 at the most, it means the mailbox does still exist but it might be inaccessible.

2) However, if the forgotten password screen accepts the username / email address it will prompt you for some security information. If you can answer that correctly you can then reset the password. That should enable you to access the account.

Just a warning that VM's password rules are very limiting. The password must be between 8 and 10 characters, start with a letter and must contain at least one number. Upper and lower case letters are allowed but you cannot have any special characters such as @ or *.

I hope that's helpful

Coenoby

[Lexy_gill]

Thank you so much for your reply. 

I've sent emails to the address and nothing has bounced back yet which gives me hope. 

I'll try the link that you sent to me now. 

The next problem would be getting someone to reinstate it if it is accessible as many of the people mum has spoken to have been quite unhelpful. 

[coenoby]

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@Lexy_gill wrote:

The next problem would be getting someone to reinstate it if it is accessible as many of the people mum has spoken to have been quite unhelpful. 

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Your best bet is to get your mum signed up for this forum and wait until one of the Forum Team (VM employees who support this forum) catches up with this thread. They will contact you via this forum thread - I think it will be more straightforward if they can communicate with your mum because there are Date Privacy issues to consider. In other words they have a legal requirement to determine that it is the VM account holder they are communicating with before they do anything with the email account.

I cannot guarantee that the Forum team will be able to help you but in my opinion they will be more sympathetic and understanding than the 150 agents. 😉 

Coenoby

[Lexy_gill]

The problem there is you need an active email address to access/activate this forum and she doesn't have one at the moment for obvious reasons. I heard there was a narrow window of opportunity to get something reactivated so wanted to get a post out asap. 

I'll get a new one set up for her and get her signed up on here.  

Thank you for your advice it's so much appreciated. 

[coenoby]

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@Lexy_gill wrote:

I'll get a new one set up for her and get her signed up on here.  

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The new email account for you mum to use on the forum does not have to be a VM email address if that makes it any easier.

Coenoby

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Alternatively you could choose to set up a new account with a provider like gmail or yahoo or Outlook. None of these are tied to an ISP like Virgin, so this problem won't happen again.  And you will only need the password if you ever need to access it for her.

[Lexy_gill]

Thank you.

We'll get something set up.

And hopefully you're right. The phone staff haven't been sympathetic at all my mum was in tears when she got off the phone yesterday just bamboozled with it all. It's knocked what little tech confidence she had. 

In all honestly, it's been eye opening for us all as none of us were aware an email account/address was something that could be removed in such a way. I think we'll all be getting new email accounts now. 

[coenoby]

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@Lexy_gill wrote:

I think we'll all be getting new email accounts now. 

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Yes, you definitely need to I'm afraid.  The Forum Team may well be able to allow your mum to regain access to the email account but,even if they can, it will be closed finally at some point. Best to move over sooner rather than later.

Coenoby

[Lexy_gill]

I'm sorry to bother you but you seem to know a lot about how this works and I've not heard anything from the forum team and just wondered if I should expect to or just hope to?