Email Disconected

[ValleyLad]

Having been a Virgin Medai customer since it was C&W, I ended my account for broadband and TV in April 2021 as we moved house to area with no provision. I spoke to the retention team and told them I would be moving back in 18 months and would pickup thair service again as it was always very good.

On Friday my email account was shut down. After 2 hours on the phone to support I am told that accounts are shut down after 90 days of ending subscription. This is the first I have heard of this and, as you would expect, is causing me major problems. I am having to use my work email account.

Does anyone know if you can get reconnected?

It is obviously having me rethink going back to Virgin when I move back to where there is a serivce

[Kain_W]

Hi ValleyLad,

Thanks for posting and welcome back to the community!

Unfortunately as the previous account would've been disconnected for 90 + days, any email addresses that were not transferred to a current Virgin account would be deactivated.

If you were to take services with us again, you would need to set a new email address back up.

Sorry for the inconvenience,

[ValleyLad]

Do you not think it would be good practice to give notice of the fact that you will be losing an email account you have had for 20 years?

I completely understand that you would lose an email account if you are no longer a customer. But as Outlook, Gmail, et al provide free email service I assumed that that was the case here. 

I can't even check if it is in the small print of my contract as I can't access that!

Very bad form. And certainly making me think twice about going back to Virgin media when I move back to an area where I can access the service next year.

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us @ValleyLad.

Yes I agree that we should be warning customers that the accounts are being disconnected and I will be sure to feed this back to the concerned teams but this is in the contract that was agreed with us. Virgin Media do not offer free email service that Google and others provide. This is detailed in your contract and can be found in section D of this page.

Regards,

Steven_L

[ValleyLad]

Steven,

Thank you very much for the reply.

The details in the contract and linked documents are all very laudable, but I signed up 20 plus years ago and who reads the T&C's?

At the time of termination I spoke to actual people as I was interested in retaining the telephone number I had had for 40 years. As I would be moving back to the live next door to my then address and would be taking up with Virgin Media then.

Also someone from the retentions team rang me. It would have thought it would be the top of their list to mention that if you leave you loose your email address.

Or is the fact that you loose your email hidden as this would be a disincentive to sign up. I wonder???

Overall very poor form and will I be signing up when I do move back.................

[Zak_M]

Thank you once again for coming back to us. 

Unfortunately, whilst I can't guarantee that we can get the email address re-activated, I will try my hardest to gain temporary access for you.

I am going to pop you over a PM so that I can get some account information, you can find the PM in the purple envelope on the top right of the screen. 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

[jem101]

@ValleyLad I am absolutely sure that @Zak_M will do whatever he can to regain access to the mailbox for you, however it may well be out of his hands depending on how far the deletion process has got for the mailbox.

The arrangement is that once you leave then 90 days later the mailbox will be deleted, (of course doesn’t always happen to that timescale, but always best to assume that it will), if you were told otherwise ie ‘oh well if you intend to return in 18 months then of course we can keep the mailbox going’, alas that was an out and out lie, the customer services staff have no ability to make such a promise.

Now my advise would be, by all means if you can then sign up to a VM broadband contract, when if works (as it does most of the time), then it’s fine with no issues, but always setup a separate email account with a company not tied to the ISP, so if you leave, you don’t have the same issue.