Email account closed after 30 years!

[30yearoldemail]

Yesterday I found I was locked out of my email account and unable to reset the password.

I assumed I had been hacked, but it turns out that Virgin decided after over 30 years that they no longer want me as a customer!!

My email was originally created as part of a dial-in modem ISP service, back in the days when 56kbps modems were the fastest home internet available!

During that time I've taken out Virgin broadband/TV accounts on at least 2 or 3 occasions at different addresses. So its not like I'm getting something for nothing.

I also would have opened a Virgin account at my new address except its not available here so wasn't an option.

When I finally got to speak to someone in support (which was no small feat as I don't have an active account) I was re-assured its not been hacked but closed due to not being linked to any active account for more than 90 days - kind of a bittersweet pill!

I have to say I'm disappointed. It seems a rather short-sighted business model to try to force customers to stay with them by taking away their email if they ever leave. Most customers like me will likely go round the block and come back to them. But changing an email is like changing an address, not a trivial task. Which in my mind makes taking out an email on a temporary basis pointless when there's so many alternative providers available.

But what I'm really disappointed about is that they didn't even have the good grace to warn me before pulling the plug on the email account so I could backup/migrate to another provider.

So my 30+ year old email account is now gone and this has caused me considerable inconvenience. Virgin support wouldn't even re-instate it just temporarily to allow me to save contacts and emails. Their only solution was to take out a new account on the hope that it may reactivate it.

This is just not good enough Virgin, I won't be returning to you again unless you can sort this!

[DJ_Shadow1966 · Accepted solution]

Hello

I am afraid that under the terms and conditions it does quite clearly state that virginmedia would close your email account after 90 days of leaving as a customer, now even if you start a new contract the problem you will have is that virginmedia no longer give email addresses with account so you will not get it back.

If the email address was originally a virgin.net one when virginmedia sold their dial-up business all customers were sent email saying that the email addresses will be closed down.

Regards Mike

[Andrew-G]

I know some providers (eg Sky) keep ex-customer email accounts live almost indefinitely, but even with Sky there's no guarantee that will continue - there's an ever present risk some small-brained manager will demand "this is costing money we must stop it!".  I would guess VM will have reason to believe that the future benefits of customers returning because they've continued to use their old VM email are lower than the cost of running the service - and I suspect they're correct.  

Mike's reply is correct about the 90 days, but there's another issue, that VM are not permitting new customers to have ISP email (it was deemed a non-core service last year), so that the number of customers continuing to use VM/BY/NTL email addresses is steadily dwindling.  I have good reason to believe this number was well below 100k users out of 5m customers.   And dwindling faster as they slowly catchup with email addresses that are not linked to live email accounts.  Which means that the email service costs are spread across a declining number of customers and the cost per account rises, so eventually (and perhaps not that far away) VM will close the email service for existing customers.  VM can say "no current plans", but it is simple logic about numbers and cost - VM's email services are on Death Row even for existing paying customers.  They'll probably have to allow customers in a fixed term to leave without penalty, but as new customers haven't been able to sign up for a good while now, and the legacy users are declining, it's only a matter of time until the potential customer losses are sufficiently low that they will pull the plug.

So you might have got a year to two's grace, but that's all.  Far better to sort out an alternative.  Free services (gmail, Outlook) are good - until either Google or Microsoft decide that the returns no longer outweigh the cost.  If you use a paid Office subscription, it's probable that the email is more secure and more durable than the gmail offer.  The alternatives are paid services, where at least somebody is making money from email, and so long as they continue to do so, they'll maintain the service.  People think internet stuff is or should be free, unfortunately there's a cost to everything, and unless you are paying, you have no say and may even be the product yourself (as with gmail).  Paid email providers are typically around £2-3 a month for 1-5 email addresses, or you could do what I did, buying a domain* name that includes one or more email addresses (from as little as a tenner a year with a single email address, eg with Ionos).  For that tenner I've setup my own dot com domain that's reasonably customised, so if my name were Alan B Snodgrass, my email would be alan@absnodgrass.com (note, random domain I've checked it doesn't exist).  In my case it's a domain without a website, although if you wanted a website at your domain it's an option.  All the obvious domains of purely surname.com have long since gone, but if you've got a couple of initials to put on the front in the way I've done there's an excellent chance that the domain is available either as a dot com or a dot co dot uk.  That's a whole lot more memorable than being asnodgrass945678903@gmail.com  or something more random still like badgersbottomsussex@gmail.com   Of course, if your name is Dave Smith then it's time to change your name by deed poll...... 

* If not familiar with the term, a domain is anything like virginmedia.com outlook.com smith.co.uk.  For third party email servers, the supplier chooses that.  If you buy your own domain and email, you choose it, subject to the domain not already being taken.

[30yearoldemail]

Thanks for your reply Mike.

> under the terms and conditions it does quite clearly state that virginmedia would close your email account after 90 days of leaving as a customer

But how would they tie the email account to the broadband account as the email account was created many years earlier? So I don't see how they could have linked it in order to apply the 90 days clause. I can see that they could have done a general sweep of email accounts not tied to any broadband accounts and found it that way. But that would be a different thing.

> If the email address was originally a virgin.net one when virginmedia sold their dial-up business all customers were sent email saying that the email addresses will be closed down.

I can confirm that it was a virgin.net domain. When did they sell the business? Its possible they could have sent an email and I missed it. Was it recently?

[Graham_A]

@30yearoldemail Although the gist of the replies so far are correct in that the email address needs to be attached to a current VM broadband account for continued use some of the details are misleading.

The old 'free' dial up access email accounts, including virgin.net relied, on you dialing into a chargeable phone number part of the of the charge went to Virgin to pay for the email access.  This was set out in the terms and conditions at the time. Once dial up access was turned off this effectively ended that contract and should have led to the closure of the email addresses affected unless they were moved to a cable broadband account.

Some of these old dial up accounts were picked up by the old ADSL broadband services that VM and it's predecessor brands ran.  These were sold to Talk Talk in 2015.  However any associated email accounts were retained by VM with users being given the option to move them to a VM broadband account for continued use.  If the user chose to move to Talk Talk they got to keep the email address for a maximum of 12 months, otherwise it would be closed after 90 days.

[30yearoldemail]

Thanks for your detailed response Andrew.

A clue that VM don't intend maintaining emails not connected to an active broadband account is the fact that when you want support you're only options are broadband/tv/phone and mobile. A fact which made getting support complicated as I had to pretend to be a mobile customer, which I am not, in order to get to speak to an adviser. I believe this has been the case for a number of years, and something I should have picked up on. But I guess I expected that they would at least give sufficient warning. If they did send a notice then I indeed must have missed the email (somewhere lost in a sea of spam no doubt), but I have no way of checking now.

> I would guess VM will have reason to believe that the future benefits of customers returning because they've continued to use their old VM email are lower than the cost of running the service

Perhaps that's true. The problem with dangling 'an email account thrown in' as a carrot to signing up is that its only a worthwhile carrot to have if its more or less indefinate. Most people I think would be put off if they realised that the email would be closed if ever they leave. And sometimes the most loyal customers have no choice but to leave, for example if they move to an address where there's no service, such as was the case with me.

This I imagine could be, partly at least, the reason for dwindling take up of new emails. Its a kind of catch-22. One way they could get round this is by only offering it as "free" to paid broadband account holders and if you leave giving the option of keeping the email by paying a small subscription fee.

I didn't realise they had stopped offering email addresses to new customers.

Thanks for the tips regarding options for having your name as part of the domain name. Not something I'm considering at the moment. It seems a little like having a personalised number plate on a car, nice to have but not essential unless your email is used for advertising yourself perhaps.

I've still got two other personal email accounts, so I guess I can live without the VM one. Or I'll be careful to pick a provider that offers semi-indefinate emails. I guess one benefit of having your own domain is that you own it and its less likely it can be taken away by a provider closing or simply changing their business practice.

[30yearoldemail]

Yes that's correct the dial-ups were charged for and when I started using a broadband ISP (not VM) and accessing email via POP3 over that instead of dial-in I started getting emails warning about deactivation unless I continued using dial-in. So every month or so I would make a habit of dialing in, in order to keep the account live. At some point this dropped off and I stopped getting the warning emails. Maybe that coincided with having an actual VM account. The first was NTL (though not sure VM owned it at that point). The details are a little sketchy being it was such a long time ago. But somehow it seemed I always managed to slip through the net, until recently that is.

One thing its taught me is not to trust your data to a 3rd party. I always used to download all emails (in MS Outlook) and store locally in the past, then switched to online at some point to benefit from 'available everywhere'.

Do you think there's anyway they could re-instate it, even if only temporarily?

The support team were most unhelpful and not very well informed it seems.

[Graham_A]

A bit of historical perspective.  NTL and Telewest merged back in 2006 and then merged with Virgin Mobile and took on the virgin.net email domain.  In 2007 they rebranded as Virgin Media via a licence agreement to use the Virgin 'brand'.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telewest

The VM Forum Team staff should pick up on this thread tomorrow and will be able to advise further. However I doubt that they will be able to reinstate temporary access for you. Watch this space for updates.

[Gareth_L]

Hello 30yearoldemail.

Thanks for your first post and welcome to our Community.
Sorry to hear you have lost access to your email account.
I'd like to take a look into this for you, and see if we can at least get temporary access .

I just need to advise you it is highly unlikely it is possible though, But I can try.
If you don't mind, I will need to send you a private message to pass security. 
If you can check the purple envelope top right of your screen that would be great. 
Regards     
Gareth_L
 

[30yearoldemail]

For those curious to know how this ended...

So after my private chat with Gareth_L it transpires that VM have indeed closed the email and removed it from the server, so there is obviously no chance of reinstating it.

The explanation I got was

"We have had a sweep of orphaned email addresses (ones that are still alive but not linked to active services)

In your case the email was missed off the 90 disconnection process when you left.

The Team that deal with this have no way of knowing if they are being used and close them down."

It was missed off the 90 days because it has no connection to the VM account I took out 2-3 years ago. Why would it if I created the email around 1990! Besides the logins were completely different!

The first sentence about "sweep of orphaned email addresses" makes more sense to me.

I don't agree with the last sentence that the team have "no way of knowing". I'm sure they have numerous ways they could check, such as last login date, sent emails. I've worked in IT for over 35 years, I know that's not true. And even if it was they could have flagged it for deletion, and sent a serious of warning emails.

There's another part to this... I also lodged a formal complaint when I contacted the support team.

True to their word I did get a follow up phone call the next week (21st Nov). I picked up the call, but as I was about to go into a meeting couldn't discuss the matter at that time. The caller understood and agreed to call again that afternoon. The call never happened. Then the next day I received this email...

Complaint reference: C-18112280

Hello <my name>,  

Thanks so much for the chat on 22/11/2022. We’re very happy to be able to resolve things for you.

Here’s a quick recap

Your complaint was:
Broadband -> Faults -> Trouble accessing my email

And here’s what we agreed:
Technical -> Technical help provided

We’ve now closed your complaint. Thank you for being so patient with us.

...

Take care now,

The Virgin Media team

The chat on the 22nd never took place! And I never agreed to close the complaint.

This goes much further than just poor service or disregard for customers. This is just plain dishonesty!!