Email account unavailable, authentication problems.

[br1anstorm]

I'm unable to access my virgin.net email account.  A quick check on the forum suggests that many others are having the same problem.  A few have apparently found solutions "thanks to the forum" but don't explain exactly how things were sorted.  Hence this call for help.

I have had a virgin.net email account for decades.  It is my main account.  I normally access it via Thunderbird on a Linux system (which incidentally means the risk of malware etc is minimal).

For the past two days Thunderbird has been unable to log in to the account.  So I have been unable to send or receive messages.  I get error message popup notifications that "Sending of password for user xxxxxxxxx@virgin.net did not succeed. Mail server pop3.virginmedia.com responded: [AUTH] Authentication failed..."  and then "...Login to server pop3.virginmedia.com with username xxxxxxxxxxx@virgin.net failed..." with an button option to enter a new password.

Before messing around with passwords, I have separately tried to log in to my account via the Virgin Media webmail login page, using my Firefox browser.  That is also unsuccessful.  I get to the 'Welcome to My Virgin Media' webpage with the two button options to Sign In or Register.  The Sign In button takes me to a page which says "Welcome back Brian" (which implies I am logged in);  but when i click on the Virgin media mail button I get a page announcing that "Your Mailbox is not available at the moment" and suggesting that I try later, that my account may have been locked, and/or that I re-set my password by going to the Sign-In page and clicking on the 'Forgotten your email or password'  option.  But this puts me into an endless loop, because on the Sign In page there is no forgotten password option, it just takes me round the same route again.

Hence, in desperation, this message on the forum to seek advice and help in getting back into my account.

[Graham_A]

Looking back through your thread from January you confirmed that you no longer have a Virgin Media broadband account.  Therefore I suspect that the orphaned email address has finally been deleted by VM.

A member of the VM Forum Team staff should be able to check this for you when they reach this thread.

You should find the Forgotten password link here: 

https://www.virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media/forgotten-details/password

[jpeg1]

Surely, after all the discussion and advice back in January, you would by now have migrated to a new permanent email account? 

[br1anstorm]

Thanks to both for those comments.  I was indeed aware that there was always a possibility that Virgin might unilaterally decide to delete this "legacy" email account.  If this was planned, I would have expected some notice.  January was almost a year ago.  I have made contingency plans, and I have other email accounts. 

But I would have wanted, and expected, some warning if my Virgin account was to be closed - not simply a sudden pulling of the plug.  As this has been and effectively still is my main account, such notice would be not only a courtesy, but would give me the opportunity then to "migrate", inform all my contacts and amend all my lists.  Especially now, as I send and receive many once-a-year Christmas messages to friends worldwide who still only have my virgin email address, I would have expected Virgin to give me warning.

If indeed Virgin has decided to close my account, I would request (a) formal confirmation of the decision, and (b) a period of grace, or notice, to organise the necessary change.  Can a member of Virgin staff be persuaded to look at this?

[Graham_A]

@br1anstorm  The VM staff will respond when they reach this thread late tomorrow.

Did you try the forgotten password link that I posted?

[br1anstorm]

Thanks Graham.  I have just been to that linked page, and followed the instructions to set a new password. 

I made three attempts, each time creating a new password which was accepted as moderate or strong and met the password requirements. 

But when I hit "Confirm" , in each case I got a popup message which said "You can't use that password.  Please choose another".  No explanation of what was wrong with my choice.  Do I have to keep trying random new passwords, and if so how many times?

[br1anstorm]

Quick update.  I have now made six attempts to reset my password, each time using a strong combination of letters, numbers and characters.  Every attempt is rejected with the same message "You can't use that password.  please choose another".  This is not very encouraging....

[Graham_A]

There seems to be a bug that says that the chosen password hasn't been accepted when in fact it has.  Have you tried accessing the email account with the new password despite the message?

Even if it does work you really do need to take this as the last chance to save any emails you want to keep to an offline storage, along with your contact details.

[br1anstorm]

Thanks again, @Graham_A.    I do appreciate your support, and that bit of lateral thinking!  But it is hard to know how to proceed when the Virgin Media password reset page has a bug which prevents me from doing so! 

If the problem is at the Virgin end, it seems a bit illogical to expect me to figure out a solution or workaround.  I'm game to try what you suggest.  But now that I have tried half-a-dozen alternative new password variations, all of which have it seems been [incorrectly] rejected because of a bug, which one do I now try to use to log in - the first...  or the last... of my proposed alternatives?

I am very willing, once I regain access to my account, to tackle the gargantuan task of sorting and saving the emails and the even more daunting task of notifying all my contacts, built up over 20 years, that my email address has to change.  But it seems only reasonable for Virgin to give me enough notice, and enough time, to do this and to enable access for a defined period to make it possible to do so.

[br1anstorm]

And again, a further sitrep.  As suggested by @Graham_A, I reset my password and despite the popup "bug" which told me I could not use it and to choose another, I then tried to login using that new password.  Didn't work.

So I am no further forward.  Hard not to feel a growing sense of frustration.  I hope that tomorrow a way might be offered to resolve this problem sensibly and reasonably.