Email accounts locked, mailbox unable, unable to access email account, malware letter

[Jago]

You have switched off my email with this message, when it is YOUR upgrade that is causing this. Your emails go into my spam inbox. My device has no malware or viruses; I have virus protection that scans all the time.  When you locked me out on Monday, I didn't know what you had done, because I cannot receive emails when you have locked them.  You have caused me lost work and incredible, incredible distress. My mental health is crumbling and I felt like slashing my wrists on Monday and Tuesday. And now there's another automated message, locking me out, accusing me of it being my device, when it's your upgrades. Am in tears right now. Cannot bear this. The locking out has messed up my Outlook and it won't let me set it up again, everything is messed up and I cannot speak to anyone.

[Jago]

This keeps happening to me this week and I have lost work and cannot get my Outlook back. It's just happened again.  VM tells me it's my device with malware, which it isn't, because I have internet virus protection which is used and updated. It is in fact a fault caused by VM's upgrade but they won't admit it. It is making me suicidal but there is never anyone to speak to or get help from. I am absolutely desperate, working remotely, and anyway, they don;t have people to answer phones.

[Robert_P · Accepted solution]

Hello Jago,

It's really disappointing to hear of the problems and inconvenience caused by the email account issues you have experienced. 

We're aware of an issue where customers emails account may be locked recently and this may be due to our spam and abuse system being updated. If you find yourself unable to log into your email account, please go to this page to perform a password reset using a completely new and unique password.

Sign in to My Virgin Media, go to My Profile and/or Manage Accounts depending on whether the account concerned is your primary account or an additional one. Select the account concerned and then click on Change to the right of password if a primary account or View/Change then change to the right of password for secondary accounts.

In addition to the password reset, please also perform a full virus scan on all devices where you have used your email address to prevent your email address and IP address from being picked up by our spam and abuse system.

If you have any issues after trying the password reset method, do post in our email board with what you have tried, the error message and a screenshot (omitting personal information) so we can assist further. 

Thanks

Rob

[Jago]

Rob, appreciate you are trying to help with this reply, which is a repetition of the advice given, and which I have already done (on Tuesday). I am being locked out again today because of VM's incompetence or whatever they have done. The issue is that VM keep doing this, blame the customer and in the meantime there is loss of service and time. Where is the accountability? Why do they not tell us when they are upgrading things that will affect us. I have been a customer for 22 years and the service has got worse and worse. But they are the only service with fibre-optic, so no choice if you want high-speed. How many times do you think a customer should have to go through this rigmarole when it is the ISP that is failing? And I am not joking about the impact of these things on people's mental health. Especially after the past 18 months. It is just not funny or acceptable. But thank you for a helpful reply. God forbid that VM would take any responsibility, but leave it to customers to help other customers.

[Travis_M]

Hi @Jago

Thanks for the reply, so after trying the advice above on Tuesday - did you not manage to get back in at all?

Regards

[Jago]

I have been getting the mailbox unavailable for 10 days now. I followed the fixes suggested here and by your extremely patronising social media team.  And why do I have to take to social media to get anywhere? On 28 October I spoke with Andrew, reset passwords three times and then found myself locked out of email and my VM account. I was told someone would ring me within 48 hours. In order to avoid receiving emails that I could not access, I gave my Gmail address. It is now 1 November and I am locked out of everything. It has, needless to say, messed up my Outlook. The last email I received via VM was early Thursday morning. 22 years a customer, so I have a blueyonder.co.uk address. We have the whole package with VM and our loyalty seems to be rewarded with contempt. More to the point, I cannot access anything. When will this be fixed? When will someone 'reach out' to me to tell me what is happening? You have all my details.

[Kath_F]

Hi Jago, 

We're sorry to hear you feel this way. Our team did not mean to cause any offence. There was an issue last week which has since been resolved and all who had the issue, have been able to regain access by following the thread we linked you too. 

I appreciate you have already tried this but if you can change your password on the email account to something new and unique that's not been used before, then wait an hour, this should reset things and allow you to sign in.

Pop back and let us know how things go.
 

[Jago]

Dear Kath,

Thank you for replying. The fixes did not work for me, so I'm very glad for everyone else. I actually got it fixed by someone in your overseas call centres - our UK teams apparently couldn't be bothered to ring me back or try and sort it out, but lovely Barratt clicked a few buttons, like Andrew was supposed to last Thursday.

During the pandemic, lots of people have suffered with their mental health. Including me. Last week was terrible, not least because of the entirely remote and uncaring attitude of Virgin Media. I know they employ humans, but they script out any empathy or humanity. I was in a bad place last week, it was clear to Andrew (no surname, like you have no surname and thus no accountability), who then lied on the screen records, giving you FIVE working days rather than the 48 hours he promised me it would take to fix on the phone. Andrew also PROMISED that someone would ring me up when my account was locked as well as the email which was broken. I am working remotely, without my family, on my own, and was particualrly vulnerable when suddently cut off from the services I pay for and rely on. My Outlook is still stuffed and I cannot get my work email restored at all to Outlook. I shall probably have to pay someone to sort it out. I very much doubt that Virgin will reimburse me for this or the estimated two lost days of work, but as i have pointed out several times, there's never any issue over getting our money on time or sending out bills.

Barratt assured me that this matter was going to be escalated to senior management, because of the lying and unacceptable service in restoring the email. What I found most distressing about this, apart from having to engage with your rude, patronising Social Media team, or holding on the phone for 45 mins, is the way that Virgin Media persistently blames the customer first and foremost: it always has to be our devices, our systems, our fault, when very often it is your own internal teams that mess it up for thousands.  It's the denial and gas-lighting that is really distressing after 18 months of pandemic gas-lighting as well. With no accountability from your senior leadership team at all, all hiding behind customer call centres and executive assistants. Please can you tell me who or what department this might be, so I don't have to waste more time looking up the email of your CEO?

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Jago,

Thank you for coming back to us with an update. I'm really goad to hear that you were able to have this issue resolved by one of our call centre team members. Are you able to access your mailbox okay now?

I'm sorry to hear that this has been your experience with our Social Media team. We did not mean to cause offence, and definitely did not mean to come across negatively. I understand that this situation must have been very frustrating for you and we apologise that the recommended fixes did not help.

I'm more than happy to help you log this incident with us and we can work on resolving this issue together.

In order to discuss this issue and your experience further, I will send you a Private Message. Please keep an eye out for a purple envelope at the top right corner of your Forum page. I will be in touch soon.

Thank you.