Have Virgin finall decided that they do not want paying customers?

[craibh]

I have just had to spend a number of months this year, with the invaluable help of Matthew from the Virgin Community Team,working, ulimately successfully, to get Virgin to restore my access to webmail on an address that I have had for something like 30 years, and which Virgin themselves could not work out how to restore- but which it seemed that they had interrupted.I hoped that that restoration meant my wife and I would enjoy a period of peaceful use of our emails .How stupid of me! Last Friday my wife woke up to find that, without any notice or explanation from Virgin to her , her account was unavailable.I tried to get the account working again- but without success.

As a result I went to our local LapTop Doctor who were very helpful .They went through the process of trying to get the account operating again- but without any success.This included trying the method Virgin suggested to restore the account  to working - without anysuccess.

As this was the denial, by Virgin, of access to the second of my addresses in the space of a very short period of time I thought that I could send a Private  Message to the Virgin team who had helped me  on my earlier problem with Virgin, asking for help.However I was swiftly told by the Virgin Team,that doing so was inappropiate!

Does Virgin have any concern about what their customers- paying customers- experience and so think about Virgin?One cannot help wondering if this is just evidence that Virgin do not want email business 

[Graham_A]

@craibh Sorry to read about your continuing issues with the email addresses provided as a free add on to your VM broadband account.

In May 2022 VM took the decision to stop issuing complimentary email accounts to new broadband customers and stopped existing customers from creating new email accounts.  That is a reasonable indication that VM do not see the provision of email as a core feature of their broadband business in common with the majority of internet service providers.  Email is best sourced from ISP independent suppliers. Gmail and Outlook are among the most popular.

[craibh]

Graham,

Many thanks. I have a contract with Virgin - so how can they lawfully cut of part of the service they are contracted to provide?Having said that when I look at the new entries on the Community website, I cannot help but feel that they are just going to behave so badly that they will make us go.

Over the past few years, I have had a lot of help from staff on the Community website; radio silence this time! Is there anything one can realistically do to make Virgin perform? They will lose our TV was well as internet; and I suspect that a lot of neighbours will feel that they should look at moving. With rising prices thrown in Virgin may find that behaving as they have is not a clever thing to do!

[goslow]

It can take the VM forum team several days to get to each topic.

As per Graham_A's advice, the best thing you could do would be to get some third party email addresses set up and start the process of migrating your contacts and services over to those. It can seem like a daunting task but doing a few each day soon builds up until you have managed to free yourself from VM email.

At least spending time moving email accounts should lead to a useful long term outcome. Spending time trying to fix a broken VM email mailbox now will not end in a substantially useful outcome because VM email will never be reliable and it won't be too long before another problem arises.

Once you have your emails moved away from VM, that particular tie to VM is broken. After that, the next time VM causes you further annoyance, you will be able to vote with your feet without any time restrictions of having to close down any VM email mailboxes.

[japitts]

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@craibh wrote:

Many thanks.I have a contract with Virgin - so how can they lawfully cut of part of the service they are contracted to provide?

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Your contract is for provision of broadband internet, telephony &/or TV services. I think you'll struggle to argue with the suggestion that email is provided as a free add-on, and is not part of your contract for services.

As per the other posts in this thread, you really will be better off in the long-run, having your email services provided separately from your internet connection provision.

[Carley_S]

Hi @craibh 

Welcome to the community forums 

Sorry to hear that your wife now also has some issues with their mailbox, we can assure you that this is not the level of service we aim to provide. 

You wouldn't be able to raise another issue over a private message with an agent that was handling another query. This would be classed as an unsolicited private message which goes against community rules.

We can help further here on this new issue for you. 

Can you advise how they access their emails is this through our webmail or a client such as Gmail or Outlook? 

What error do they see when trying to access their email?

Ensure that your username for your online account is up to date with the new requirement for a non-Virgin Media email. You can find steps to help you manage your account and emails here should you need them. 
How to manage your email account 

How to manage your My VM account