I would like to keep my email address

[Gingerwine]

Hi. I desperately wish to leave Virgin, because my broadband is always down and completely unreliable,  but would like to keep my NTL email address which I have had a long time, way, before I had an account with Virgin.

It was a free account which I attached to my account when I moved house in 2006  

I have had this email address since 2004. I have been advised that regardless of when or how I obtained the email address I must relinquish it when I leave Virgin. 

I understand that other providers are offering a set fee to retain email accounts and did see in the forum somewhere, one person that managed to retain their Virgin email for a mere £5.00 per month.

Did I imagine this? 

Is it completely unreasonable to wish to retain an email address which I have had for so long.

What are they going to do with it- give it to someone with the same name so they can fish about looking to get hold of some old passwords that might prove useful.  I see a security issue here,  but that’s another story  

I need to leave Virgin because this month alone, December 2021, my broadband has collapsed every single day- yes you read that correctly, every day and all they keep telling me when I phone up is to reset it - stick a pen or something in the hole at the back…you may have to do it two or three times to get it to work.  

I can’t take it anymore   Imagine if you had some other appliance that didn’t work and the sales rep said, ‘oh don’t worry, there’s a hole in the back, just stick something in there two or three times, that will get it going..  

Really would appreciate and be more than grateful for some advice

Happy New Year

Gingerwine  

[japitts · Accepted solution]

There's 2 angles from which this can be answered...

Firstly, you've hit on the very reason why relying on ISP-provided freebie email accounts is a bad idea - because it ties you to that ISP. VM provide email accounts as a free-extra with an active broadband account, and in terminating that broadband subscription you (after a period of grace - currently 90days I believe) should expect to lose access to that email.

Whilst I understand you may have had this email account for a long time, I can only refer you the above advice - technically it's not "your" email, but VM's - which they have allowed you to use for as long as you maintain an active broadband subscription. Many people on here will advise you to create a new email account with a provider separate to your ISP - there's free options such as Gmail, hotmail, Outlook or suchlike. At a small cost you can buy your own internet domain and own the use of that for as long as you maintain registration. Whichever way you go, you've broken the link between your ISP & your email account - which you are currently bound by.

Having said all that, and whilst I'd advise you to start making alternate arrangements for your email regardless (so that you're not tied), what are the problems you're having with your broadband? Perhaps by establishing what the issues are, we may be able to get some help for you and VM may be able to investigate. It's your first post on here, so "we" don't know what the problems are... I'll perhaps start by suggesting some basic steps that I would ask of anyone reporting broadband/WiFi problems...

Do they affect both wired & wireless connections equally? That is good evidence of underlying broadband problems, rather than perhaps router issues only affecting wireless.

1: Let's get all your modem stats.. Goto to http://192.168.0.1 (or http://192.168.100.1 - if in modem mode) but don't log in. Click on "router status", and copy & paste the data from each of the tabs.

2: If you haven't already, please setup a Broadband Quality Monitor and post a link to your live graph. It monitors your connection 24/7 and provides excellent diagnosis of any underlying issues.

[jem101]

There is absolutely no possibility of you retaining the email address once you are no longer a VM broadband customer. It is true that some providers have a mechanism where an ex customer can continue using an address for a small fee but alas VM simply do not have that facility and have never offered it.

In theory once you leave the email address should be closed down after 90 days as advised by VM and clearly stated in the Ts and Cs, but in practice this doesn’t always happen on time and the address lingers on for months, sometimes years and the ex customer carries on using it until they get a rude shock one day when it is unceremoniously taken down with no further warning.

As regard the address itself, this is never reused, purely for the reasons you mention.

Email is far more than the address itself, firstly it’s not your address, it belongs and always has done, to VM and their precursor companies, just as any and all .outlook.com email addresses belong to Microsoft, gmail addresses all belong to Google, they just let you use them according to their conditions. The email has to be stored somewhere on VM’s servers, that costs money, they need to handle the traffic in and out, that costs money - they are not going to do all this for free if you are not a customer of their’s.

Since VM have a company policy not to offer an email only service for a nominal sum, which is entirely their choice, then I’m afraid at some point, once you leave, the address itself, the mailbox and all of the mail within it absolutely will be deleted. Your best choice is to find an alternative email provider, ideally one not tied to a particular ISP, set up a forwarder on your existing email and use the time you have while it still works to migrate everything across and notify all of your contacts of the new address.

[coenoby]

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@Gingerwine wrote:

Really would appreciate and be more than grateful for some advice

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Here are my thoughts for what they are worth:

Strangely enough, my experience is the complete opposite of yours.

I have been with Virgin Media for many years and have rarely had any issues with their broadband or TV services and any problems have been sorted straight away. However, I have only ever used their email service for communications from VM, I have never used my Ntlworld address as my main email account.

VM email is what it is.  A very basic free email service that is not high on VM's priority list when it comes to providing improvements or updates.  There are so many better free services provided by email specialists that far surpass VM email in terms of security, reliability and support. Personally I would not even consider paying for it if I left VM.

I suspect that the main reason people want to stick with their old email address is that they are concerned about all the work involved in changing to a new address. Updating all your online accounts and advising all your contacts seems just too much bother.

All I can say is that for many years my main email address was a non VM account that I used for business and social contacts from around 2002 to 2019. When I closed my business down I decided that I had to move on and get a new address.

Over a period of two or three months I worked my way through all my online accounts but that was useful because I realised that I had several that I no longer used or needed.  Similarly with my contacts, there were a few I decided not to tell about my new address.😮

To sum up, I would say if you want to leave VM you should go the whole way and change your email as well. However, I would advise you not to use the "free" email service offered by your new broadband provided.

Start using a non ISP email provider. Gmail and Outlook.com are the market leaders but there are many others, just do a search for "best free email service" and take a look. You can start now and begin the process of updating your onllne accounts to your new address. You will have 90 days from the time you close your VM broadband before your current email address is at risk of closure.

There you go, that's my advice. I'm not sure that's what you wanted to hear but it is based on my experience with email services since the 1990's.

Coenoby