Forum Discussion

barden44's avatar
barden44
Joining in
4 years ago
Solved

Leave Virgin Media but keep email accounts

After 25 years of being virgin media via Telewest I’m at the end of my tether with the near constant broadband drop out over the past 4 or 5 months that’s screwing up everything from work meetings, m...
Broadband dropout
Keep email accounts
leave Virgin
  • Graham_A's avatar
    Graham_A
    4 years ago

    Short answer to a long post.  No. 

    A blueyonder email address or any other VM address has to be part of a current VM broadband account to continue operating as per the T&Cs. Once you leave the associated email addresses should be deleted after 90 days.

barden44's avatar
barden44
Joining in
4 years ago

Thanks Graham 

Seems like this is the last digital hold out when we can port and transfer all / most other numbers. I don’t think anyone disputes a storage fee to manage the email account but tying it to a broadband service seems archaic. OFCOM I believe mandated mobile companies had port numbers to other service providers if requested. 

jem101's avatar
jem101
Superstar
4 years ago

barden44 correct about phone numbers but email simply doesn’t and cannot work in the same way. Put simply an email address belongs to and is controlled by whoever owns the domain, ie the bit after the @ sign. Virgin Media own the blueyonder.com domain and hence own all of the email addresses, they simply ‘allow’ you to use one based on certain terms and conditions, ie be a broadband customer. It is just not technically possible to ‘move’ a particular address to another email supplier.

Now, of course, VM could offer a service whereby they keep the address live for a monthly fee, but they have decided not to do this - fair enough, their company, their system, their rules.

The only way that an email address is ever truly yours is to purchase your own domain and email storage and manage and maintain it yourself.