No emails for too long

[JulieT6]

I've had a month of intermittent service, unable to send emails, message FORBIDDEN kept appearing on my 3 devices, PC, phone and chromebook. Then 8th December lost emails. 3 hours on phone. Ditto Wed 13th, 1.5 hours on phone.  Ditto 15th, 1 hour.  I was told on the 15th by a very hostile team member that it would take 5 days to recover my emails. Yesterday the 17th I was in despair as I can't function without my emails for travel and other bookings - went onto the chat and within an hour it was fixed. BUT meanwhile I had been previously blackmailed into signing up to gadget rescue under the pretext it was an outlook fault. It wasn't an Outlook fault, it was a Virgin server fault.  My passwords were reset innumerable times and various people insisted my user name was a googlemail address although on the screen in front of me I could see it was ntl.  I've come to the conclusion a caller is getting pot luck with the ability of who answers, there is no accountability whatsoever and calls are passed between people with no one taking ownership.

I have no faith that my emails won't go down again at some crucial moment. No one has rung me to talk about what I have been through with all this, the stress, annoyance, and at 69 years old also the struggle to grasp what I'm being asked to do.

I would certainly expect a phone call and at least a month's refund of what I've paid for non-existent email service and very poor customer service.

[Zach_R]

Hi @JulieT6,

Thank you for your post and welcome back to our community forums. We're here to help.

I'm so sorry to hear that you've had a bit of trouble accessing your email account recently and that you've not had a great experience when discussing this with the team, though I'm glad to hear that this has since been resolved.

As you don't pay for the email account or service with it being provided as a free extra if you have a broadband service with us, we wouldn't provide a credit for any loss of email services. For reference, you can find our credit policy which details what we would provide a credit for, the amount, and when to expect it, by heading here.

As with any provider, I'm afraid that we cannot guarantee a 100% fault-free service. As such, if there is any important information within your emails, I would always recommend saving and storing them elsewhere if possible just in case you need to access them and there's some downtime.

As for signing up to Gadget Rescue, are you still signed up to this? Are you looking to now remove this?

Thanks,
 

[JulieT6]

I can't regard the length of time I was without emails as "a bit of trouble".

I have no idea if I'm signed up to Gadget Rescue, but yes, I would like it removed and any payment taken from me to be refunded as there was nothing wrong with any of my "gadgets" only the Virginmedia server.

I think it's blatant age discrimination that everyone assumes that the entire populuation is tech savvy, I'm 69 and have no idea half the time what people are talking about on the helplines, and when you say I can't rely on my emails and need to store information elsewhere, that's great if I have an IT person travelling with me to help me access bookings for plane, train, hotel, airbnb, codes, passwords, etc, it's very daunting.  I wasn't even able to change passwords because everything defaults to passwords connecting to my ntl email address - which I was unable to access.

[JulieT6]

I can't regard the length of time I was without emails as "a bit of trouble".  Especially when I got the response "FORBIDDEN" across all 3 devices and it was obviously an error on the Virgin Media server.  Why else was it finally so swiftly fixed once I had finally managed to have the situation where someone actually knew what to do to fix it?  

I have no idea if I'm signed up to Gadget Rescue, but yes, I would like it removed and any payment taken from me to be refunded as there was nothing wrong with any of my "gadgets" only the Virginmedia server.

I think it's blatant age discrimination that everyone assumes that the entire population is tech savvy, I'm 69 and have no idea half the time what people are talking about on the helplines, and when you say I can't rely on my emails and need to store information elsewhere, that's great if I have an IT person travelling with me to help me access bookings for plane, train, hotel, airbnb, codes, passwords, etc, it's very daunting.  I wasn't even able to change passwords because everything defaults to passwords connecting to my ntl email address - which I was unable to access.

It's strange that several of the great many people I have been speaking to at Virgin recently said that I would definitely be entitled to recompense for the time I was without emails, for the 6 or 7 hours I had been on the phone struggling to get it put right, and for the inconvenience and frustration I experienced after being a virgin media customer for nearly 30 years. 

[Alex_RM]

Hi JulieT6,

Thanks for posting, we're sorry for the time it took to resolve your email issues. 

Gadget rescue is something we no longer offer, this has been the case since 31st August 2023.

So I can go through a few things with you, I've popped you over a private message.

Alex_Rm

[JulieT6]

If you no longer offer Gadget rescue, then who was the lady I was put through to that made me agree to pay for gadget rescue before she spoke to me?  I'm sure you could easily find a record of all the many conversations with different people I had over that period?  that is even more disturbing to  me now, if you are saying you don't offer it, then who was I speaking to?