One of my email accounts won't sign in

[countyexile]

I am a VM  tv, landline and broadband customer (continuous for 20+ years) and use 2 blueyonder.co.uk  and 1 virginmedia.com email addresses. The server settings for all 3 are IMAP and the same password as my VM login.

This morning I started getting error messages on my main email address (one of the blueyonder  ones) - yet the other 2 email addresses are still working fine.  I access emails through Thunderbird on my Windows 11 desktop and through  Samsung email on my android mobile device.

On the desktop Thunderbird email the error message is "Login to server imap.virginmedia.com with username ...........@blueyonder.co.uk failed" and says to retry or enter new password - but neither work. I also tried it through Windows mail but get a  similar error message.

On the samsung mobile email the error message is " There was a problem signing in to your account. Enter your password again. If you've changed your password recently make sure you enter the new password."   again re-entering the password makes no difference.

If I use the password to sign in to my account at VM or to sign in to my other 2 email addresses it works fine.

If I try to sign into webmail using the problem email address I get a "Your mailbox is not available at the moment" error message.

This problem only started this morning and all three email accounts were working fine up until then

[Sabrina_B]

Hi @countyexile 👋.

Thanks for getting back in touch. We would advise that if you are still having issues with your email address access via the web mail client. The standard process would be to completely remove the account from the web mail platform that you are using and re-add. This does resolve the issue and there has only been a rare few cases where it has not. 

Please could you give this a try and let us know how you get on with it?

Sabrina

[countyexile]

Thanks for your reply.  

I understood that Virgin were no longer allowing new email accounts to be set up. If I delete the account from the Virgin Web Mail platform doesn't that mean I would be unable to re-install it?

If, however, you mean the email client platforms then I have already tried completely uninstalling it from  Thunderbird, from Microsoft Windows email and from Samsung mail but on each occasion when I try to re-install the same error messages come up for each one of them.

[countyexile]

None of the suggestions made so far have worked. I therefore tried scrolling through the many, many posts from others experiencing the same sudden removal of email access for those using 3rd party email host accounts. I came across this suggestion in one of the threads:-

"The issue of no longer being able to access the email accounts via email clients may be because of a recent change Virgin Media have made to email security.  If you change the password for the account in My Virgin Media > account settings > Account details you will not be able to use the new password to access the account via an email client.  Email client access now requires an app specific password which can be generated in the MyVM > Account Settings > Account details > Mailbox app password management."

Tried it and it works! So it appears, as I suspected all along, that the whole issue has arisen because VM changed email security settings but didn't bother to tell customers about it! A lot of time and effort and requests for help on this forum could have been avoided if VM simply told customers it had changed the settings and what could be done to maintain Email client access!!

[Molly_T]

Hi Countyexile 👋 thank you for returning to this thread to keep it updated. 

Sincerest apologies for these issues with your email service. Really pleased to hear that you have been able to get things sorted. Thank you for raising this to our attention! 
You can find more information about managing your email account here 👉 How to manage my email account | Virgin Media Help, particularly via 3rd party email clients via the 'How to set up my Virgin Media email on a device'. 

If you would also like to link the thread you found this on via community this may help other users! Please let us know if there is anything outstanding you need our support with! Wishing you all the best. 🌞

[countyexile]

Hi, Thanks for your reply.  Not sure how to link but it was in this thread https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Login-rejected/td-p/5314886

The advice that worked was given by Graham_A  and I believe he has already informed the community manager in the hope that a prominent notification relating to this can be displayed.

Rob

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us with the update countyexile, I'm glad that the advice from Graham_A has helped to resolve your issues.

Kind Regards,

Steven_L

[JimEngineer]

Hello Country exile - I too had the same totally frustrating issues at about the same time you did. I also found the advice from Graham A and it work first time. But only for my primary email address. The 2 alias addresses are still barred to me. I cant find a way of getting a VM generated password for them (if they need one that is different). Thunderbird for the aliases goes thro the same process you describe. Thunderbird for an unknown reason is now a problem on my Windows 10 - It has been uninstalled and reinstalled. The Windows 10 was uninstalled and then replaced, but Thunderbird still does not function correctly. It all started with a MSoft Tuesday update last December, blue screen in the midst of the update. Countless blue screen events until the reloading of W10. Now only periodic ones - usually on a Tuesday!

I am trialling the use of Mailbird - it is not a free app but the subscription is modest and their real person support is excellent. 
If any member of the Forum Team could assist with accessing my alias emails I would be very grateful.

[coenoby]

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I also found the advice from Graham A and it work first time. But only for my primary email address. The 2 alias addresses are still barred to me. I cant find a way of getting a VM generated password for them  (if they need one that is different).

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Are these problem email accounts actually alias addresses or are they secondary email accounts? Alias addresses were (as far as I am aware) a Blueyonder email option.

Blueyonder alias addresses have the same password as their parent email account because aliases share the same email account as the main address. So if these really are alias addresses and you have changed the password for the parent account their password will effectively already been reset.

However, if they are secondary email accounts, the process to reset the password for a secondary email account is exactly the same as resetting the primary account password. All secondary email accounts now have their own My Virgin Media account.

@Graham_A does explain that in his post:

"Secondary accounts changes now have to be made via the My Virgin Media account for the secondary email.

Sign into the account here: https://www.virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media using the email address concerned and the current password. Once logged in click on Account Settings then Account details. You should now see the options to change password etc".

I hope that helps.

Coenoby