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Orphaned Account - Oct 2021

John_B2021
Tuning in

Hi,

I signed up for a virgin email account when they started and seem to remember it was marketed at the time as an "e-mail address for life" ...and have been using my ....@virgin.net e-mail address ever since, quite happily. I even worked for Virgin for a while.

Then last week .. cut off ... no warning, no offer to upgrade, nothing ... just stopped.

It might have been polite to at least notify me?

No I'm not a VM customer and searching online suspect that it might be tagged as an "orphaned account"

Anyway of getting this back? Sign up for something?

34 REPLIES 34

Having tried to send myself a message to my old ...@virgin.net mailbox ... I do not get a reply saying that this e-mail doesn't exist (or similar) which makes me suspect that it hasn't yet been deleted. Can you confirm please?

 

Hi John_B2021, 

Thanks for coming back to us on this. 

Taking a look at this, there may be one last thing we can try. 

I must stress to you, and other members of the Community who may be having the same issue, if this works, you should use the new access to back up and save all important emails and contacts and move over to a new email address as if the access is blocked again, there will be no getting it back as there is no longer an active account associated with the email address. 

I have sent you a private message regarding this. Just click on the little plum envelope at the top right hand side of the page to access your inbox.

 

Thanks,
 

Kath_F
Forum Team

New around here? Check out the do's and don'ts, in our Community FAQs


Kath, thank you so much for taking the time to look at this again.

I have followed your instructions and yes, were back up and running again.

Relieved and delighted in about equal measure. Thank you is rather an understatement.

I guess my next question is ... is this likely to happen again? I see you have associated my e-mail address with a new customer number so am guessing that my e-mail address is no longer "orphaned" in quite the way it was before?

You made my day ... well week actually! Thanks again

Kind Regards

@John_B2021 good news in getting your email back, it isn’t 100% clear as to what has occurred to get you access again, but I have to reiterate @Kath_F message above, unless you have a current active VM broadband subscription to which the email address is attached, then this mailbox and address is orphaned and absolutely WILL be deleted at some point in the (probably) near future.

In this case, regard it as a ‘stay of execution’ and take the opportunity to move everything to a non VM email address - the next time it is unavailable (and no ‘if’ about it, it absolutely will go at some point), you probably won’t be so fortunate in getting it back.

Of course if you do have an active VM broadband subscription and the address has been associated with it, then my apologies and ignore all of the above.

John

Hi John, 

Thanks for coming back to me and I'm glad I've been able to help on this occasion.

As the account is not connected to an active broadband account, the email could well stop working in an hours time, or it could be a year from now. There really is no telling I'm afraid but we won't be able to gain access to it if it goes again. 

I would absolutely be looking at creating an independent email address as soon as possible and moving things to that. There are a number of free email providers that don't rely on an active internet service that you can use but we're not able to recommend one for you. 

Fingers crossed you have enough time to move everything over. 

Let us know if you have any further issues. 

Thanks,

Kath_F
Forum Team

New around here? Check out the do's and don'ts, in our Community FAQs


Thanks for getting back to me Kath,

Is the only option taking up a "Broadband account"? ... or are there other accounts that could secure it?

Thanks 

... The reason i ask is that having checked ... it seems Virgin Broadband is not available in the region I live.

If there's another option I'd be happy to look at paying for that

Zoie_P
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi John_B2021,

Thanks for your reply. You would need an active broadband Virgin Media account. 

Zoie

Hi Zoe, thanks for the reply ...

yep .. I get that and would be willing to sign up for that ... however it seems that Virgin Broadband is not available in my region.

Any other options?

@John_B2021 l’m afraid the answer is no, there are no other options - you absolutely have to have a VM broadband subscription to use their email addresses.

As this isn’t a possibility for you, short of moving house to a VM area, then you have to work on the basis of the email address being removed permanently at some point in the future with no chance of it being reinstated again, and act accordingly.