Pop3 email servers pop3.virginmedia.com & pop.virgin.net not working

[rossfletcher]

Hi. Over the past fortnight or so I have received intermittent failures to download my emails into Outlook 2003 under Windows 10. Now, since yesterday (12/6/21) the failure rate is 100%. As well as the recommended pop3.virginmedia.com on my blueyonder email addresees, I have even tried the old pop.virgin.net on my virgin.net email address. I have tried from my android phone using the K9 mail app and my wife has tried her blueyonder address from her iphone. All fail consistently to be authenticated by Virgin Media's servers. I spent the worst Virgin customer service 46 minutes ever yesterday (and that is saying something) with a woman who told me that if Webmail was working that is all Virgin supports and I need to contact Microsoft, Android and Apple as it must be their problem. She even suggested the problem was with the router despite me saying it was the same on the phones when accessing via  the SIM card. She refused to transfer me to a supervisor or to raise a ticket so I asked to be transferred to the Cancellations Dept. This lady was much more helpful and reduced my monthly charge, though if I accept that it is a new 18 month contract and I will have to pay an exit fee after 14 days to cancel, so I need this sorted within 14 days. She transferred me to someone more senior in Customer Service and I thought I was maybe making progress when they cut me off. No-one called me back so I started again, and was told I could not be connected to the person I was last speaking with. Not sure what the new guy was doing as he put me on hold a lot and we hardly spoke before I was cut off again after a further 13 minutes. Will someone from Virgin Media please sort the apparent POP3 server issues - surely I cannot be the only person experiencing them? Thank you.

[NinjaMeerkat]

Use IMAP rather than POP3.

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Email-settings-change/m-p/3369438#M157131

[Graham_A · Accepted solution]

@rossfletcher 

As well as checking your settings against the link posted above make sure  that you do not have 'recent' prefixed to your username in the POP3 settings.

If you do remove it.

[ravenstar68 · Accepted solution]

@NinjaMeerkat - While I'd certainly recommend IMAP over POP3 for all users, if users want to use POP3 they can do so IMHO

@rossfletcher 

To back up what Graham is saying, in the past, when VM used Google's Apps for ISP's Google recommended putting recent: before the username when more than one client was accessing the same POP3 account.  This was a Google specific thing.  When VM started using their own servers, in order to make things easier for users, they used to strip the recent: from the username automatically.

Based on what we've seen on the Forum it looks as though this is no longer happening.

I've manually logged in to pop3.blueyonder.co.uk

+OK Virgin Media server ready.
user <my email address>
+OK
pass <my password>
+OK Logged in.
list
+OK 249 messages:
1 69623
2 97756
..

So we know the server is authenticating perfectly well here.

Check your settings

make sure you are using pop3.virginmedia.com on port 995 with SSL/TLS

Make sure that your username is YOUR FULL email address, e.g. joebloggs@blueyonder.co.uk and that you DON'T prefix it with recent:

Your outgoing server should be smtp.virginmedia.com on port 465 with SSL/TLS

Authentication should be enabled and the username and password are the same as for the incoming server.

Tim

[rossfletcher]

Thank you for all those suggestions. I am quite computer savvy and understand the history of how Virgin deals with pop. I was not aware that Recent: on the front of the email address no longer works (though it did until a few days ago) but removing it was one of the first things I tried to no avail. I too think that if I want to use Pop rather than IMAP then I should be able to. I considered IMAP in he past and may now move to it if Pop is going to be as flaky as many suggest it is compared to IMAP and there are other benefits. Pop actually works better for me on multiple devices as I like  a master copy where I file my emails I want to keep and once read there I set it to remove from the server (Virgin doesn't of course because it's rubbish, but it stops further downloads to other devices). Other devices are all set to leave a copy on the server. That way I can look at a few emails on my phone when I'm out then get them again on the PC for filing, but if I get them on the PC first they don't trouble the phone. I can probably live with IMAP. The angle I need to test is that is that I use an email address on my own domain name and have it simply forward all emails to my blueyonder address. In Pop in Outlook, I just have an email account for the blueyonder and another one for the domain name email address so I can easily SEND emails from the domain name address. Need to ensure there is a way of doing that if I move to IMAP as I won't, I assume, be able to set them both up pointing at the blueyonder address. Maybe set up a dummy blueyonder pop address just for sending from the domain name address? Regarding Ravenstar68 managing to logon, I tried logging on via the curl command in a command prompt using my email address and that failed for me too. Thanks again for your responses so far, much appreciated. If anyone uses a domain name based email address and forwards their emails to their Virgin address like I do, I would be glad to hear how you set this up with IMAP.

[ravenstar68]

Are you able to post the actual curl command you were using (minus the actual login details of course), as well as the output.

Tim

[rossfletcher]

Hi Tim. I am convinced that the first thing I tried when I first had this problem was removing "Recent:" from in front of the email address in the Username field and that it did not fix the problem. I have re-read that advice a few more times this evening and so decided to try it again and it has fixed my problem. That's either inexplicable or, more likely, I did not remove it as I thought I had. One of those where I am convinced I did it, but after a life time working in IT accept I probably messed up! So apologies for wasting yours and others' time, but many thanks for all the help. I shall give some consideration to switching to IMAP now. I'd rather just stick with what I'm used to but I know it makes sense. I'm frankly amazed at the promptness and quality of you guys on the forum which, sadly, I find to be in stark contrast to the quality of Virgin Media's customer service, not just on this occasion. I cannot believe that during 59 minutes of discussion on Saturday, none of the four Virgin people I spoke with mentioned that the "Recent:" prefix no longer works and that the person I had the main conversation with told me Virgin only supports webmail and if Outlook is having a problem I should talk to Microsoft. Anyway, thanks again for your help and patience. Ross.

[ravenstar68]

@rossfletcher 

I don't consider it time wasted.  We all mess up from time to time, and the old adage that "Doctors make the worst patients.", can be applied to any professionals seeking help in their own field - Including IT - 😋 PMSL.

We're genuinely glad that you've got the matter sorted.

Regarding the removal of recent:: it's not something I considered in the first place, recent: is an abomination that was only needed because of the way gmail handles multiple POP3 clients. i.e. Once one client had downloaded mail, even if mail was set to be left on the server, no other clients could see it.

Tim

[rossfletcher]

Kind of you to say so. Thanks again.