Question regarding Virgin Email Account

[TheFellaLondon]

I have had an email saying that my Virgin Media email account is going to be closed in 15 days. Basically it is saying I no longer have Virgin Media services, so I will lose my email address. I have had this address for approximately 25 years, although I think it was with someone else when it was originally set up - maybe Telewest. I have emails going back over 15 years, and everyone knows my virgin.net email.

I am obviously very concerned about this, and want to keep this email address going, if possible. I note that Virgin Media have merged with O2, and some services are being moved over. I am an O2 customer, and have been for some years - does this mean, in affect, I do have still have Virgin Media services? Does anyone know if that is the case, or if not, is there anyway I can direct any emails sent to my Virgin email address to another email, such as Google? Thanks in advance.

[Graham_A]

By Virgin Media services they mean a VM broadband account.  If you don't have a VM broadband account then the virgin.net email address will be lost.

Any forwarding you set up will only work until the email account is closed.

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

@TheFellaLondon 

Like @Graham_A , I am not a Virgin Media staff member but I have been helping on Email section of this forum for several years so I can give the benefit of that experience.   Sadly, it's not good news I'm afraid.and there a lots of people in the same position as yourself.

"I am an O2 customer, and have been for some years - does this mean, in affect, I do have still have Virgin Media services?"

As far as the VM email service is concerned the answer is no.

To continue using the VM email service you need to be a paying VM broadband customer. That has always been the case but VM have only just started to actively enforce that.

VM actually stopped issuing VM email addresses 2 1/2 years ago and since then new VM broadband customers have not had the option of having a VM email account they have to use their own email account.  So my understanding is that even if you took out a new VM broadband contract it is highly unlikely that you could get your virgin.net address linked to it,

"is there anyway I can direct any emails sent to my Virgin email address to another email?"

You can set up an Autoforward in your virgin.net webmail account but that's not going to solve your problem long term.

It will only work as long as your virgin.net account is live. Once  VM delete your email account it will no longer exist.  so anyone emailing that address will get a non delivery error message back.

(Just for completeness you can set up an Auroforward from your virgin.net account by clicking on the cog symbol top right of the main screen, then clicking on "Email" in the left  hand menu. You will then see a button to set up an Autoforward}

The only real option you have is

1. to get a new non VM email account -  here are some options  https://www.lifewire.com/best-free-email-accounts 
2. Downloading the emails currently in your virgin.net account so that you have them for future reference. Hers is a post that may help you https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Backing-up-your-Emails-One-of-many-solutions 

Sorry I cannot be more positive about your situation. The reality is that your virgin.net email account should have been deleted 90 days after you ceased to be a paying customer. That would have  still caused you problems at the tine but probably not to the same extent as you are currently facing.

Coenoby

[TheFellaLondon]

Thanks for your very detailed and helpful answer. I thought this might be the case, and have already got a gmail account set up that I can start forwarding my Virgin emails to. However, from what you are saying, once I can no longer access my account, the forwarding will no longer work? I assume it is not possible to have some kind of auto reply set up which gives people trying to contact me my new email address?

I will certainly look at downloading my existing emails, but I have been a bit slack with keeping my inbox tidy! I have emails going back to 2009, and am nearly at my 25gb capacity. I will look at doing that now, as I only saw my 15 day reminder from Virgin Media, and only have about 10 days left in which to sort this.

Thanks again for your help, it's appreciated.

[TheFellaLondon]

Hi. I have one further thing to add. When looking for ways of downloading and archiving my VM emails it seems a few people mention Outlook. I have this installed already, and it seems I can import my VM emails. It doesn't seem to have done them all, but maybe there is a limit? I appreciate that once my VM account is closed, any new emails won't start arriving in the Outlook account, but assume all the existing ones that have loaded will remain, therefore providing me with a searchable archive of all the old emails I have been sent? Or at least the ones that have imported.

[Graham_A]

@TheFellaLondon In order to ensure that happens you need to make sure that they are moved to an offline folder within Outlook. These usually have a.pst extension to the file name.  If they are left in an online.ost file they will be deleted when the virgin.net email address is deleted.

This may have changed in later versions of Outlook. Take a look at this page from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/introduction-to-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-222eaf92-a...

[TheFellaLondon]

Thanks Graham_A for the advice. I will check this now, as want to make sure all my emails are saved and backed up!

[Ayisha_B]

Hi @TheFellaLondon 

If you have a current and active broadband service with us, we can look at the possibility of transferring the impacted email address over for you.