Another virgin.net Cancellation Victim

[Sam390]

I am in exactly the same position. Had the identity of my virgin.net for nigh on 30 and have also, for years, had autoforward set up to a Hotmail account as a precaution. Spoke to customer services today and they basically said, your email address is toast, please find someone else to complain to about how this will unavoidably make you ill with stress and ruin your life.

The only thing I can think to do is make an almighty noise begging for a change of heart; petition, march on Whitehall...?

[goslow]

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@Sam390 wrote:

I am in exactly the same position. <snip>

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Are you currently a VM broadband customer? If you are, VM may be able to associate your .net mailbox with your VM broadband account (but it would be best to start your own topic to do this).

If you are not curently a VM broadband customer then your .net mailbox will be due for deletion as per the letter. A possible method to back up the mailbox is described in this past forum topic.

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Backing-up-your-Emails-One-of-many-solutions/m-p/...

[Sam390]

So does that mean those of us who have virgin.net email addresses that go so far back we weren't ever virgin media customers can do nothing whatsoever? That even if we opened a virgin account tomorrow, you wouldn't maintain the email address? Have you accounted for the fact that many of us will have 2 step verifications all over the place using this address? If we forget one in the next few days we'll have money we can't access, sites we can't shop in, subscriptions we can't cancel? Please please, please find a way to accommodate us - so many people have said they'd be prepared to pay - why not consider setting up a way? Please. I am someone who suffers from mental health problems and this is genuinely making me ill with worry. Thanks. 

[goslow · Accepted solution]

A VIP or moderator has placed your last post here, onto your own topic, taken from a post elsewhere on a different topic. You would do best to keep your posts to your own topic here to avoid them getting missed by the VM forum team if tagged on elsewhere. A VM forum team person should reply here within a few days.

A couple of people have asked on here about taking out a VM broadband package to try to move a virgin.net email address to it. See my reply on a different topic as to why, IMHO, this could well turn out to be a waste of time/effort/money for the customer

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Re-Email-from-Virgin-Media-about-closing-my-email-account...

VM seems pretty determined to close down the remaining legacy virgin.net mailboxes and, in all likelihood, your virgin.net mailbox is going to be closed at the end of the 30 day window if you are not currently a VM broadband customer. VM's previous approach was just to delete the mailbox without warning so the 30 days does at least give some window of opportunity to make the necessary changes.

As far as completing a salvage operation before that happens, the link above for Mailstore should help you rescue the contents of the mailbox (but note the need to use an app password to set that up as per below)

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Another-virgin-net-Cancellation-Victim/m-p/5579522#M28053...

Once you have the mailbox backed up, you can start identifying contacts and services you need to move to a new third-party email address (Gmail or Outlook are the obvious choices but there are others too).

You may be able to export contacts from the VM mailbox as below (I no longer have VM email to check if this feature is actually available)

https://mail2.virginmedia.com/appsuite/help/l10n/en_GB/ox.appsuite.user.sect.contacts.manage.export....

When I moved away from VM email around 2010, I began by viewing the inbox and folders for the last year and sorted them by sender name. That gave me a list of recent names/services that needed to be updated. I chose to start with the most important ones such as banking, utilities, medical, insurance, main online shopping sites etc. etc. working my way through to the least important ones. You could also prioritise any that you know required the email address for 2FA.

It's a bit of tedious process but I think I only encountered one financial website where I couldn't make the change online and had to go to a branch to change details.

Doing a certain number each day, the task was completed in a reasonable timeframe after sticking at it.

Hope you manage to resolve the issue one way or another.

[Sam390]

So does that mean those of us who have virgin.net email addresses that go so far back we weren't even virgin media customers to begin with can do nothing whatsoever? That even if we opened a virgin account tomorrow, you wouldn't maintain the email address?

Have you accounted for the fact that many of us will have 2 step verifications all over the place using this address? If we forget one in the next few days we'll have money we can't access, sites we can't shop in, subscriptions we can't cancel?

Please please, please find a way to accommodate us - so many people have said they'd be prepared to pay - why not consider setting up a way? Please. I am someone who suffers from mental health problems and this is genuinely making me ill with worry. Thanks.Sam

[goslow]

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@Sam390 wrote:

So does that mean those of us who have virgin.net email addresses that go so far back we weren't even virgin media customers to begin with can do nothing whatsoever? <snip>

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You may do best to wait for a VM reply on your own/original topic instead of multi-posting the same thing (as multi-posting may possibly reduce your chances of getting useful help by spreading your questions and answers in multiple locations across the forum). While waiting for a VM reply, I would politely suggest you start making some preparations in case you get a reply from VM that your mailbox cannot be kept (which, based on all the other similar topics on here, seems very likely unless you are currently a VM broadband customer).

Edit: Posts now merged

[Sam390]

Apologies all. New here and new to the online community set-up generally. Kept thinking my posts/replies weren't visible or were in the wrong thread or whatever and putting them up again.

You are right, of course, I need to get on and face this but it just keeps feeling too overwhelming to even work out where to start.

[goslow]

I have outlined some suggestions above on how you could approach the task.

Try doing the most important, mission-critical ones first (such as banking, utilities, medical, social media etc.). They are likely to have the most security attached to them and need the existing mailbox working to receive change of email address notifications.

If you get those working on a new email address, it may give you some peace of mind that the important ones are dealt with and some encouragement to do the less important ones. The less important ones may just need you to log in and change the address with no verification so may be easier and less time-critical.