Virgin Media Community

[JoyceHen]

I am unable to access my virgin.net email address since yesterday. I don’t have a virgin account any more as they moved out of my area. I phoned virgin and I got told that talk talk should be able to help but that say they can’t. What now? 

[coenoby]

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@JoyceHen wrote:

I am unable to access my virgin.net email address since yesterday. I don’t have a virgin account any more as they moved out of my area. I phoned virgin and I got told that talk talk should be able to help but that say they can’t. What now? 

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Talk Talk have absolutely nothing to do with the Virgin.net email domain.

The history of the Virgin.net addresses is that they were issued to customers of Virgin's ADSL broadband service. (ADSL uses home telephone lines to transfer data rather than dedicated cable.) Virgin sold that broadband service to TalkTalk in 2014  but Virgin Media took responsibility for supporting the email accounts.

The terms of the move of ADSL service to TalkTalk. were:

a) Virgin.net ADSL customers who transferred their broadband to Talk Talk were allowed to keep their email address for one year, after which Virgin Media should have closed them down.

b) Virgin ADSL customers who transferred over to a Virgin Media fibre broadband account where allowed to keep their virgin.net email addresses for as long as they remained VM customers.

c) Virgin.net ADSL customers who did not, or more likely, could not transfer to Virgin Media fibre broadband should have lost their Virgin.net email accounts 90 days after the closure of their ADSL account.

In reality, many Virgin.net email accounts seem to have been allowed to solder on for years without a VM broadband account as was the case with yours. However, eventually the inevitable happens and they stop working.

You could try resetting the password from here https://my.virginmedia.com/forgot-details/password  Enter your Virgin.net address as the username and follow the prompts.Then leave it about 30minutes before trying to access the account again.

I would be surprised if you can regain access but even if you do you will have to regard that as a very short reprieve before the account disappears for good.

You ask "What now? ".... Well the answer I'm afraid is that you need to open a new email account (if you don't already have one). Use a large email provider, Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.com are the market leaders but there are many others.

One of the Forum Team (VM employees who support this forum) should pick up on your post in the next day or so. However, as you do not have a VM Broadband account they will not be able to help you. However, hopefully they will endorse what I have said in this post.

Sorry I cannot give you better news.😞

Coenoby

[Hayley_S]

Hello @JoyceHen,

Welcome to the community page, thank you for posting on here.

I am sorry about your email not working.

As you do not have an active Virgin Media account anymore we are unable to activate the email. Normally an NTL email address will delete after 90 days when the account with us has been disconnected.

Many thanks,

[Sololobo · Accepted solution]

The same applies to an orphaned virgin.net email address, which is what the OP was asking about.

[JoyceHen]

Thanks Hayley_S

The funny thing is that I can now send mail. Virgin sent me to Talktalk who have sent me back to Virgin. I'm hoping I can find a way in to collect emails from he last few days and then move on. It was such a pity that virgin.net left my part of town and transferred us. I never got a warning this would happen. Hey, it could be worse.. thanks again for replying..

[Gaaz1]

I would like to thank coenoby for this reply to the post. It has been extremely helpful.

Can I first point out unlike the OP, I am a customer of virgin and have been for many years.

2 weeks ago I lost my connection to my virgin.net email, which I have had for many many years and is my main email address, along with my other lesser used virginmedia.com addresses. Thinking this was just a blip in the system leading up to Christmas, I waited a day or 2. I then called the customer care team the evening of the 23rd Dec 2021. 

No problems was the response, we will just reset your password. This did not initially correct the problem on any of my email addresses, I was then told they could do no more and would be passed to the next tier up technical dept , which will take 2 to 3 working days and that they will call me (Not very helpful). As it would in effect be the middle of the following week because of the holidays. I wasn't happy about this but eventually resigned myself to the fact I would have to wait a week for access to a very important address which is linked top many accounts.

By the way there was no mention of the fact that they no longer have control of my virgin.net email address at this stage.

I later checked my virginmedia.com address and it had eventually started working. But my main virgin.net  address still did not work. After not hearing from anyone at virgin for a week, I rang customer service again, only to be told they no longer have access to virgin.net as it was sold years ago to BT or Outreach and I would now have to deal with Talk Talk. Gob smacked I asked to be put through to retentions. Who were also surprised to hear this and found it unbelievable. They put me on hold to speak to technical, only to come back with the same message, although very sorry and fully sympathetic to my situation, they told me I would have to ring Talk Talk as they are the only ones able to control my virgin.net email address. 

Reluctantly I rang Talk Talk who I have no contracts with at all. They were equally puzzled and asked why I was ringing them about a virgin email address. After I told them the lengthy tale and insisted they check and double check, they checked with their top technical to no avail. I again went back to Virgin retentions and repeated the process all over again, with the same answer. I must go back to Talk Talk because although virgin have a record of this old account historically being an ADSL active account in the distant passed, they no longer able to deal with it.  

Finally in despair I Googled my problem, I found this page and coenoby's reply. Something one of the retention guys said about them having no control and the coenoby's reply clicked. Putting 2 and 2 together, I used the link on this post. Reset my password and 'Hey Presto'  10 days of emails came down on to my PC. Happy bunny.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted firstly to thank coenoby and secondly to detail my experience, to hopefully help anyone in the future with the same problem.

1. Why a lot of Virgin staff are not aware of this and keep insisting customers call Talk Talk is beyond me. Along with the embarrassment of ringing Talk Talk with this tail, I felt a right idiot.

2. Why I was at first contact not told that they no longer have control of virgin.net as they start changing passwords has been a complete time waster and very stressful. 10 days without email and 5 hours on the phone to Virgin and Talk Talk later, problem solved and I will be taking further advice from coenoby and will be transferring all my email activity to Microsoft or Google.

Whenever I have thought for a moment about moving away from Virgin, the long used email address has always been a big deciding factor to stay.

Lesson Learnt.

[Zach_R]

Hi @Gaaz1,

I am so sorry to hear of the experience that you've had here regarding your email service and your virgin.net account. Though we no longer supply those email addresses to new customers, we do still manage existing and active email accounts. It's a shame to hear that you'd been advised otherwise.

If there's anything more we can assist you with on this at all, please do let us know.

Thanks,
 

[Gaaz1]

Hi Zach

Thank you for your reply. It has been a very stressful experience.

But I can not understand when you say you still manage these accounts.
Yet several VM staff tell me they can do nothing for me or help in anyway with the virgin.net account and I must call Talk Talk.
If this is the case there must be many customers in the same situation and being given the wrong advice.

[jem101]

@Gaaz1, the issue is that the VM staff who say this, actually aren’t, they are outsourced third party call centre workers, probably on whatever passes for minimum wage in whatever part of the world they are in, in a system with a truly massive turnover in staff and a training system which borders on the non existent!

The Virgin.net dial up internet customers, were indeed transferred to Talk Talk back in 2015/16 but NOT the email addresses themselves or the Virgin.net domain, which is probably where the confusion comes from, but despite many, many claims by the forum team, to ‘feed back’ this and update the call-flows (which is a bit of marketing BS of the highest order), nothing actually happens and the same lies get repeated over and over again.

So here’s a bit of speculation, VM only want to use the world’s cheapest call centre and aren’t actually too bothered about the accuracy of the information being given to their customers. The call centre management are only concerned with number of calls closed per hour, as that’s the only criterion on which they are paid, so the incentive is to outright lie to the customer, get them off the phone and chalk up another successfully closed call. Everyone’s happy, well except for the VM customer, but, honestly who cares about them?

Cynical, me? Surely not!

[Gaaz1]

Thanks for your reply jem101.

Re:- not VM Staff. Would this also apply to the UK based retention department I spoke to twice?

I must admit I was on the call to them for at least an hour on each occasion and they appeared to be concerned, conferring with the technical team on several occasions and kept coming back to me, saying you need to call Talk Talk.

Or is that me being naive and they were just dealing with other calls, having a good laugh on my account?