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.