{Security} - Unable to Change passwords within accounts for primary or secondary emails

[th3steg]

I have an issue with both primary and secondary email accounts.

I am unable to set a password on either account to anything I want to use, unless I call VM customer support and they do it for me.

Now this has not always been the case, I have freely, and routinely been able to reset passwords within my accounts, but since the "hiccup" VM/O2 suffered with emails not so long about this has been a reality.

This is the issue,  If I log in with my known account, go to accounts, and click edit to change my password, I see the following:  "Verify it’s you First, we need you to change your sign in email address to one that isn't from Virgin Media. Then, when we send you a verification code in the next step, you'll able to access it from your alternative email address."

Clicking this takes me back to the main screen and the only option is to click "Edit" which in turn takes me back to the above, this is just a round-robin error, I can't get out of that loop.

If I try and change my security information, IE, "Password recovery question" by clicking Edit I also get taken to the above message and we start again in the loop.

If I go back to the start and click forgot password I am told " You can’t reset your password online right now, as you don’t have additional details set up on your account. To reset your password, please contact us  and one of our team will help you."

So, I am unable to change my passwords or update my security information and right now my only option is to call VM and tell them the password I want to use, which I have done, and they could not figure out the issue and said some one will look in to this.

Its been a couple of days now and I am now more concerned, that I can not change my passwords and the only password I can use is one that has been set by VM customer services which is less than ideal considering its a personal account.

So any ideas from the community support on this on what my next steps should/could be?

[Robert_P]

Thanks th3steg, Akua will pick this up as soon as possible 🙂

Rob

[用心棒]

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@th3steg wrote:

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Sadly,  I have followed the advice from 用心棒, and no disrespect to you as I am sure they may work for some, but this has now locked me out of my email entirely and I can not get my VirginMedia.com address back since changing it to an alternative for the MFA.
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I am really sorry to read that. Can I just confirm that when signing into My Virgin Media you use the:

• newly changed email address, i.e. if the sign in email address was changed from richard.branson@virginmedia.com  to richard.branson@example.com then:
  1) sign in using richard.branson@example.com
  2) with the password previously used with richard.branson@virginmedia.com unless you have changed it

[th3steg]

Thanks for your reply,  the newer issue is now 

Since change my virginmedia email to an external email for the verification  I can not change it back, that's the problem now,  I get the following

"Sorry, you can’t change your sign in details to a @virginmedia.com email address, please choose a different email."

[Graham_A · Accepted solution]

@th3steg That is how it works now.  You need to use the third party email address as the username to sign into your Virgin Media email address.  Changing the username does not alter the underlying VM email address so there is no need for you to try changing the username back to the VM address.

It is all rather confusing but that is the way that VM have chosen to implement a two factor authentication system.

[th3steg]

Thank you, Graham,   not going to lie this is a ridiculous way to carry out MFA,  surely adding a number or authentication app link would have been the better way of doing this.

It's leaving customers with a risk of losing access to VM accounts if they lose access to the other email address for any reason.

It all makes sense now, and why VM customer services over the phone could not have picked this up is beyond me,  thank you all in this thread, both VM staff and support people for your help on this.  

[Marcus72]

Hi, can I please ask what the actual solution was here?  I'm trying to help my elderly father with a Virgin email password reset and I'm getting caught in the same "loop" mentioned above. We still have access to his account via my Chromebook (password remembered from cache?) but he is unable to log on using his PC as he doesn't remember the password. On my Chromebook, whilst logged into the account, I am trying to add my email address when prompted to change to a non-Virgin one for logging in, but all I see is the message below. I was expecting to receive some kind of link to follow but we haven't received anything to either email address and it's been 24 hours now?  How do we proceed from here?  And how can it be so difficult to reset a password?!  Thanks :0)

[th3steg]

Hi Marcus72,

Its madness to say the least this idea of multi-authentication with 3rd party email taking over the initial logins for VM.

For your scenario, Check your junk mail on the other email that you've changed over to as this was my case that all emails to my other email went to the Junk for the password resets and password changes initially. 

The steps I took where as follows.

1. - Change email to a non-VM account - logged into none VM account, - Junk Mail - click link to authorise.

2.  Asked VM to change my password - this was then sent to the non-VM email - Junk - Changed password

3 - Back at VM login screen - Entered non-VM email address and new password and this was then linked to my existing VM email address.

Its a crazy method deployed by VM in my honest opinion, and does not make it clear the process whilst we as customers are left to figure it out.

There are much better and more robust ways to deal with MFA/OF2 to be honest VM's setup looks like its because of potential limitations in their email solution.

[th3steg]

Also meant to say there is about a 5-10 min delay on emails coming through from VM to your non-VM email address

[Matthew_ML]

Thank you for reaching back out and I am sorry to hear this, did the above advice help at all? Cheers 

[Marcus72]

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately I have now tried adding two different (non-Virgin) email addresses to the account and neither of them has received an email to then confirm the change. I've checked junk mail folders in both of them. Nothing. In the meantime my dad managed to get through to someone on the phone who was able to set a password for him but he's a bit unclear how long this will be valid for.  So we do have access to the account at the moment but I fear it's only a matter of time before one or both of the devices are logged out and we'll have to make another phone call.