Unable to access POP or IMAP

[nigelpt]

Having been a customer since NTL days, I have been using my principal NTLWorld email account constantly for decades.

Outlook is the master client running on a Windoze 10 PC with many email addresses from different providers including my own domains. The system polls all email accounts every 5 minutes and in recent weeks I have been getting an occasional pop-up which indicates the NTLWorld.com account isn't permitting access. This usually resolves itself but over the past 2 days, this particular email account just refuses to allow POP or IMAP access.

Long story short, I deleted the local Outlook account and tried oh so many times, to create a new account to connect but it refuses to connect. I get an Outlook-generated pop-up saying "We couldn't logon to the incoming (POP) server. Pease check your email address and password and try again."

Some info:    

• IMAP and POP3 won't work
• Tried setting up with Thunderbird - won't work either. Similar error notice.
• Webmail access does work - very odd.
• Setting up several of my seldom-used NTLWorld accounts in Outlook works like a dream!
• Even more irritating, this particular email address is the master for the VirginMedia broadband account!

So the question is - has the access for POP/IMAP been turned off for this particular account at the VirginMedia Mothership? I cannot find any method of manually turning it off and back on [like Gmail]. Perhaps it needs resetting on the server?

Any guidance as to how the get this resolved will be greatly appreciated!

[Graham_A · Accepted solution]

Having deleted the account from Outlook and attempted to re add it may have triggered the recent VM security change that requires a generated app password to be used with email clients.  The generated password is created via the My Virgin Media account for the email address concerned in account settings> account details. Generated passwords are in the format horse-moose-pony-dog,

You can read full instructions in the Add email to a device section of this help page:

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/manage-email-account

[nigelpt]

Aha!   Thank you that excellent pointer. I shall have a try!

Cheers for now,

[nigelpt]

Result! 

Sincere thanks, Graham - I should have asked 8 hours ago!

[Graham_A]

@jmpaul unfortunately I think that fault is not connected to the subject of this thread.

[nigelpt]

I have an added problem related to the strange 4 word password evocation.

I visited an old account to wake it up for use via Outlook and true enough, I was required to create a password for external client access.  This was not a problem but it required me to "change my access email address to a non-Virgin address" for the exercise. I presumed this was to ensure access if it went wrong.

Anyway, all done and I decided to return to the email account but soon discovered that I can only access using the new email [actually a Gmail address].   After searching for 'Change email address', I went to the account and my attempt to revert to the 'xxx@ntlworld.com' was not possible.   Is there a logical reason for this? 

[Graham_A]

@nigelpt  The reason is that VM now require all account usernames to be a third party email address.  This is all explained in the following article: https://www.virginmedia.com/dpb/help/change-my-virgin-media-email-address

[nigelpt]

Thank Graham,

You are obviously very up to speed on these matters!

However, the information on the page that you kindly shared does not explain the logic behind why this is happening. It mentions '..for security reasons..' which implies their security is suspect , they question their competence to manage it, or that they are just offloading to Gmail and minimising their duties - I suspect the latter.  There is also an irritating expectation to 'place the burden of work' upon their Customers, by requiring them to dance to the corporate tune and set up loads of free accounts elsewhere. This latter action will make people think "Why not just use the new account and not bother with the NTLWorld one that I am paying for!"   This sounds to me, that Virgin want the revenue but not have all the faff with providing a service.

There is another element of irritation. Imagine that I have a single Gmail account - how does one access say, 10 remaining NTLWorld accounts.

As mentioned I have been with NTL/Virgin since God wore short trousers and am beginning to feel grossly abused. The concept of respecting Customer loyalty seems to be a source of much merriment amongst the people I speak to at Virgin, having suffered unreasonable price hikes and managed eventually to have my monthly charge of £35 for a miserable 100Mb frozen for some years but see that everyone else around me enjoying considerably faster speeds for a lot less per month. I suspect they will try it on again soon but I shall walk.

I appreciate that you are a VM Customer and please don't consider any of the above to be aimed at you for I and I am sure many, really appreciate your kind guidance and wisdom !  I only hope that the individuals in VM might stray across this and have the grace to spend a moment considering their stance.

[Graham_A]

VM are not offloading anything onto Gmail.  Third party usernames can be on any domain, free or otherwise.  Changing the username doesn't minimise VM's duties as they continue to manage and maintain the underlying ntlword email addresses along with virginmedia.com, blueyonder.co.uk and virgin.net for customers who have a VM broadband account that was in place before May 2022.

Since May 2022 no new customers have been able to open VM email accounts, nor can existing customers add new ones.

As I understand it the 'logic' behind the security change is so that verification codes to change passwords are sent to the verified third party address and not the VM email address.

[nigelpt]

Not quite sure "VM are offloading anything onto Gmail."   - VM are offloading everything or they are not offloading anything?      

The reason I mention Gmail is that it said in an email, [very clearly,

---

Hello and welcome to your new and improved Virgin Media Mail!

Virgin Media Mail is an upgrade to your existing ntlworld.com email account and if you're reading this, then you've logged in already. Brilliant!

Your existing email address still works and we have no plans to change that. We hope you'll find Virgin Media Mail much easier to use than your old email account and because we now use Google to provide your service, there are some fantastic new features too!"

---

I also note there are 2 inboxes, one obviously within Gmail but another appearing in the original position - which one should one use or do they have different feature options?