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Virgin Net address has disappeared after 20 years

JWalters
Tuning in

Hi Virgin Media, can you tell me the precise steps to rescue my virgin net email address, which I have had since the late '90s. It's disappeared and in its place I just have a screen telling me to wait an hour. It's been three days...

I gather I might need to sign up for a service, and that's fine. 

The bottom line: I need precise steps to rescue and restore my virgin net email.

Kind Regards

Jeremy

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

BillC45
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

The bad news is – if you do not have a monthly-paid-for Virginmedia Broadband service, - then your address has been identified as an Orphan address and probably scheduled for closure.

To elaborate –

1. You probably signed up for a Virgin.Net address which allowed access to the VM email service over a telephone dial-up connection (using ADSL) some time in the late nineties. The cost of the phone call (to the customer) was split between VM and the telephone service provider – usually BT in most cases.

2. Sometime into the 20’s you probably discovered that any old internet connection could be used to access your VM email service - so you started to use that instead of the dial-up service - which VM finally closed down in 2016 and passed remaining users of that service to Talk Talk.

3. So, who told you that you could use, say a BT service instead of a VM service? It certainly wasn’t VM.

4. Did you consciously ignore the transfer of Virgin.Net users to Talk Talk?

5. At this time, VM should have identified all such customers who did not sign-up for Broadband Cable services and should have terminated them after an agreed time. Some may have been missed – or perhaps ignored the transfer communications.

6. During all this time you obviously failed to read or acknowledge the Terms and Conditions which are clearly available on the VM website and say this -

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terms and Conditions

See -https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/terms-and-conditions-for-fibre-optic-services#broad...

The terms and conditions have always said the below - at Section D6 of the above.

6. Any email address allocated by us to you will at all times belong to us and you may not transfer the address to any person. If this agreement ends, your right to use that email address will also end and you will no longer be able to use the email address, so please make sure you have an alternative email address and let your contacts know of the change, as we cannot do this for you. Please see our acceptable rules policy for more detail on email address usage and our Help and Support page on what happens to your email when you leave us.

And the Acceptable Use Policy at

https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/acceptable-use-policy

says -

Email use

6.5. It is your responsibility to back up the contents of your Virgin Media email account. Upon suspension or termination of services the content may be removed and permanently deleted by Virgin Media without notice.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Forum Team will respond here in due course.

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

39 REPLIES 39

BillC45
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

The bad news is – if you do not have a monthly-paid-for Virginmedia Broadband service, - then your address has been identified as an Orphan address and probably scheduled for closure.

To elaborate –

1. You probably signed up for a Virgin.Net address which allowed access to the VM email service over a telephone dial-up connection (using ADSL) some time in the late nineties. The cost of the phone call (to the customer) was split between VM and the telephone service provider – usually BT in most cases.

2. Sometime into the 20’s you probably discovered that any old internet connection could be used to access your VM email service - so you started to use that instead of the dial-up service - which VM finally closed down in 2016 and passed remaining users of that service to Talk Talk.

3. So, who told you that you could use, say a BT service instead of a VM service? It certainly wasn’t VM.

4. Did you consciously ignore the transfer of Virgin.Net users to Talk Talk?

5. At this time, VM should have identified all such customers who did not sign-up for Broadband Cable services and should have terminated them after an agreed time. Some may have been missed – or perhaps ignored the transfer communications.

6. During all this time you obviously failed to read or acknowledge the Terms and Conditions which are clearly available on the VM website and say this -

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terms and Conditions

See -https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/terms-and-conditions-for-fibre-optic-services#broad...

The terms and conditions have always said the below - at Section D6 of the above.

6. Any email address allocated by us to you will at all times belong to us and you may not transfer the address to any person. If this agreement ends, your right to use that email address will also end and you will no longer be able to use the email address, so please make sure you have an alternative email address and let your contacts know of the change, as we cannot do this for you. Please see our acceptable rules policy for more detail on email address usage and our Help and Support page on what happens to your email when you leave us.

And the Acceptable Use Policy at

https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/acceptable-use-policy

says -

Email use

6.5. It is your responsibility to back up the contents of your Virgin Media email account. Upon suspension or termination of services the content may be removed and permanently deleted by Virgin Media without notice.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Forum Team will respond here in due course.

That's very helpful - thank you.

Buying a Virgin Media package isn't a problem - what I need help with is (a) buying a package and (b) resurrecting my old email address before it gets deleted completely.

Can someone at Virgin Media help me with this?

Thanks again.

Hi Jeremy,

 

Thanks for your post and welcome to the Community Forums, Sorry to hear that you have lost access to your email. What @BillC45 advised is correct that if it is an orphaned email address, then it will not come back as this is something we have been cleaning up and advising everyone about since 2016.  I will send you a private message to confirm your details so we can see wat can be done, if anything.

 

Cheers,

Corey C

JWalters
Tuning in

I've been notified by private message from the Virgin Media Community team that my virgin net email address, which also disappeared on Friday, is not recoverable because Virgin doesn't own the virgin.net address.....words to that effect. 

No; something's got lost in translation, I can assure you that Virgin Media absolutely do own the virgin.net domain.

But this isn't your issue, because you don't have a live VM broadband account, the old mailbox should have been deleted ages ago and probably it's been caught up in a clean up.

Even if it were still alive in some sense, and even if you were to sign up now for a VM broadband account (are you living in a serviced area, ie can you even get VM where you are), I don't believe there is a mechanism for that mailbox or address to be associated with your new account. 

Yes, that's pretty much what I've been told...

Thanks Jem101 for clarifying.

Jez

Hi JWalters, 

Thanks for coming back to us on this. 

I have some further information and have sent you a private message. Just click on the little plum envelope at the top right hand side of the page to access your inbox.

Thanks,

Kath_F
Forum Team

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Thank you Kath for restoring my old inbox.

That's come out of the blue, but I'm grateful.

How long have I got to transfer everything over to a new email account?

Thanks again

Jez

 

Hi @JWalters,

Thank you for the update. I'm glad to hear that has worked.

I would recommend backing up all of your content that you want to keep ASAP.

Thanks,
 


Zach - Forum Team
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