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Virgin.net - Mailbox unavailable (Try again in hour etc message)

whizzkid11
Tuning in

Hi Guys,

My @virgin.net  email mailbox has been unavailable as of yesterday evening. I have had this mailbox since 1994 so you can imagine how many places have this as my contact address.

I have had broadband services over the years but due to personal circumstances and availability I don't have a current virgin broadband/phone/tv services etc. I used my 'old/existing email address' to manage my account.

To days some virgin media minion is telling me from India that because i dont have any services with Virgin Media I can't use my email address and that they will put me thourgh to sales so i can buy some services and maybe get my old email address back.

You can imagine how furious I am - I am expecting some VERY urgent emails overnight and now I may not even be able to get them.

Unless VM can fix this asap.... I will spend the rest of the day on social media.

v unhappy!

 

9 REPLIES 9

DJ_Shadow1966
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Hello

What you have been told is correct as per T&C you do not have the rights to use a Virginmedia email address, normally once an account is closed the email address will be deleted 90 days later, with the Virgin.net email address these were supplied to the old dial up service that VM had and when the dial up service was sold off the email address would have remained active for 1 yr this happened back in 2003. I am afraid that all the support staff can do is too make sure that the email address is fully deleted, there is no option to get it activated even for a short period of time.

Regards Mike

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Well, Its been working fine since 1994, and overnight has been disabled without any notice.

Surely that is not acceptable by anyone's standards. I have lots of important emails going there and I don't have any access to it. 

 

DJ_Shadow1966
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Hello

Even on the old dial up account the T&C's did state that if you do not dial in every 90 days you will loose the email address. Have a look at https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Orphan-Email-accounts/td-p/3492073
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Closure-of-former-customer-email-accounts/m-p/4092021

Regards Mike

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I appreciate your research, I use this email mailbox about 50 times a day. As a dial up customer I obviously used regularly enough to still have 27 years on.

The T&Cs have been abided by all this time. My issue right now is I am expecting urgent emails and lots of my services accounts etc are associated with this email address.  It has been disabled/deactivated/unavailable since last night without any previous notification.

My Virgin Media services were associated a different email account not this one as previously mentioned, and my services ended in Feb 2019.  The email address associated with the services was never used and was deactivated after the 90 day period.

Throwing T&Cs at me doesn't really provide me a solution in the current situation. I will be moving all my services elsewhere after this - its its a service issue that's fine but if its been specifically deactivated without any notice that's not good.

Hello whizzkid11

Sadly what you have been advised is true 

I know its bad news but we can only have active email accounts with active services

If you need any more information arounds this the please have a look at this Forums Post 

Gareth_L

 

ravenstar68
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@whizzkid11 wrote:

Well, Its been working fine since 1994, and overnight has been disabled without any notice.

Surely that is not acceptable by anyone's standards. I have lots of important emails going there and I don't have any access to it. 

 


I think you mean 1995.  From what I can see virgin.net wasn't registered before then.

You may not like @DJ_Shadow1966 throwing the T&C's at you, but you accepted them when you signed up for your virgin.net account.  Essentially you were supposed to dial in once every 180 days to keep the account live.  When dial up finally closed in 2013, all email addresses associated with those accounts should have been closed.  180 days after this.

Free email is not free to the provider  When you are on dial up, VM recouped the cost through the money you spent on the phone connected to the net.  Similarly for those with broadband accounts, the cost of the free email is offset via the fees paid to keep the account running.

Were you only using webmail or were you using email programs?

Tim

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I was using Outlook IMAP, and also the webmail via mail.virgin.net

I am fine with the T&Cs and that I most likely did agree to them all over over the 26yrs ago.

I appreciate everyones input and feedback, just it was a shock without notice and being an old email was sync'd up with all my important bits, banking/HMRC/paypal etc

Have to try and change as much of it as I can remember as the associations pop up.

Off to Hotmail it is.... been told by several people now to avoid ISP emails.

Thanks all

ravenstar68
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Outlook normally defaults to downloading copies of all mails to your PC.  So if there is any historical mail you need access to, it should be there.

Tim

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It is thanks, and I am also one to make backups of the OST/PST files.

Its the hassle of having to change everything without notice.