Virgin.net email closed with no notice

[kimbrosnan]

My virgin.net email has been deleted with no notice.

Can anyone help? Customer services won't help because I don't have an account.

I just need to get access to retrieve my data.

[kimbrosnan]

Hi Lee_R this has just happened to me. Please can you help?

[Robert_P]

Hello Kimbrosnan

Sorry to hear you no longer have access to your email account, we understand the frustration this can cause and appreciate you taking the time to raise this via the forums. Welcome to the community.

If you are no longer a customer of Virgin Media it would appear the account has been closed due to the 90 day policy. It may be that your services were disconnected prior to the 90 day period but has remained open but has been closed recently .

Details of this can be found here

Rob

[kimbrosnan]

Hi Rob, 

No not the 90 day policy applying here. I never had any service with Virgin Media. I opened the account before you needed any service attached.

Still looking for some help from you please.

Thanks

Kim

[Martin_N]

Thank you for confirming that for us Kim. 

What I will do is pop you a private message you to get some details so we can see if we can locate this address. 

If we're unable to locate this, then we wouldn't be able to retrieve this for you. 

^Martin

[ravenstar68]

---

@kimbrosnan wrote:

Hi Rob, 

No not the 90 day policy applying here. I never had any service with Virgin Media. I opened the account before you needed any service attached.

Still looking for some help from you please.

Thanks

Kim

---

Hi Kim

The notion that you did not have a service attached is a misunderstanding.

ISP's including virgin.net all provided "Free" Dial up internet access with email attached to the dial up service - prior to broadband such as ADSL and  Cable Internet launching, and for some years afterwards, although Broadband eventually signalled the death of dial up as fewer and fewer people used that service.

In order to keep the email address active it was required to dial in at least once every 180 days.  If you failed to dial in then the account was at risk of closure and the email address at risk of deletion without notice.

Why did I put the word "Free" in speechmarks, well because no one gives anything away for free.  Running an ISP and an email service costs money.  With dial up the costs were paid out of the fees made by users ringing the dial up number (or via a paid subscription and a freephone dial up number)..

The dial up service closed around 2013 and all email addresses linked to that service should have closed 6 months later.  However Virgin Media's system has been very poor at deleting such accounts in the past.  However VM do have periodic purges of Orphan accounts - those formerly linked to dial up and broadband accounts.

Tim

[kimbrosnan]

Thanks Tim.
So this account was used everyday and I'm desperate to get my data back.
What can I do next ?