Virgin.net email down

[GeoffreyPG]

My wife and I use virgin.net emails but they both went down yesterday. I have now learned that these have been shutting down for some time, but we had missed the news. I have spoken to Virgin and they referred me to TalkTalk, who they said had taken over the .net emails. But TalkTalk can't help because we don't have a TalkTalk account. I have seen that Forum member Paulina_z was able to reactivate a .net address and I wonder if she or someone else can pull the same stunt for us. We would then set up a new address and alert all our contacts and retrieve a lot of important correspondence. Otherwise we have lost about 20 years of emails.

[nodrogd]

Virgin sold their "off-net" ISP business to TalkTalk sometime ago. This did NOT include Virgin net mail services.

I quote from a post on the Talk Talk forum below:

"Although TalkTalk inherited some off-net Virgin broadband customers a while back the email service for virgin.net mail accounts remained with Virgin Media. This is a Virgin Media issue.

Virgin Media said at the time that customers would have more than their usual 90 days to migrate email usage away from Virgin and that they would allow 12 months to migrate. However, it's a fact that some ex-Virgin customers didn't get auto-disconnected after 12 months but have been gradually 'discovered' and these orphaned email accounts summarily disconnected by Virgin Media.

This is not a TalkTalk matter as TalkTalk have never been responsible for Virgin Media email even for those broadband customers it did take on when Virgin dumped its off-net customer base."

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Email/Access-to-virgin-net/td-p/2539415 

[GeoffreyPG]

Thanks for that reply. We were never advised that the .net addresses were being discontinued so this has come as quite a shock.

[Lee_R · Accepted solution]

Thanks for getting back to us GeoffreyPG. 

We did send the original notifications of cancelling the virgin.net email addresses back in 2015.  As it's a considerable amount of time since, I am sorry if you did not receive the notification.  I would like to take a look on your behalf.  I am going to send you a private message.

Regards

Lee_R

[Kath_F]

Hi GeoffreyPG, 

Thanks for coming back to me via private message. I'm glad to hear you've been able to get access to your mails now. 

I just wanted to confirm that the virgin.net service isn't being closed. The accounts associated with these were closed long ago when we closed our National service however those who have these address connected to active Virgin Media broadband accounts will be able to continue using these accounts. 
Any email accounts, whether they end in virgin.net, blueyonder, ntlworld or virginmedia, if they are not associated to an active broadband account then they would be at risk. We wouldn't send any further reminders as the terms and conditions show the account will only be valid for 90 days after disconnection. After this time it can be closed at any time. 

If you have any further issues, pop back and let us know. 

Thanks, 

[GeoffreyPG]

Thanks, again, Kath.

When I rang the service desk on 23 February I spoke to a man called Sebastian. He was unable to change the password, which appeared to prevent him him doing any more. Perhaps I should have simply told him the password, but I didn't think of that. He also said that he could not see our email addresses associated with our broadband account, which is true, since they were set up about ten years before we set up the broadband account. If I could have given him an account number for the emails (we never had an account number for them) I think he said he could have linked them to the broadband account. So  if you can now do that in such a way that they will show up to someone in Sebastian's role as being 'associated' with it, that would be helpful because it might protect them in the way you suggest. Having said that, it would also be good to know what would happen if we subsequently switched our broadband to another provider: would we lose the virgin.net addresses because of that association?

Regards, Geoff

[Serena_C]

Hi @GeoffreyPG

Thanks for getting back to us. We can link the email addresses to the broadband account - however, there is a risk that should you switch broadband provider in the future, then the email accounts may be deleted 90 days later. Would you still like to link them to your account?

Best wishes,

Serena

[GeoffreyPG]

Serena: Thanks for that advice. I would like to reply with a PM but when I click on your name to send a reply, it seems to be linking me back to Kath. Can you send me a PM and I will reply to that.

[Jodi_S]

Thanks for coming back to us GeoffreyPG.

Serena is currently unavailable, so I will be happy to look into this for you.

I will pop you over a private message and take some details from you.

Please click on the purple envelope to accept the chat.

Kind regards Jodi.