Virgin.net email has shut me out for more that two weeks

[andrewbillen]

Despite many calls, one that took 90 minutes and ended up in me talking last Friday (December 3)  to a secondary fault engineer in the Phillipines  (who said colleagues would call me back to resolve the issue within 48 hours  but they didn't) I can still not use by virgin.net email service. It is officially an orphan account, sold to Talk Talk years and years ago. Of course, Talk Talk will not talk to me because I am not a customer of theirs. As I know from threads here, I am not the only loyal Virgin Media customer (of 13 years at this address of mine) afflicted. It needs to be sorted. People have been sending me emails for 20 days now and getting no notification that their messages have not reached me. I just want to get back into my email account, which I must have had for 20 years, so I can set up a forwarding message to my new gmail account.

[Gareth_L]

Hello andrewbillen

Thanks for Joining here 

I will need to take some details from you by private message 

I Would also need to advise we may not be able to access this email again

We might be able to get temporary access long enough for you to move emails out contact etc 

If you can check the purple envelope top right of your screen that would be great 
Regards     
Gareth_L
 

[Sololobo]

For clarity:

The old ADSL Virgin Media National service was taken over by Talk Talk in 2015, however Virgin Media retained and still control all their legacy email domains, including virgin.net.

Some (most?) VM call staff appear to be totally unaware of this fact and spuriously direct callers to Talk Talk when issues are raised.

Which sadly is of no help to you.

[andrewbillen]

Thank you very much. If Virgin Media is still in control why cannot it not get into the site if only to send a message to my correspondents saying the site is no longer receiving emails? Not great.

[goslow · Accepted solution]

Much debated on here in recent weeks. It is in VM's T&Cs that they will delete email accounts after 90 days when a customer leaves. However, in the best of VM traditions, they have been very lax and inconsistent about doing this in a reliable way. Some of these legacy accounts have been on 'borrowed time' for years and years, as in your case.

VM seems to have decided that it is going to be easier for them in the long run to simply delete these accounts now, without warning, rather than giving any notice and so avoid any extended discussions and arguments about how much longer former customers should have access to the accounts before they are terminated.

Can't say I fully understand the email account deletion sequence of events but from recent past topics on here, your chances of recovery aren't too hopeful. Depending on whether you can/cannot get access to the account, some have found this archive posting useful on rescuing data from VM accounts about to be closed down

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Backing-up-your-Emails-One-of-many-solutions/m-p/...

The post is quite old so screenshots etc. may not match the current software version. Unfortunately though, your account may well be too far gone in the deletion process for this to work.

[andrewbillen]

Thank you. That is very kind of you. Andrew