Kath,
It's worth pointing out that the discontinuing of Virgin emails (after 90 days on ending a VM contract) has been introduced over the past decade or so. For those of us who went online in the 90s and early 2000s with Virgin have retained and continued to use the email we chose at the time. With developments and takeover of the VM brand there has been peridically mutings of old emails being stopped, however the subsequent reassurance has meant these have been allowed to continue. You may also been aware of the changes to the email server provider has changed over that time, with services being maintained - Open-Xchange now manage the email servers on VM behalf.
Although VM customer service staff are contstrained within their CRM system which shows current customers and contractors, it doesn't show past customers or their details and email addresses - so are unable to help due to the limitations of the paramenters of the CRM system in front of them. However, the email servers operators OX will be able to 'see' these emails, and therefore would be fully able to send out an email notification on behalf of VM to announce impending closure. This is standard best practice, and what we'd expect from VM and its partners. Most of us would have accepted this announcement (as over 20+ years) we've had to adjust as online platforms adjust and close, and taken the necessary steps to remove, export and close down our account, while notifying those contacts in the address book of a new email address. This is important because as it can be our default personal email address and it impacts on our online registration for all personal matters - tax, banking, health, shopping, social media, transport, social friends/family points of contact etc. So to us it's not just a random email address but an important link in the chain to securing our home and working lives - and in the event of not being able to access and undertake the necessary housekeeping before closure, means we have to spend a much longer time trying to contact and 'prove' we're the same people when we change log-ins on online platforms, go to secure websites, or get in touch with people and reassuring them that we are the same people on not some scam account. In some cases changing an email results in an email being sent to the original email address checking if it's really you who has made this change.
I propose a solution - please, please can VM put out an announcement (through mainstream and social media) and contact point to a technical team with a technical help line to help users reaccess their email accounts and clean them up and close them down. This would help enormously and rescue some credibility for this not-though-thhrough action of closing down these email accounts unannounced.
