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Virginmedia blocking suspected spam which is actually genuine email

kevinh
Dialled in

VM delays or blocks some email before it gets to webmail. That means I have no way of receiving what I know is genuine email. Users can't whitelist domain names to bypass this either, unlike with most email providers. Delayed email gets through, but possibly too late if it's a timed verification link. Blocked email simply never appears.

Yesterday I had to reset an online account password, but I never received the emailed reset link despite repeated attempts. The account support team can't do anything about this and now I can't access my account. Why does VM behave in this way towards it's customers? Clearly they use strong email filtering but it isn't perfect and it should be in the customers control to switch it off in an attempt to receive suspected spam email that they know is not spam.

34 REPLIES 34

Hi kevinh

Thanks for coming back to us.

Can you get the email headers for us for the emails not coming through to you, then we can send them off to our internet team to review?

Best,

John_GS
Forum Team


Need a helpful hand to show you how to make a payment? Check out our guide - How to pay my Virgin Media bill

Hi John,

How can I get email headers for mail I haven't received?

Kevin

Zoie_P
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

HI Kevinh, 

Is the email address provided above the only email you are not receiving emails from? Has anything changed recently that could be the cause of this issue?

Zoie


@Zoie_P wrote:

HI Kevinh, 

Is the email address provided above the only email you are not receiving emails from? Has anything changed recently that could be the cause of this issue?

Zoie


Hi Zoie,

The day after I noticed this problem I missed another email reset link from a different account subscription but I don't know what address that came from. So the email address I reported is the only one that I know of. Clearly I could be missing much more but not know about it. 

Nothing has changed at my end that might have affected email delivery. AV settings are the same, no updates to OS, etc. Chrome is updated regularly but that should not affect email. However I have recently noticed a dramatic reduction in email going to my spam folder which is why I suspect VM have tightened their spam detection and email rejection.

Kevin

Kain_W
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Thanks for the responses kevinh,

Welcome back to the community.

Just for further clarification also, are you facing problems with different types of emails (automated, marketing etc) or is it when an email is requested i.e. password reset, verifications etc?

Thanks,

Kain


@Kain_W wrote:

Thanks for the responses kevinh,

Welcome back to the community.

Just for further clarification also, are you facing problems with different types of emails (automated, marketing etc) or is it when an email is requested i.e. password reset, verifications etc?

Thanks,


As far as I'm aware the only problem is with automated password reset links from Heathrow Rewards. However I haven't received a newsletter or offers from them since March, and I usually receive one email every month or two. I would have expected one this month. These promotional emails come from heathrowrewards@em.heathrow.com

Kevin

Hi @kevinh thanks for your reply and apologies this still doesn't appear to have been resolved.

Can you please read this thread here, to see if any of the replies can help you further?

Many thanks

Tom_W


@Tom_W1 wrote:

Hi @kevinh thanks for your reply and apologies this still doesn't appear to have been resolved.

Can you please read this thread here, to see if any of the replies can help you further?

Many thanks


Nothing helpful in that thread. I haven't blacklisted the email myself and I don't regard using a different email address to be a solution. If VM are blocking email because it comes from a suspicious IP address range or the account it comes from isn't set up correctly for security then you should also be able to whitelist addresses too.

My personal preference would be for VM to stop rejecting email altogether, mark such email as SPAM and allow customers to use email filtering and blacklists themselves to prevent block SPAM they actually know is SPAM. At the very least give users a setting to switch off server email rejection.

Virgin use the email provider ziggo I think, and email is controlled by servers in Netherlands so difficulties often occur in getting answers.

I do agree that all mail should get through even spam.

Like most free emails, support for email is usually poor or in some cases no support unless you pay for the email service.

Paid options may have better support.

Virgin does at least offer support via the community and I have used that.

I myself use gmail and outlook and find I can forward those emails to virgin email no problem, so that might be a solution for you to change to another email and then auto forward that to virgin email, not all emails have a forward facility. I actually do that, and although there is the risk it could be tagged as spam select the option mark as spam and send to the inbox in virgin spam settings.

As gmail and outlook are very reliable and very large companies, that is a better option to use for account recovery, and works perfectly most of the time, also mobile sms is another way to get recovery codes.

There have been several posting recently with the same issue, one was plusnet, so several others have had email blocked recently for no apparent reason of they do not like the sender IP address or virgin may be protecting their servers from attack and they may block some senders for some unknown reasons they then get a mail delivery fail notice generated with details why it was not delivered.

The problem is that if mail is being blocked by virgin mail, then you do not know what you may have missed. I get a lot of stupid spam emails coming through so I have filtered these spammers out, but wise to ensure you are not filtering or blacklisting any genuine emails.

alf28

 

Alf28,

I can't separate account operation and account recovery in this case. One address does everything. I'm aware of the servers being in the Netherlands from my previous problem with this back in 2020. I was able to trace authorisation email that was being delayed. As I've repeatedly said, using a different email provider is not a solution and it only hides the problem. In 2020 I was able to get one issue resolved and if people complain often enough and loudly enough VM will have to do something about this issue.

There are probably things Heathrow Rewards can do to fix this too. If VM can find out why the email is being rejected I can pass that info back to them.

What VM (or their email service provider) are doing does not stop spam and does not help stop it. Rejecting spam can encourage spammers by identifying genuine email addresses and genuine automated email will most likely not monitor incoming email to that address so won't see rejected messages.

Kevin