email account disabled, unable to send or receive e-mail

[davidhewitt27]

my email account (ending @virginmedia.com) stopped working on 6th October 2021. I can neither send or receive email from the account. I established by looking at the account in web mail that the account is disabled, for no apparent reason. Despite regular calls and web chats with Customer Service Agents and Tech Support the issue remains unresolved. I have now resorted to using a gmail account instead, but would really like to at least retrieve any emails sent to me since 6th Oct. However there appears to be no-one at Virgin Media with sufficient technical skill to fix the problem, and I get nowhere ringing the call centre or using web chat. The extent of their knowledge appears to be to reset my password, which doesn't work and isn't the problem. I cannot get to speak with anyone above this rudimentary skill level. I even raised a complaint, but that was just closed after 28 days without any resolution. I have raised a fresh complaint,  but have little confidence that I will hear back.

Overall the service I have received is a disgrace, and the sheer frustration of this is driving me crazy.

How do I get to speak to a senior manager at VM who can explain to me what is going on, and why no-one can fix a simple account issue after 7 weeks?  

[John_GS]

Hi davidhewitt27

Thanks for posting and welcome to the community.

I am sorry for the email issues you're having. 

In relation to the complaint, is there an update listed here - one thing I would point out, if you've raised two complaints, one would be closed as a duplicate. Also, that link should advise if a response has been sent via letter or indeed webform back to you. 

I can see this was with our IT team who sent you a text yesterday. Have you been able to log in since?

Best,

[davidhewitt27]

Hi, thanks for your response John.

Yes I did get a text to say the email issue is fixed, but it isn’t!! The account is still disabled. I really don’t understand how it can take 7 weeks to fix an email account. This is a massive fail and reflects very badly on VM, who claim to be a technology company, but can’t fix a simple fault, and don’t appear to understand even the basics of IT trouble shooting, to get to a route cause.

Dave

[John_GS]

Thanks for coming back to us davidhewitt27

I am sorry to hear it's not sorted. Can you try changing the password to something new unique never used before. Then run malware scans on all devices.

Leave it 30 minutes before retrying the mailbox access.

Best,

[davidhewitt27]

Hi John 

I’ve done all that, I’m an IT professional, this has nothing to do with passwords or malware etc. The account has been disable due to incorrect credentials, which to me means there is a corruption somewhere in the virtual server that validates the log on, either a damaged disc or data missing. When I delete the account from a device and recreate it, I always get a message that the password is missing, even though it’s there. That tells me that when I try to retrieve my email the system is not able to get to where the password is saved, either because it isn’t there or it’s corrupted in some way. They should be running a trace on the validation script to see what it is doing and where it is going to do the validation. This is IT trouble shooting 101, not rocket science.

[MoFelton]

Me too.  Exactly same. Only 5 days but same runaround. If you have been waiting 7 weeks I might as well give up.

Bad service by Virgin. We will never sign up with Virgin again.

[John_GS]

Please can you do as requested and we can go from there

Best

[davidhewitt27]

Hi John

I'm willing to try anything, but I can guarantee that this will not work, the account doesn't work on any device, and I have 2 other e-mail accounts, (1 very old ntlworld.com account and a new virginmedia.com account which I created a couple of days ago) both of which work fine, so I know it's something specific to this account and not anything general. Oh and now today since this morning I cannot access my webmail either. I get a messsage:

Your mailbox is not available at the moment.

Please retry again in one hour and make sure you are using the correct password to access your email from all of your devices.

If the problem continues, please call our team for help on 150 from a Virgin Media phone or mobile, or 0345 454 1111 from any other phone and select option 2. For details about how much it costs to call our team from a Virgin Media home phone, visit virginmedia.com/callcosts. Call costs from other networks and mobiles vary.

So I will try resetting my password for the 10th time!!!!!!

D

[John_GS]

Hi davidhewitt27

Thanks for coming back to me. Let me know how you get on

Best,

[davidhewitt27]

Dear John

i have tried resetting passwords again and have checked 3 devices for malware. All devices are clean and the password reset has no effect. 
I went a step further and deleted all 3 Virginmedia/ntlworld accounts and added them back on my windows laptop and iPhone. The old ntlworld account and the new Virginmedia account both work fine, but my main email account still does not work. On my iPhone it still says that there is no password provided, which again suggests to me some form of missing or corrupted data, or a missing pathway etc. In any case this is clearly a technical IT issue which an organisation the size of Virgin Media should be able to easily fix, if the issue gets escalated to the right level.

D