@ntlworld.com email - no longer accessible

[Tomas28]

Hi,

I’m no longer with Virgin, however, I need to access my old @ntlworld.com email account as it’s linked to an important account elsewhere but when trying to login with my details it’s not recognising the address, bare in mind I haven’t logged in for a long time on this address as I thought I switched all accounts to another email address. Is there anyway you’re able to reactivate the account or autoforward incoming emails to my new address? Thanks in advance.

[Kath_F]

Hi Tomas28, 

Thanks for taking the time to contact us via the Community. It's lovely having you on board with us in the Forums. ⭐

We're sorry to hear you've been unable to access an old email address. An email address will only be accessible if it's connected to an active Virgin Media broadband account. As you no longer have one of these, we would be unable to restore access I'm afraid. 

The address would be locked and then eventually deleted. We can double check if the address is still active and if it is, this will allow us to move the address to an active broadband account if you wanted to join VM but if you don't then there would be nothing more we could do other than to arrange to permanently delete it. This would then produce an error for anyone trying to send an email to that address which may initiate them to contact you to update your details. Let us know if you would like us to do this.

Apologies that we were unable to help further on this. 

Thanks, 

[Tomas28]

Hey Kath, if you can check if it’s still active then that’ll be great and then I’ll consider switching back. Did you want to private message so I can send my email across? 

[goslow]

If you have left VM, your account is likely to be deleted after 90 days (as per VM's T&Cs) although VM does not always do this reliably. If you have not accessed the account for 150 days, the account might also be deleted (as per VM's AUP, suspended after 90 days inactivity with a further 60 days in which it could be reactivated)

You can try checking your address here

https://verifalia.com/validate-email

If it gives you an 'undeliverable'/'mailbox does not exist' warning then you might have your answer (although nothing to stop VM checking for you as well to confirm).

[Tomas28]

The account is still showing as deliverable which on their terms shouldn’t be correct as it’s been a while since my email was accessed and since I’m not a VM customer anymore they’ve clearly changed my credentials and left my email address active which doesn’t seem right?

[goslow]

What VM says and what VM does are often different. It is not uncommon to find defunct mailboxes carry on working/existing for years, even decades, when they should have been deleted. The fact it is not 'undeliverable' may offer you some hope depending on what stage of deletion it has reached.

I would be very wary of signing up again to VM in the hope of getting access to the mailbox. It could very well be a case of VM promising one thing (to give you access again) but failing to deliver. New VM customers cannot create new email addresses and migrating a locked legacy account would be subject to VM's internal email support processes (which are very poor as you can see from the topics on here).

You have not stated any time scales on how long this mailbox has been out of use and when you were last a customer. If you left VM in the recent past (recent weeks/months), there have been some past cases on here where the mailbox has been reactivated for a short time, as a goodwill gesture, to rescue data from it. If your mailbox has not been used for years you may be less fortunate. It's all at VM's discretion.

Wait for the next VM forum team reply to see if they can/will do any more.

[Tomas28]

Thanks for the feedback and info, very helpful. I’ll wait to see what VM have to say, but I don’t think it’ll be the answer I’m hoping for! If it’s not, then fingers crossed they can actually make it undeliverable/deleted so I have more chance of restoring access on another account…

[Daniel_Et]

Hi @Tomas28, thank you for your response.

In order to look into this for you further, we'll send you a private message on here. Look out for the envelope in the top right-hand corner.

If you're on a portable device with a smaller screen, click on the icon in the top right-hand corner and select "messages" from the additional menu options.

Regards,
Daniel