Hi Rachel
It turned out it was not a problem with Virgin. It was my iPhone! I spent about 4 hours on a chat with Apple trying to sort it out and eventually got it working. Unfortunately, it was a bit extreme in the end. I'm not sure if you have an iPhone or Android, but these are the steps that I took with my iPhone Xs.
1. Try your SIM in another phone and resend an OTP from one of the websites that you are trying to access. If the text comes through, then the issue is with your phone, not Virgin.
2. If the issue is with your phone there are a number of things that you can try. I've listed the easiest first, but they did not work for me. Force a hard restart of your phone. One the iPhone Xs, press volume up quickly, volume down quickly, then press and hold the right hand power button until the apple symbol appears (over 1 minute).
3. Go to Settings>Messages>Send and Receive - check that your mobile number has a tick against it. I do not suggest that you deselect it if it is ticked though. On my phone, I was unable to reselect my mobile number. The rotating 'waiting' symbol appeared where the tick was and would not go, even after hours, numerous restarts etc.
4. Back up your phone to icloud, reset it to factory settings and restore from back up. Instructions for this can be found here. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/icloud/mm7e756df7fd/icloud.
Then try resending on OTP code from a website and see if this works.
5. If none of the above worked then the iCloud backup is corrupted with the bug that is causing the problem and you need to reset the phone and restore it without using a backup! This is pretty serious stuff as you will loose all your apps etc. The good news is that its not quite as bad as you think. If you save certain things like contacts, Notes, etc to iCloud and take a backup, these things get associated with your Apple ID and are imported when you start to set up your phone again, even though you have not selected to restore from a backup. The following articles from Apple tell you how to save some of your important data to iCloud before you start so that you don't loose everything. The info is not written specifically for someone wanting to restore their phone, but it is in there - eg For Notes, mine were all saved to my phone - I had to first enable iCloud notes and then move each not over individually.
Set up and use iCloud Photos
Use Notes on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Keep your Calendar up to date with iCloud
Keep all your messages in iCloud
Set up and use iCloud Contacts
Once everything is saved, run a backup. Reset your phone then start the setup process again. Don't select setup from iCloud backup. I can't remember the exact wording of the option I selected I'm afraid. I have a feeling it was not obvious and it may have been the last option. The Apple website says to select 'Setup as new iPhone' however, I don't remember this option.
Best of luck
Ruth
