Towards the end of 2016 we received some telephone calls from people who wanted to know if we could help them with their @virgin.net email problems. They all had @virgin.net email addresses and some of them relied upon them for their business. Then one day their email no longer worked or if they had forgotten their password they weren’t able to reset it.
They had all spoken to Virgin who weren’t able to help. They had read other posts by us regarding Virgin.net emails so gave us a call to see if we could help. Unfortunately we couldn’t.
We know that a large number of people who had @virgin.net email addresses also used to get their broadband from Virgin and were transferred to TalkTalk because Virgin wanted to focus on their cable customers. We also know that these customers were told that their virgin.net email address would cease to exist after June 2016.
However, the people we spoke to recently were never Virgin customers or TalkTalk customers and it seems they have had their @virgin.net email addresses for a very long time – back in the day when Virgin gave people the opportunity to get an email address for free.
Therefore, it seems to me that that Virgin have deleted a number of @virgin.net email addresses without any warning. If you are one of these unlucky people then it seems there isn’t anything that can be done. We’d be interested to hear your experience in the comments below.
I had one of these accounts which suddenly without warning was shut down. It was really complicated getting a new email tho I did eventually but then had to contact my whole mailing list by phone to explain why I couldn’t just contact them by email to inform them of the new address. Some company contacts still brought up the virgin.net address on my last laptop but on the new one I have lost even that. I am now wanting to find old emails from that account but I’ve tried all the suggested ways and had no luck. Mail2web doesn’t do it, nor any of the companies I previously contacted through the virgin.net address. If anyone can help me find the old emails pre 2017 pls contact me. Thanx.
My virgin.net email is still forwarding emails to my main Google email. Tried in vain over 3 years to log into it, to no avail.
Same experience here. 20+ years account, used every day, suddenly turned off. No warning. Hours on phone trying to reset/ restart/ recreate with some conflicting and misleading advice
It seems older customers may have been grandfathered into policies which shut down the email address?
Let’s hope Google/ Microsoft etc do a better job when they are broken up and/or decide to stop managing gmail and outlook accounts!
Astonishing that there doesn’t appear to be a workable option to – for example – pay them £1000 a year to keep the service going. Based on the first advice, I opened a mobile account for £100 (that I will never use_… only to be told today by Virgin Media (which seems to take no responsibility for advice from Virgin Mobile) that it makes no difference
Scary isn’t it? I recently received a letter by post from TV Licensing to say I needed to answer their questions pronto (which I did of course). I think they’d thought they’d made contact with my via my virgin.net email and was simply not responding. Because my former virgin.net account is not giving out any ’email undelivered’ messages it is causing untold and as yet unrevealed problems. Virgin Media have still not given me any indication that a proper person has taken my (October 2021) complaint on board.
Another victim here. 20+ years of life in a virgin.net mailbox which has just become unavailable without notice. If Virgin are capable of putting a person into space, then it is not rocket science for their software engineers to identify a mailbox for deletion, pop a warning email into it giving 30 days’ notice and then queue it up for deletion 30 days later.
I’ve had the same experience. After a repair last week I could not access My NTL Email and after a day and a half working on on the problem and leaving a complaint with VM, no joy. The account was still working on my phone so I managed to change a few suppliers to my new Email address but this morning that was gone. I have no idea now how to inform people like Sainsburys (essential for home deliveries as I’m a 67 year old house bound pensioner) ect. As they all have my NTL address as my user name and can’t verify It’ me contacting them.
I signed up with VM email 17 years ago when it was free and was given no warning of this, I have lost a lot of personnel information but I can’t prove it now. I hope Branson shots him self into space and doesn’t come down ‘cos his Email link was shut down.
Well, it sounds like you didn’t have a whisper of notice about this about to happen (like many of us here – and I don’t count ‘it was being shared on social media or in the news’ as being notice from a company I have been paying good money to for over 2 decades. As promised, I have made a complaint to VirginMedia and will post what I get in terms of a response in this channel. I feel your pain. It has not been a fun time. In trying to cover my back, using what I could retrieve from my husband’s contact addresses (which doesn’t have many of my own) and faffing around with changing things like you have, with services, subscriptions and supermarkets and the like. This is bad practice from VirginMedia – now and in any day and any age. Perhaps the most very annoying thing is that (over 3 weeks now) those who sending emails to my ‘old’ account actually don’t know that they are going to a defunct email. There is no alert! Have you tested yours? Is that the case? I consider that a serious lapse on VM’s part.
You should be able to login to your Sainsbury’s account at https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/ and update your email address. Login to your account and then click Personal Details. From here you can update your email address. Hope this helps.
I think the right tree to bark up might be this regulator’s https://ico.org.uk/ Any thoughts anyone? A developing concern for me now is that sending a test email to my virgin.net account STILL does not serve a bounce back or an alert of any sort that the mail account is defunct. It is the equivalent of having had one’s house boarded up (and being denied access) yet the letter box for the house remains open. The post is going in and three weeks’ worth of it has been piling up on the doormat inside.
I contacted Ofcom to get their view on next steps. I now have a reply and they have registered my complaint. Essentially they say: “Ofcom has no regulations surrounding email addresses or the platform in which they operate. It is a commercial decision whether a provider opts to offer an email service and they can choose to withdraw this if they choose. Any problems with the service should be pursued with Virgin Media directly. If the email service is going to be withdrawn, we would expect notice to be given of this to allow customers to make alternative arrangements in terms of their emails and I was sorry to read that this did not happen. Taking an email account with a standalone email provider that is not linked to a broadband provider tends to provide greater flexibility when switching or cancelling; therefore, this may be something to consider. If you remain unhappy, you may wish to register a complaint with Virgin Media directly. This can be done by following their code of practice here: http://store.virginmedia.com/content/dam/eSales/Downloads/Consumer%20Complaint%20Code%20of%20Practice.pdf“
An email address is provided by a service supplier to a user on a contractual basis, thus an arbitrary withdrawal of that service without reason or adequate notification may reasonably be deemed a breach of contract on the basis of unreasonable behaviour or possibly, in the case of Virgin Media, an abuse of dominant position. It is wholly unacceptable that a state regulator should collude in such a practice and defend the malefactor in this way. Perhaps the matter could be raised by a victim’s MP as a preliminary, and then referred to a formally constituted court rather than a regulator which, it would seem, is failing to discharge it duties and meet its obligations. If thousands of individual and businesses are suffering damage as a result of such actions Ofcom’s position is indefensible and CEO Melanie Dawes should be held to account for this – unfortunately Ofcom’s capacity for fulfilling its regulatory role has not been helped by the almighty stramash over the Paul Dacre business.
I am in the same boat as of Thursday last week. I have spent one week trying to get someone to take responsibility and let me into my virgin.net account. I too went down the rubbish TalkTalk route led by VirginMedia customer services. Overall, it is not looking good. I wish also to seek redress. These accounts were stopped with NO WARNING. If anyone knows a good lawyer…
How many of us are there in the UK being subjected to this? In my case it could certainly be demonstrated that Virgin Media has taken an arbitray action to breach a standing contract and are continuing to extract money through a direct debit arrangement. They could also be accused of a breach of their dominant position in the marketplace as well as a theoretical breach of Article 10 ECHR (the right to receive and impart information) – not to mention material damage in the case of a business or a profession. I would suggest a class action might be a good starting point if there are enough of us to launch it. We should all join forces – their PR is important to them.
I totally agree. I would argue that decency alone would have dictated that VM should have contacted everyone that was going to be the victim of this ‘orphaning’ of virgin.net as they call it and give them 2 weeks minimum to sort things out with contacts, clients etc. before closing the accounts. Reading between the lines, ntlworld accounts are next in line for this shoddy treatment. Only they can know how many were [going to be] affected. One way of getting some information about how many affected would be to look at the community forum pages in VM ‘help and support’. There hasn’t been a deluge but there is evidence that this happened to a few people in September and again recently. Also in that environment you can see some of the vapid [and insulting] responses from VM support, basically saying tough ‘it’s gone’. I have taken screen grabs of some of these.
Another victim of arbitrary action by Virgin Media, it would seem, wiping all my contacts and emails about three days ago, nothing retrievable, which is of course a manifest breach of contract by a service provider who continues to extract monthly payments by Direct Debit from my Virgin Money account! This is utterly devastating for my business and personal life, especially given a requirement for me to have a medical emergency link. Attempts to seek redress via their so called complaints system is a sick joke. This should be the subject of a police investigation – unlawful destruction of data and IP, not to mention a manifest breach of Article 10, European Convention on Human Rights, to which Britain is a signatory.
I have suffered the same fate yesterday (13th September 2021). vigin.net working until 7.26am, then totally unavailable. Both VM and TalkTalk refuse to accept responsibility. I think VM may have breached Data Protection Regulations by passing our details to another provider without our express permission. That would be a criminal offence – but is it worth pursuing?
My virgin.net email address is still working, but TalkTalk will not reset my password (and I cannot do it online as the account does not come up on VirginMedia) as I have no services with TalkTalk. It took 45 minutes and three agents to deny they have those accounts – but in any case will not assist as I have no other accounts with them.
hello
can not gain access to my account wont let me sign in.
no warning. if this is how they treat you now dread to thnk when you have a payed account with them , told account transfered to talk talk. then talk talk no nothng about it.
does any one have any contact details to get this sorted?
Same has just happened to me ! Virgin absolutely useless couldn’t care less ,I will not recommend any of their services customer care atrocious, when I asked to speak to a supervisor or manager was told no ! Absolutely disgraceful !
It’s just happened to me yesterday. I had no idea this was coming. I started with that email address in 1997 and used to pay for it and dial-up before the days of Broadband. Then it became free when all providers made email addresses free. I carried on using it and it’s vital to me. But yesterday, without any warning at all, I cannot get into it. Spent on hour on the phone with Virgin and in the end was nastily told I don’t have any of their services so I could p*ss off basically. They told me Talk Talk now look after email addresses like mine so I’ve called them – they aren’t interested either.
What a way for these companies to treat people. NEVER have anything to do with Virgin – I never will.
I am in pretty much the same boat. I got a virgin.net email address in 1997. I used it for nearly 20 years. I had a Virgin broadband account. Then Virgin locked me out and I was unable to recover nearly 20 years’ worth of messages, many of which were of sentimental value – eg photos, messages to and from loved ones, etc. It’s a shoddy way to treat people. If anyone knows a way of recovering such data, please post it.
It is an utter disgrace that Virgin are allowed to just cancel my email address without any warning at all
12.30 17th Aug 2021 last email then nothing. Spent all of yesterday and all today trying to get answers.
Apparently they are allowed to do because its in their terms and conditions.
I’ve had exactly the same experience. fortunately I’ve connection through Outlook so have emails in the outlook ost file. I migrating to Gmail. Spent morning talking to Virgin and Talk Talk. Customer service is not in their vocabulary !!
Spent hours on the phone to Virgin before I got referred back to Talk Talk who will take no responsibility!
BACK IT UP & Change NOW… is my advice to everyone with one of these accounts; I don’t have photos sent from a recently poorly loved one which is the most soul destroying thing ever!
Bloody Virgin, I will slate at every given opportunity from now & forever… SO bitter!
Jo, Guildford
I’ve had exactly the same experience. fortunately I’ve connection through Outlook so have emails in the outlook ost file. I migrating to Gmail. Spent morning talking to Virgin and Talk Talk. Customer service is not in their vocabulary !!
Just lost my virgin.net email address this week. I have been using it for around 20 years & now without any warning, gone!! I will have to set up a new email address, go through my backup mail recipients & get everything back on track. Thanks a lot virgin for the heads up!!!
Jon, Ballymoney. N.I.
This avenue has now been closed too, alas. Locked out today from my account without warning.
I still get mine through mail2web.com