Virgin withdrawing email addresses

Jolly_Roger

I've had a rant elsewhere on the forum regarding the appalling customer service metered out by Virgin Media. They have insitagated a campaign to eliminate all email addresses ending in @virgin.net. I've had mine for 14 years and want to keep it, since otherwise I have to go to the massive expense of printing new business cards, sending them out and also advising everybody I know of the change.
Without telling me, they have wiped all my webmail accessible emails and the technician said that my email account which I download onto Outlook Express would stop working soon.
My question is: will they technically be able to do that? And what is the obsession with hunting down these addresses?
A friend of mine also had his frequently used email addressed wiped, without any prior warning. He lost loads of vital emails.
What on earth is going on?

KillerWatt

Jolly_Roger wrote: »

I've had mine for 14 years and want to keep it, since otherwise I have to go to the massive expense of printing new business cards,

You use an ISP provided mail addy for your business??
£25 a year gets you webspace, your own dedicated mail server (inc SMTP) where YOU decide what happens & when, etc, etc.

I know this forum is about saving money, but an ISP mail addy on someone's business card/van/whatever just looks so unprofessional IMO.

Jolly_Roger wrote: »

Without telling me, they have wiped all my webmail accessible emails and the technician said that my email account which I download onto Outlook Express would stop working soon.
My question is: will they technically be able to do that?

Of course they can, it's their mail server and THEY decide what it does and when it does it.

Jolly_Roger wrote: »

What on earth is going on?

Set your own mail server up and you won't have to worry about what your ISP is doing.

John_Gray

Virgin Media is trying to get rid of their historical email domains, not only @virginmedia.net but (eventually) @blueyonder.co.uk and @ntlworld.co.uk (or similar), and move to @virginmedia.com. It makes their farmed-out-to-Google-Mail platform more straightforward. They say. No doubt it better defines the Virgin Media brand!

Like many broadband providers, Virgin Media are fine (perhaps even wonderful) when everything is working, but rather poor if anything goes wrong. "Customer Services" is a bit of a misnomer, and should really be called "Customer Fob-Off" or something similar. Your suggestions are invited!

aliEnRIK

Youve had a @virgin.net email address for 14 years? They only took over 3 years ago didnt they?

soolin

Is there an announcement anywhere please about this withdrawal of vitrgin.net email accounts? I've got one and I have heard nothing at all about it being withdrawn so am obviously concerned.

Jolly_Roger

I'm a freelance journalist, so using a Virgin email address is fine.
How do I go about setting up my own mail server at £25 a year?
Yes, I really have had a @virgin.net email address for 14 years!

richard734

I too have a Virgin.net addy, had it for over 10 years.... anyone found a formal announcement or any Virgin info about this.

bcl999

soolin wrote: »

Is there an announcement anywhere please about this withdrawal of vitrgin.net email accounts? I've got one and I have heard nothing at all about it being withdrawn so am obviously concerned.

Same here.

DanRogl

Jolly_Roger

Can I suggest you register a domain name, a .co.uk domain costs about £3 per year and you register usually for 2 years. You then have to re-register it every 2 years, it's usually really straight forward.
I have my own business domain and I use google gmail for hosting (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gmail.html), it costs a little more than £25 per year (£33 I think) and offers all the benefits of gmail as well as 25GB of storage, and can be set-up to use your own domain name. so instead of using jolly_roger[at]gmail.com you can use jolly_roger[at]yourdoamin.co.uk. Hope that makes sense?

Jolly_Roger

DanRogl
Thanks, that's very interesting.

BTW, Virgin Media sent round an email some time ago offering virgin.net holders the possibility of transferring to a virginmedia.net address, with short term forwarding of emails. However, there was no indication that this was a must. When I spoke to the tech guys yesterday, they told me that the old email addresses are all being eliminated. They claim many of these were not being used, despite the fact that mine had dozens of recent emails in the inbox.
As I said, a friend had exactly the same problem. Complete loss of archived, recent emails and no prior warning whatsoever. You just wonder what Virgin are thinking about, don't you?

soolin

I've tried contacting virgin as I can find nothing at all about any withdrawal of the virgin.net accounts, but as usual all the help facilities and contact us facilities end up on this screen:

Sorry, but your request could not be processed due to an unexpected error.
Please try again later.
The system administrator can look at the server logs to find the reason for this error.