Virgin Media - Cancelling email address & appalling customer service

Ladyvaletta

On Monday, my Virgin email address suddenly stopped working (I use it via Mac Mail on a Macbook pro). I was also unable to access Virgin webmail. My only resource was to tweet them. They eventually acknowledged a problem with certain email suffixes. I thought it would be resolved overnight, these things usually are. Tuesday morning, still down - and they informed me that they would not be reinstating it! Just like that - no warning, no nothing. We are broadband customers, have been for years. Also TV, landline. In fact, we've been Virgin customers since the beginning of home internet. Wednesday morning, I spent two hours on a webchat, where they informed me that they had written to me in 2015 (!!!) telling me that they would - at some unspecified point in time - cancel this virgin.net email address and it was my fault for not creating a new email address within 90 days. This is the email address that is linked to everything - my bank, my pension, my current impending house move. I am also self-employed, and THIS email address is listed in certain industry publications as a way of people commissioning me - my income. This caused untold problems all week - some now resolved. They refused to provide any evidence of the 2015 emails, and would not provide any terms and conditions or notifications of this. Surely, surely - they need to be forced to give people proper, sufficient notice of this rather than cutting folk off in an instant?

Neil49

You may wish to read the following article which comes from 2015.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.maidenheadcs.co.uk/what-to-do-if-you-have-a-virgin-net-email-address/&ved=2ahUKEwiKrJWo0b_zAhWOnRQKHQGmDi4QFnoECDsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw25rcCCbJ3HyhA4pXi3OOCn

Bradden

As a gerneral rule I'd avoid using any email address linked to an ISP. Using a seprate address means you can switch broadband without hassles.

mjm3346

"Surely, surely - they need to be forced to give people proper, sufficient notice of this rather than cutting folk off in an instant?2

Giving over 5 years notice is hardly "cutting folk off in an instant"

As same as the poster above I would never use an ISP provided e-mail address as one of my main addresses 

JJ_Egan

Probably find this evidence on the old MSE forum .

problem is like many OP thinks they own the email address .

Neil_Jones

Ladyvaletta said:

On Monday, my Virgin email address suddenly stopped working (I use it via Mac Mail on a Macbook pro). I was also unable to access Virgin webmail. My only resource was to tweet them. They eventually acknowledged a problem with certain email suffixes. I thought it would be resolved overnight, these things usually are. Tuesday morning, still down - and they informed me that they would not be reinstating it! Just like that - no warning, no nothing. We are broadband customers, have been for years. Also TV, landline. In fact, we've been Virgin customers since the beginning of home internet. Wednesday morning, I spent two hours on a webchat, where they informed me that they had written to me in 2015 (!!!) telling me that they would - at some unspecified point in time - cancel this virgin.net email address and it was my fault for not creating a new email address within 90 days. This is the email address that is linked to everything - my bank, my pension, my current impending house move. I am also self-employed, and THIS email address is listed in certain industry publications as a way of people commissioning me - my income. This caused untold problems all week - some now resolved. They refused to provide any evidence of the 2015 emails, and would not provide any terms and conditions or notifications of this. Surely, surely - they need to be forced to give people proper, sufficient notice of this rather than cutting folk off in an instant?

And this is why you shouldn't use ISP email addresses.  If you're self employed it may have been more professional/beneficial to you to have a .co.uk address and then you woudn't have had this issue.  Your personal matters would have been better on a Gmail/Yahoo/outlook account and your work matters on a .co.uk.

Anyway Virgin.net closed in 2015, it was transferred to TalkTalk at the time.  So your beef email wise is probably actually with TalkTalk, not Virgin.  If you moved to Virgin (cable) you should have set up a new virginmedia address.

As for "sufficient notice" - well you've just said you've had five years, how much notice do you think you need?  If you don't do anything about it after five years, why would any more notice be of benefit?