Virgin.Net Email Discontinued

IdleEye071

Hello. I'm hoping & praying someone here can help me with this: I've had a virgin.net email address since 1999 &, for the most part, it has worked ok.  I'm no longer a Virgin Media customer because when I moved from London to Sheffield in 2017, they didn't serve my area so I went with BT. I kept the email & things continued without a glitch until Tuesday lunchtime, when it just stopped. So I called VM, who said they would give me a new password to get things running again. This didn't happen, so I called again last night. The new op essentially said I'd been cut off & there's no way I can get it back, as it should have been cut off 90 days after I terminated the VM account. I never once was told of this & the account is still dead. So now I'm left with 23 years of contacts unable to reach me (all of my business/social/admin have been conducted here) & I don't know where to turn. I do have everything on Apple Mail stored until the point of cut-off (I had an IMAP account) so if there is a way of getting any new mail redirected to a new address, I'd be more than grateful for some help. To be cut off with no warning whatsoever has been difficult to say the least, but my greater fear is to lose any future corresponence, so much of which is crucial right now. Thanking you in advance

Neil_Jones

IdleEye071 said:

Hello. I'm hoping & praying someone here can help me with this: I've had a virgin.net email address since 1999 &, for the most part, it has worked ok.  I'm no longer a Virgin Media customer because when I moved from London to Sheffield in 2017, they didn't serve my area so I went with BT. I kept the email & things continued without a glitch until Tuesday lunchtime, when it just stopped. So I called VM, who said they would give me a new password to get things running again. This didn't happen, so I called again last night. The new op essentially said I'd been cut off & there's no way I can get it back, as it should have been cut off 90 days after I terminated the VM account. I never once was told of this & the account is still dead. So now I'm left with 23 years of contacts unable to reach me (all of my business/social/admin have been conducted here) & I don't know where to turn. I do have everything on Apple Mail stored until the point of cut-off (I had an IMAP account) so if there is a way of getting any new mail redirected to a new address, I'd be more than grateful for some help. To be cut off with no warning whatsoever has been difficult to say the least, but my greater fear is to lose any future corresponence, so much of which is crucial right now. Thanking you in advance

Virgin Media sold off part of their broadband division to TalkTalk in 2016 and this included virgin.net (which was internet down a BT line, not Virgin as is the norm).

It was announced back in 2016 after after that acquisition that the accounts were going to be wiped.  For whatever reason this never happened at the time and it was just left to bounce along at the hands of TalkTalk who to their credit have kept many legacy email address domains they've inherited over the years active.  There was never any obligation for them to do so..

So the "no warning" was actually issued in 2016.  So you've had best part of six years that it could go at any time.  You can't say you weren't told, and if you ignored the notifications then well basically more fool you.  But as you've lost the account now anyway its relatively moot.

A provider does not owe you an email address, you do not own an email address and they do not owe you a backup of contacts, email etc.  That's your responsibility (on a domestic package).  If you choose to run your online life through that email address that's up to you but many email providers have been, gone, rebranded, repackaged etc, so if you were using it for business you probably should have got a .co.uk address and backed up the data.

TL;DR - you've lost it.  The email is gone, defunct, has ceased to be.  Can't rdirect email from it when it no longer exists.

outtatune

Ask here, it's a specialist forum for Virgin Media stuff

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/

But what else did you expect when you left VM? That they would continue to provide you with free email hosting forever?

debitcardmayhem

Sorry to hear that you have lost your email address, however you have had 5 years to work out what would happen, and now you are possibly facing another dilemma if you ever leave BT. I know that my words are of no comfort, but you could get in touch with your contacts and tell them of your new email address, but better still get yourself an address not tied to an ISP. Basically you have been freeloading on VM and I am sure that when you signed up with them their T&Cs mention email addresses available as long as you are a customer.

IdleEye071

Thank you all. I now know all the issues, but some notification would have been nice. When something works, you tend not to question as to why. And I have never received anything to this effect ever. If I had, of course I'd have acted. So now I accept I have to find something else, but losing any new incoming stuff is really worrying. Just need to find a way of forwarding it all to a new address

razord

IdleEye071 said:

Thank you all. I now know all the issues, but some notification would have been nice. When something works, you tend not to question as to why. And I have never received anything to this effect ever. If I had, of course I'd have acted. So now I accept I have to find something else, but losing any new incoming stuff is really worrying. Just need to find a way of forwarding it all to a new address

Do you mean copy all the old email into a new account? You should be able to just do all that in Apple Mail - just add whoever you decide to use going forward to Mail too, and then drag them all over. It'll take a while but it should just work!

debitcardmayhem

You can't the virgin.net domain is out of your control I'm afraid

IdleEye071

razord said:

IdleEye071 said:

Thank you all. I now know all the issues, but some notification would have been nice. When something works, you tend not to question as to why. And I have never received anything to this effect ever. If I had, of course I'd have acted. So now I accept I have to find something else, but losing any new incoming stuff is really worrying. Just need to find a way of forwarding it all to a new address

Do you mean copy all the old email into a new account? You should be able to just do all that in Apple Mail - just add whoever you decide to use going forward to Mail too, and then drag them all over. It'll take a while but it should just work!

No, got all legacy emails on my Apple Mail IMAP so that's all good. Just wondered if there's a way I can get future ones forwarded to whatever I set up next

razord

IdleEye071 said:

razord said:

IdleEye071 said:

Thank you all. I now know all the issues, but some notification would have been nice. When something works, you tend not to question as to why. And I have never received anything to this effect ever. If I had, of course I'd have acted. So now I accept I have to find something else, but losing any new incoming stuff is really worrying. Just need to find a way of forwarding it all to a new address

Do you mean copy all the old email into a new account? You should be able to just do all that in Apple Mail - just add whoever you decide to use going forward to Mail too, and then drag them all over. It'll take a while but it should just work!

No, got all legacy emails on my Apple Mail IMAP so that's all good. Just wondered if there's a way I can get future ones forwarded to whatever I set up next

Ah, nope. Unfortunately not.

You'll need to drop an email to everyone you need to giving them your new email address, and update any accounts you used to login with the old email.

IdleEye071

razord said:

IdleEye071 said:

razord said:

IdleEye071 said:

Thank you all. I now know all the issues, but some notification would have been nice. When something works, you tend not to question as to why. And I have never received anything to this effect ever. If I had, of course I'd have acted. So now I accept I have to find something else, but losing any new incoming stuff is really worrying. Just need to find a way of forwarding it all to a new address

Do you mean copy all the old email into a new account? You should be able to just do all that in Apple Mail - just add whoever you decide to use going forward to Mail too, and then drag them all over. It'll take a while but it should just work!

No, got all legacy emails on my Apple Mail IMAP so that's all good. Just wondered if there's a way I can get future ones forwarded to whatever I set up next

Ah, nope. Unfortunately not.

You'll need to drop an email to everyone you need to giving them your new email address, and update any accounts you used to login with the old email.

Thought that might be the case. It's gonna be months of work to do this, sifting through the backlog. Feel a bit sick as I'm working away from home with patchy internet. Just imagined VM Support may have been a tad more helpful

400ixl

You can't put an email forwarder on the account now as you have no access, all emails sent will either bounce as undeliverable, or just go into the ether. You can test this when you set up a new email service by emailing your old address and seeing what happens. Hopefully they will bounce as it at least tells people it is no longer active.