Last weekend’s Guardian Money article about Virgin Media customers being left without access to vital emails for several weeks prompted a sizeable response from other readers saying “me, too”.
The sense of frustration was writ large across the letters sent in to us.
Our article explained that problems started in June when Virgin Media upgraded its systems, and affected people using older email addresses. A tech failure initially left some people unable to send or receive messages for several days, and then meant some had three to four weeks without access to historic emails.
Here’s what some readers said:
NL, who has been trying to help his father-in-law restore his service, was incensed after reading Virgin Media’s response to the article.
“He has had this issue going on for four weeks and yesterday spent a total of six hours being passed from pillar to post by Virgin’s customer service team, with no one having a clue what is going on,” he wrote.
“No one has been in contact to explain the situation (unless they sent an email?!), and the issue is ongoing, with customer service teams unprepared to deal with something they clearly state is a known issue.”
AJ said she felt similarly let down after being unable to access her Blueyonder email account for five weeks.
“My emails disappeared during outages in June. After the second, they reappeared, but they quickly disappeared again, and I haven’t seen them since. Attempts to get access arrive at an almost blank page headed “403 Forbidden”. The lost emails include correspondence about several science history papers I am preparing. Virgin Media says it has been in regular contact with affected account holders – this is simply not true,” she wrote.
OG told us she had similarly been without access to her emails since 15 July, when she started getting the message “403 Forbidden”. She said she had been told it could take up to 28 days to resolve.
“I changed my password and memorable word, as they told me to, but no luck. I then rang Virgin Media and was put through to the Gadget Rescue Team. About 45 minutes with them got nowhere. They put me through to the broadband email department. No luck. They tried to put me back to the Gadget lot, but I said I’d been there already. Eventually I was told they knew about the fault and it would be sorted by 19 July, but it hasn’t been.”
HS contacted us to say he had been unable to send or receive emails via his Blueyonder email address since 3 July, nearly seven weeks ago.
He said he had been “trying to resolve the situation through countless lengthy telephone calls with Virgin… I do not know what meetings or appointments I have missed or to whom I have failed to respond”.
SC wrote to say that she had lost two-and-a-half years’ worth of emails which disappeared from her Virgin Media email account in April. “Despite raising this as a complaint with Virgin, they advised that they are unable to retrieve the lost emails.
“Virgin only offered a goodwill payment of £50, which I was advised by the ombudsman to accept. Is there anything else that can be done?” she asked.
SB wrote to say that her 87-year-old mother, who lives alone, was going through the same process.
“I live in France so I can’t go round and help her sort it out for another couple of weeks. She doesn’t use her emails a great deal, but they are a way for her to stay in touch with friends, and she feels very cut off without it.
“She doesn’t understand what she has to do to reactivate her account. She has tried phoning the helpline, but they weren’t able to reestablish access – she said they didn’t understand her problem.”
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We completed our work to restore historic emails for the small proportion of impacted account holders last month. We have since been investigating a small number of cases where individuals have experienced other issues accessing their emails, many of which we’ve already resolved. We are working with users to troubleshoot their issues as soon as we can and apologise to any customer who has experienced any difficulty accessing their emails.”
We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions
