Any Virgin broadband users lost their email today ? Mine's been off all day. In Thunderbird I get the error:
"Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server pop.virgin.net responded: [AUTH] Username and password not accepted."

With Virgin's online mail service, I get a Google screen saying:
"This account has been disabled. We are unable to process your request at this time, please try again later."

There are no email faults reported on their service status and I'm definitely using my correct username and password. Phoned their 0845 help line but there's a big queue.

Anyone got any ideas ?

I've had the exact same problem! I thought it was just me because I'd moved house. I thought they had disabled my old accounts so I was going to phone them and play hell because they never told me but I didn't have time today.

Just checked mine and it just comes up with a disabled message !. I don't use it that much but some people still send me mail despite the fact i have moved on to another service !.

just tested my accounts - work fine


However, over a couple of weeks I have had problems of emails not arriving when I KNOW they have been sent. Indeed, if I open up NTL Webmail I can see the emails concerned sitting in the received folder - but Outlook is not picking them up no matter what I do.

And yet - if in webmail I forward them to myself - Outlook then picks them up OK

Weird

Snod

I'll take a guess and say that it's a problem which is not uncommon then. As usual, Virgin's service is downright shoddy and they can't even be bothered to make an announcement on their website. They really *are* unbelievably sh1te.

The virgin media site is saying..

Your email service is being upgraded. Please enter your email address to check if your account has been moved to our new system

Could be to do with that???

Virgin media

Up until now I've never had a problem with Nynex, Cable and Wireless, NTL or Virgin. (all the same people under different names) and I've been with them for 15 years none stop. Like I said, I just thought it was because of the move.

You must have had problems with them at some point, given the numerous regional and national outages they have suffered over the years.

They are a terrble company, and their internet service may seem great on the surface, but scratch a little deeper and you enter the murky world of throttling, traffic shaping, non-net-neutrality, Phorm... the list goes on and on lol. Not to mention their implementation of both DAVIC and DOCSIS (and on the TW side of things, euroDOCSIS) has been piss-poor and years behind at best.

As a home user, I don't have that much to download so those problems have been avoided. My original 'never had a problem' was concerning email as per the post subject not the general internet service, which I also haven't a problem with beyong the occasional disruption and nothing is perfect. On the whole, I am very happy with the service I have had and value for money with Virgin et-al!

Mine went off for about 5 mins at around 5.00pm, i shut down the comp, started it up again and now everything's fine again

My Virgin Media has been fine, never ever had a problem with it. been with them since Nynex.

My Virgin Media is OK as of 0754 on March 1st, but I did have to re-connect to my wireless router to get on line this morning.

I got the same Google Apps page saying it's been disabled, and my phone email keeps popping up with 'unable to sign in'

yours won't work because it runs off mine!

Booooo! I googled it and it had happened to other people but last year, some of them were posting after waiting 8 weeks with no email :S

Still no email. I've phoned the useless buggers and requested my MAC.

20 minutes on the phone, thank god it's free, and four different departments later and Virgin say they are hoping it will be fixed by 09:00 tomorrow. Watch this space!!!

Croc is it the usual problems with the exchange BS

Can't be as bad as talk talk, absolute clowns they are

I'ts an area fault they reckon.

definitely an area fault, mine is spot on.

Are yo on their ADSL service? At least their cable service is consitently quite fast (when they allow you to use it that is), but their ADSL service is the pits lmao.

Yes Matt and it's never been that good to be honest. I'm getting 6.2Mbps at the moment which is ok but it usually disconnects and reconnects itself at least once per day.

I'm thinking of going onto BT's Broadband And Anytime Calls bundle btw. Got my MAC already. At least Virgin can get something right.

Avoid BT like the plague - my mum was left without internet for 52 days by their stupidity - and their broadband is a right royal rip off price wise - and they are starting to implement the dirty traffic management and throttling tactics that Virgin do. And avoid TalkTalk/Tiscali. Not sure about Orange nowadays, but they had a terrible reputation.

Probably leaves you with o2 and Plusnet haha, the former have been excellent for me. Im with Madasafish (sub of Plusnet) for my landline, and they are dirt cheap call-wise, and have always gone way above my expectations when it comes to customer service!!

I'm with talk talk, they are very cheap (phonecalls and broadband), customer service can be crap when you initially try and get connected. Once your connected everything is fine.

Most of the customer services are much of a muchness, you might as well pay a cheap price and get crappy service than pay a higher price and get a crap service.

My speed on ADSL is amazing, but I am sitting on top of the telephone exchange.

All the problems on joining were Openreach problems not talktalk as they do line repairs, connections etc.

Have had a few funnies now and then - broadband and/or phone occasionally went off just after midnight, back on the next day, but they were doing a major upgrade to the exchange to increase its capacity and speed.

I don't know how people are taken in by the Virgin phonecall pricing, they are totally extortionate on a system that should be able to provide the cheapest calls.

The problem with Tiscali/TalkTalk is they are rotten from the core, every element of their service seems to fall foul of regulators and watchdogs, and they are constantly involved in some scam or swindle, and generating massive amounts of complaints. For all their faults, even BT can't hold a candle to TalkTalks crappy service...

TalkTalk have a long and established history of leaving (particuarly new) customers without internet access for weeks, even months in a lot of cases. Then they have the reputation for increasing their prices willy-nilly. Just this week they have been fined £2.5million for continuing to bill an estimated 62,000 customers who no longer have services from them. Routers going lost in the post, ending up all around the world, taking months to arrive at customers, not honouring price contracts etc... And thats before you even consider their shitty customer services!! I seem to recall it took you over a month of arsing about with their customer services telling you your not even a customer etc, before they got your connection installed.

Their biggest problem is, they seem to be totally profit driven, with zero interest in their customers. Everytime they have problems, and the numerous times they have been on Watchdog and other consumer shows, they always blame it on some crappy system they have running, they never hold their hands up and say we are getting it wrong, and things never improve (its 5 years since the horrors of new customer connections hit the headlines, and you yourself are proof they are still happening). They were on rip-off britain just a few weeks ago with people still experiencing problems with their internet connections amongst other issues.

It's easier to just avoid the ... than risk the problems - the risk is simply too high. Whilst no ISP is perfect, and all ISP's suffer some issues from time to time, the level of customer disastisfaction with TalkTalk seems to be extraordinarily higher than other ISP's. When a company like o2, for the mostpart, can get it "just right" (even if it is a couple of quid more expensive - not worked it out) why can't the others? Freefone customer support 24/7 based in the UK (no Indians asking you to speak clear English to them because they can't understand you), who know what they are talking about instead of just reading from a script and ending up at "computer says no" etc... Internet services that are lightning fast, no horror stories of people struggling for months to get connections, rewards given to loyal customers in the form of discounts, generally just a service that works and a company that seems interested in keeping you happy to keep your custom etc... and there are other smaller companies like them, but none of the big-boys follow their example?

o2 show it can be done, the only conclusion I can reach is that none of the other want to do it!

Bahhh it's still not working

Told ya haha

Likewise. Day 3 and still no email. Useless bustards.

Shhhhh!

Matt i'm with you mate, I used to be a bench engineer and have a decent bit of IT experience, Talk Talk are the biggest shower i have come across, Customer service is sh*te and all call centres seem to be based abroad. Frustration isn't the word. You get helpfull advice such as is your router turned on ? - wtf ?

They give you a half decent connection when in trial period, but averages about 5mb soon as trial expires and your bound for two years they put u on a 1mb pI** poor line, online with your mates on COD is a no no as line can't cope, youtube is even an effort, constant lag and pauses and contention on the line is about 1 to the rest of the wirral, stay away from talk talk they are about as technical as a monkey, customer support doesn't exist, you'd get more sense from pc world and that is saying something !

My missus thought she was doing us a favor by using them becasue they are cheap, i have found out why the hard way

Cowboys

Day 4. Email finally working again.

Mine's still not working

Talktalk won the "most improved customer services award", while admittedly starting off from a low level makes this easier, credit must be given to them for not sitting on their laurels. I have certainly noticed a significant improvement.

My problems when starting with them was caused solely by Openreach, who are not directly under control of talktalk. Openreach told talktalk that they had checked by line thoroughly a number of times and saying that they had paid a visit. Actually my telephone line wasn't going to my property and they had not paid a visit either to my property or the one where my line was going to.

For the price and performance I rate them very highly. Off-shore customer services can be bypassed to a degree by using the online forums and dealing with Milton Keynes directly if things have gone bosoms-up.

Remember though DD, it's very easy for any ISP to blame connection delays on Openreach, especially since Openreach are not directly responsible for or accountable to the end-user... indeed Sky spent a few months doing it when they had account system issues. Openreach have a contractual and legal (competition) obligation to connect line within a set period and activate a DSL ATM on the line. In this case, Openreach will have been getting paid (handsomely) by TalkTalk to enter the exchange to connect the line to TalkTalks equipment as it's not a standard IPStream connection. It is not inconceivable to think that TalkTalk may be asking Openreach to conduct the work on a "best effort" basis and thus benefitting from lower costs of such work.

The BT Group are NOT allowed to stifle to BT retail competition connections by influencing Openreach to connect lines slower etc..

If it had only happened to yourself and a couple of others, then that would be clearly a mistake, but for it to have kept happening over and over again during a period of 5 years, seems a little strange, when the issue is almost unheard of for other ISP's.

This, with all the other shit they seem get stuck up in, says to me they are a very very shady company, with zero interest in their customers, and are a company best avoided. As you say, their customer services was pityful to begin with, so a 100% improvement still would not bring them up to the level of other companies... despite which, almost all of these "awards" are purchased by ISP's anyway... I remember the ISPA awards being sponsored by Freeserve, and guess who scooped more than half of the awards...

I also remember the TalkTalk "free internet for life" so long as you take their phone service... that 18 months later, customers started getting billed for??

Finally got my email back! Was hoping to have two weeks of emails but no, haha

They will have been bounced around like a shock absorber on a Britsh road. Still, some may come through over the next few days, dependent on the kill/discard duration on the sending server.

Yeah yeah so you said. But a girl can dream!

Personally, I have my servers blackholing emails after a week Far too many to hold onto them any longer haha!

Haha I know!