Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Virgin email stopped working? A solution

Has your Virgin Media email stopped working today? I have an ntlworld.com email address and this morning the incoming mail server started  rejecting all requests ("terminated unexpectedly") from Outlook Express.

Well, after much googling (anyone who has Virgin will know how pointless and time-wasting ringing them is!) I found the Virgin support forum and this post. The Upshot being what worked for me was to turn off SSL for the imcoming mail (Tools->Account->Mail->ntlworld->Properties->Advanced->untick incoming mail SSL). I am now receiving email again (I imagine it will stop working again once they "fix" it and I'll have to put it back). YMMV


Reading through the forums it seems that this kind of thing is quite a frequent occurrence each time picking out one of their other email domains (blueyonder, virginmedia).

When people ask me whether I would recommend Virgin, I always say that their broadband and TV service is excellent (I love on-demand TV and the broadband has never let me down) but woe betide if anything ever does go wrong as they have the worst customer service this side of Betelgeuse! (Indian call-centre script, have you tried turning it on and off, our systems aren't working at the moment, etc...)

UPDATE: They seem to have fixed it now.
UPDATE 28/07/2010 (the next day). Sigh, it's not working again, switching off ssl works...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I too had problems getting my e-mails while on holiday, rang customer service lady kept me waiting ages asked me stuped questions. had i forgot my password etc i reminded her 3 times i was on a mobile from Eire would she put it right. She said she would ask someone never came back. I wasted about 10euros on calls. Where do they recruit their staff?????. Just came across this by chance