back to article Virgin Media filters are still eating our email – Ntlworlders

The woes of Virgin Media Ntlworld.com account-holders are no closer to being resolved, with continued reports of customers unable to access their email. Last week The Register reported that subscribers affected by the ISP's migration from Google's Gmail service were first forced to wade through hundreds of spam messages to get …

  1. arnieL

    Not just NTLWorld customers

    (Blueyonder) I moved away from Virgin ages ago because there were so many problems with their email service, I think it may have been after the original move from Unix to Exchange some time in the naughties...

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "We appreciate the frustration this causes our customers and thank them for their patience,”

    Translation: "we seem to be getting away with doing nothing".

    Why should they bother to do anything if their customers are gormless* enough not to get another email service?

    *With a nod to the thread on Lester's article.

    1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

      "We appreciate the frustration this causes our customers and thank them for their patience,”

      Translation: "Please stop yelling at me".

    2. Velv
      Flame

      Why should they get another email service? Virgin are meant to be providing a service and are charging for it.

      Agreed you "could" vote with your feet and move, but similarly Virgin "could" pay compensation (or at least reduce bills) for failing to provide the service they have contracted to provide.

  3. BenBell
    Trollface

    “We’re aware that some customers may be experiencing issues with their email filters and are working hard with our provider to ensure normal service is resumed. We appreciate the frustration this causes our customers and thank them for their patience,”

    "We don't give a flying f*ck!"

    Fixed that for you.

    </rant>

    I feel sorry for the poor folk who need this service online. While most of us have moved onto gmail, onto our own domains, onto wherever we currently host our mail - it would really suck to not be able to get mail and to be one of those affected - their mail is just as important to them as ours is to us... wherever its's hosted.

  4. Gordan

    Yeah, right...

    "The problem continues and is impacting their ntlworld.com customers. The company I work for has 10,000 of their customers legitimately registered."

    I somehow seriously doubt the truthfulness of that statement. I regularly end up getting email I most definitely didn't sign up for via "digital marketing" companies that make that exact claim.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Yeah, right...

      "I somehow seriously doubt the truthfulness of that statement"

      Why? It's quite feasible that large scale companies such as banks would have large numbers with a given provider.

      1. Gordan

        Re: Yeah, right...

        Banks generally explicitly state that they will never, ever email you. The reason they don't email things out is because if the users grow to expect emails from their banks they become that much more susceptible to phishing scam emails pretending to be from their bank.

        1. Donn Bly
          FAIL

          Re: Banks generally explicitly state that they will never, ever email you

          Uh, no. Many banks do email their customers - I get a dozen or so messages from mine every week. Messages that statements are available to download, messages saying that a wire transfer has been received, messages with electronic receipts from the ATM, messages with service announcements, etc.

          I deal with several banks, at EVERY one of them sends me at least one email a month.

          1. Vic
            Joke

            Re: Banks generally explicitly state that they will never, ever email you

            Many banks do email their customers - I get a dozen or so messages from mine every week

            I get a dozen or so messages from yours every week too.

            Vic.

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Yeah, right...

          @ Gordan

          Banks don't email? Worse. They employ marketing companies to email on their behalf with the From: field set to look as if it's the bank's domain when a quick chase through the headers reveals that it's not. Often there are embedded links which aren't to the banks emails. They've been teaching their customers to fall for phishing scams for years. Retail banking is run by marketing wonks who wouldn't recognise security if it came up to them & bit them in the arse.

  5. Spender

    ISP email?

    Maybe 15 years ago... Why would you do that now?

    1. Valerion

      Re: ISP email?

      Because I've had the damn email address from the ISP for 15 years...

      1. wolfetone Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: ISP email?

        Have you ever watched Frozen? Because there's a song in it called "Let It Go" which you'd probably find useful around about now...

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: ISP email?

        " I've had the damn email address from the ISP for 15 years"

        Does that mean you've never needed to change ISP (in which case you're lucky) or because the grief of changing email address is too great to contemplate changing ISP - however bad they are?

        1. Valerion

          Re: ISP email?

          "Does that mean you've never needed to change ISP (in which case you're lucky) or because the grief of changing email address is too great to contemplate changing ISP - however bad they are?"

          Never had to change ISP. Got Virgin Media (well, Telewest) installed when I moved into my house in 2001. I haven't moved since and Virgin's cable internet is generally far superior to anything a phone line can offer.

    2. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

      Re: ISP email?

      Why not? There is no implicit reason VM email should be worse than any other and it generally hasn't been.

      In the wake of moving from Google it has been a steaming pile of crap; endless spam getting through, incoming mail lost (even email I have sent from one of my own accounts to another), web mail not working properly when one has to use that to try and fix things. And it is taking weeks to get things fixed.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: ISP email?

        Because reliance on any one supplier is a bad thing.

        At minimum, buy a domain, forward it to your ISP email account of choice. No working changes for you, but when there's a problem, you can change the forwarding to ANYTHING AT ALL. An emergency gmail address, another ISP, your own server.

        Cost? Forward-only domains are pence. You also get an unlimited number of email addresses you can use (e.g. iknowthisisspambutiamonlyenteringacompetition@yourdomain.com) and nobody ever finds out your "real" email (if they do, but you never advertised it, you know Virgin/whoever have sold their lists! In fact, I have done something similar to prove that RM sold their account lists - or had them stolen - because they were the only ones ever issued with rm@mydomain.com).

        People on TheReg are supposed to be slightly more technically literate than the average person. If you were applying for an IT job with me and only have @gmail.com/@hotmail.com addresses on your CV, that's bad. @someispthatdiedyearsago.com? That's so incredibly worse. I honestly judge even service providers who only provide me with @isp.com emails... even more so when their website clearly has a relevant domain name that they've purchased but not bothered to use.

        ISP email was back in the 90's when people didn't have their own email address or know how to buy a domain. Now even web-based mail is superior and free, but still frowned upon. Not having changed the way you do email since the 90's and dial-up suggests a lack of appreciation for quite what reliance on a single ISP that gives you. Nowadays it's just a bad sign. It's like advertising a C/O address as your main company address. It's so unprofessional.

        And given that this is not the first major upheaval suffered by these customers for lingering on these ancients domains of the predecessor company, they have only themselves to blame by now. If you'd bought "mydomain.com" years ago, you could put that on business cards and given it to friends, ride through all these transitions and - at any point - move your email to any other provider in the world and nobody else would even notice. And next time you need a spam email, or to block a certain company sending you email, you just use/block that particular user@mydomain.com.

        If nothing else, do it NOW so you aren't affected in the future.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: ISP email?

          "iknowthisisspambutiamonlyenteringacompetition@yourdomain.com"

          There's also the secret little pleasure of knowing all their spam will bounce.

          1. Sgt_Oddball

            Re: ISP email?

            I just named mine spambox... That way if anyone actually reads it they should get the hint.

        2. a_mu

          Dont forward to ntlworld.com

          DO NOT forward to NTLWORD.com email address's

          The virgin system now filters most forwarded mails , and just blocks them .

          no spam no warning, just bounced.

          Now once upon a time the ntlworld mail just worked, then came virgin with google, and it was OK, now google have dropped virgin, and virgin managment just seem not to have this under control.

        3. Vic

          Re: ISP email?

          I have done something similar to prove that RM sold their account lists - or had them stolen - because they were the only ones ever issued with rm@mydomain.com).

          You've done no such thing.

          A username part as simple as "rm" could easily have bene found by dictionary attack or domain enumeration. Had your address been "thisaddresswasonlygiventormandtheresnowayitshouldcomefromanyoneelse@mydomain.com", you might have had a point...

          Vic.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: ISP email?

            A username part as simple as "rm" could easily have bene found by dictionary attack or domain enumeration. Had your address been "thisaddresswasonlygiventormandtheresnowayitshouldcomefromanyoneelse@mydomain.com", you might have had a point..."

            I do similar, but the name is usually more than just two letters. The only time I've suspected a sell off or theft of email addresses was SVP. But like rm, svp is short enough that it MIGHT have been dictionaried. But then again, I'd expect a dictionary attack which found svp@mydomain.com would have filled the postmaster@ address with all the other attempts. It didn't.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: ISP email?

        Until recently it's been no worse than my other accounts and marginally better than one I had hosted. And at no extra cost. It's certainly been fine for the family, indeed for most of the public ISP email is perfectly good. And since I don't often pick it up via the web page I can filter it locally. But that's still a pain.

        BUT, at the moment it's just a steaming pile of c**p.

        Not simply that a flood of blindingly obvious scam email is getting through (how many gift tokens from reputable companies could a guy want?). But also that the in-built controls for marking spam don't work.

        Mark an email as Spam and it vanishes. But then reappears in the inbox.

        Try to move it to the SPAM folder and it doesn't go

        And I don't know if I've lost any proper emails.

        Come to think of it, the web based email isn't too clever even when it is working.

        If you select (tick) a message and delete it. the next one in the list gets ticked in its place. So that when you tick another one to remove, they both stay selected, it doesn't move to the new selection and two get hit (Like doing ctrl+click versus "click").

        In short - total f*ck up.

        It's beyond my skills to know how these things work. But how hard can it be for a bloody great big communications company to sort out its f***ing communications???????????

        Spawn of Satan icon, because I can't have FAIL WTF and the one with a flame all at the same time.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: ISP email?

          "But how hard can it be for a bloody great big communications company to sort out its f***ing communications???????????"

          Have you tried hunting across their site/help pages for a contact email address? Bet you can't find one! :-)

      4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: ISP email?

        "endless spam getting through,"

        Can I have some please?

        I just dumped spamassassin as being too slow and am busy training bogofilter but I'm "lucky" if I get more than a few spams per day through 4 Blueyonder address as well as my own domain.

        I'm really not sure what has gone pear-shaped at VM and why some blocks of customers are getting large amounts of spam and/or many "lost" legitimate emails but I can quite categorically say it's not everyone who is suffering, much as I feel for those who are. On the other hand, maybe I am suffering from the problems and it's only the spam which is being blocked?

        (I really don't use the BY address for much important stuff other than as the primary domain contact address for my own domain admin stuff and the billing notifications are still getting through as normal)

        1. James R Grinter

          Re: ISP email?

          They were rejecting emails during delivery, the other week (including to postmaster). So you almost certainly have lost some.

  6. teebie

    "Why not"

    To avoid vendor lock-in.

    Because if you move house to a place that Virgin haven't cabled you presumably lose access to your email address. Which adds to the frustration that comes of them somehow needing 10 days to work out that they can't give you service because they haven't cabled the house despite...

    ...sorry, I seem to have something on my mind.

    1. Martin-73 Silver badge

      To a place virgin HAVE cabled but the gormless fuckwits at customer disservice swear blind they haven't. Till you ask them who owns the cabinet full of coaxial cable down the road: If it's not them, cutting a few wires and seeing what name is on the van that turns up (other than 'police') should identify the cable company.

      Their response: "You can't do that, that's our equipment"... in an area they JUST claimed they weren't in

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Normal Service

    I don't want normal service. I want to be able to get my bloody email.

  8. DaddyHoggy

    I started with NTL World with 1997 and was given an NTL World email address. It was my main email for many years - when Virgin took over - they said we'd get VM emails but either it didn't happen or I missed the email to tell me how to do it.

    So, I've been slowly been increasing my use of my Gmail account (and moving away from my NTLWorld one - I dip into it once a week as lots of people, companies still have it - indeed - I often register with that email expecting it to get spammed at a later date. (Which happens a lot).

    They recently migrated the browser based version to gmail - and I find it a pain to log in as it seems to get confused about me also having a gmail account - so I always have to log back in via the actual Virgin Media website...

    I've gone from hundreds of spam emails a few weeks ago - to almost none at all - so I guess the filter is now chopping out everything - hopefully I'm not missing anything important - as my friends now have my Gmail account to contact me by and any company which only issues important stuff via a email is asking for trouble and not being very professional.

    Been looking at getting my own domain - and this just pushes me further in that direction...

    1. Pookietoo

      Re: They recently migrated the browser based version to gmail

      Actually they're in the process of migrating from Google, that's what this article is about.

  9. Tubz Silver badge

    "We appreciate the frustration this causes our customers and thank them for their patience,”

    Translation,

    We have you money and don't give a flying ferret, if you don't like it FOAD, we'll fix it when we can be arsed, about the same time we fix video buffering and overselling our bandwidth capabilities and give you the speed your actually paying for 365/24/7 or hell freezes, which ever comes first!

    1. Gavin Chester

      Oi. Leave Ferrets alone. They are useful critters.

  10. a_mu

    And so far only a few percent of emails moved

    So far, its only the blueyonder and ntlworld accounts that have been moved to the new virgin server.

    Just think whats going to happen when the much larger number of virginmedia accounts are moved,

    If I was in front line support, I'd either leave or get ready for lots of overtime.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: And so far only a few percent of emails moved

      "So far, its only the blueyonder and ntlworld accounts that have been moved to the new virgin server."

      It's interesting that this didn't happen during the BY migration from GMail. I wonder what they did differently for the NTLWorld accounts? After all, they are all coming from the same GMail system to the same new system. I'm betting that either they, their new mail provider, or GMail have tried to automate more of the process to save time and/or money in the meantime and someone screwed up.

  11. bikerwales

    and don't forget the "remove email from server" option which stil doesn't work

    Since migrating to the gmail replacement the "remove email from server" option doesn't work on Outlook or anthing else any more as far as I can see. They are still working on this (incredibly annoying) "feature" but no time scale or news on it. I really don't want to be logging on to their webmail every week to delete shedloads of emils that are already on my PC, phone or whatever!

  12. darren.b

    Meh

    The only thing that I use VM's email service for are their bills and marketing junk. Everything else is kept well away from them. Hence...no problem this end.

    You can port your phone number, you can't port your ISP email address.

  13. Number6

    Old Addresses

    Interestingly enough, I cancelled my VM subscription over a year ago, but the ntlworld email address I had there, which was configured to auto-forward to my domain, still does.

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