Virgin Media email service users suffer lengthy failure

Virgin Media has apologised to users of its email services after long-running problems stopped some users accessing inboxes or sending messages.

Some customers were still reporting problems on social media 36 hours after initial reports of issues.

Virgin Media email is no longer available to new customers, but many existing customers still rely on it for work.

The company said restoring access was a priority.

"We apologise again to those individuals who have been experiencing issues with their email services," Virgin Media said.

Problems were first reported on Monday morning and continued into Tuesday. A steady stream of over 800 reports were submitted to the website Downdetector since 08:00 BST Tuesday.

Virgin Media Mail operates several email domains, including @virginmedia.com, @ntlworld.com, @blueyonder.co.uk and @virgin.net, according to broadband news site ISPreview.co.uk.

A user in Cambridgeshire - who contacted the BBC but did not wish to be named - said she had lost access to her emails. Her husband died recently and the loss of access to email was "a complete and utter nightmare".

"It has been unbelievably stressful and upsetting. My email is my lifeline. I'm the executor of his will and therefore, for the last few months, I've been back and forth with emails.

"But it's also people who have contacted me from different parts of the world about him and their memories of him and that's been important to me too."

She described the wait to regain access to her emails as "nerve wracking".

Mike Brennan from Preston told the BBC he had been "pretty much two days without it. So I will say, it's frustrating".

"You do pay a lot of money for the service to be fair, and then when there is a glitch you're so reliant on it, it's a difficult one to get around when you're not able to access services and stuff like that, or get in contact with people to complain about it."

In an email sent to some customers published by ISPreview.co.uk on Tuesday, Virgin Media said its "teams have been able to fully restore most email services".

But it says for some customers emails "received on or before 19 June will not be appearing in your inbox, sent items or any other folders".

It said that these emails were "safe and secure" and would be restored.