Virgin Media dont support Outlook

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

Where should VM draw the line - should they provide support for Flash, MS Office, COD:WAW, Avast Anti-virus, GameSpy?

All of the above are third party software, and if VM are expected to provide support for all major 3rd Party software products, they will have to hire hundreds, if not thousands of extra support staff, which will in turn increase our bills - all for someone else's software they do not get any revenue from.

Where's the sense in that?

That's just it. They add support for Outlook. Where do they end? Pegasus? Eudora? Thunderbird? The Bat? Opera Mail? Or, any one of the 100s of other mail clients available on Windows? What about the Mac? What about Linux? FreeBSD? any Unix or Unix clone? What about phones/PDAs? The iPhone, any Android handset? Windows Mobile? Symbian (Series 40, 60, 90 or UIQ)? I don't know how many email clients there are, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were 1000s of email clients available on all those platforms I listed.

Unfortunately, while it would be nice for Virgin (or any ISP) to support every available email client, but as you note, it is not practical.

[Onclejean]

Originally Posted by Jon T

@ Onclejean

You've also conveniently forgot, or not read, one of my posts that specifically said that I know lots of ex-telewest(now virgin) users who use outlook, have done for years and have never had any problems.

I also know many users that are ex-ntl(not as many as those on ex-telewest) that have used outlook for ages, again without problems.

Like i've also said before, if any of the plethora of email systems virgin adopted from NTL, Telewest etc were non standard, then you'd have more than users of MS outlook complaining.

I've got a Linksys router, which although it's badged that way is actually made by Cisco. Should virgin support my router as it's made by one of the biggest players in the world of networking. They don't and i'm happy with that. That's not to say my Linksys/Cisco rout won't work with Virgin, it does work, and very well. But if I get a problem with it, it isn't Virgin's problem. Exactly the same situation.

Would you care to tell us in what way outlook doesn't work, someone on here may know why in your case it doesn't work. I know you've mentioned multiple instances of it not working, but you've never told us exactly what doesn't work.

No need to get cross! It confuses the discussion. I did see your contribution but you must have missed my early contributions.
The short answer to your question is that many inexperienced users cannot configure Outlook as their email client using the latter's "new" account settings.
A newcomer was complaining that he could not use Outlook with VM who would not help him. I explained how to do it. And yes , yes, a lot of users like him do complain as shown by this thread which started a very long while ago.

I personally have been able to run Outlook with Blueyonder since the latter started years ago.

[Jon T]

Me, cross, nope .

OK, I see the point your making. I don't agree though, like others have said, where do you draw the line?

My question as to what issues you had with Outlook comes from the fact that you made reference to the fact that you thought that Virgin were operating non standard mail services (POP3/SMTP) which i took to mean you(or someone you knew) was having more of a problem than getting the mailbox and sending/receiving settings right.

[Stuart]

Erm, how does a thread that , over the space of 1 year, has had 2 (or possibly 3) users who are having problems with Outlook, show that a lot of users are having problems?

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Onclejean

I suggest that it is the existence of Virgin’s unusually complex access to email mail settings that makes Virgin Help’s refuse to go beyond advice on setting up Outlook Express. In particular Virgin Media email is not simple to configure for inexperienced users of Outlook because the latter offers several email protocols, not just Pop3.
I expect that as time goes on Virgin will sort this out and refrain from foolish comments like not supporting Outlook because it is third party software

As I have said earlier Virgin do not support products that are not bundled with the operating systems regardless of how much you and others think they should be as this would entail extra training and relevant software to be installed on our systems which in turn would increase the cost of the service which by default makes it a non starter.

If you have to downloaded it, bought it, got it free with a magazine and want to install it on your system then Virgin will not support that product as it is a "THIRD PARTY PRODUCT" no ifs or buts.

You want to access Virgin email easily then use webmail, if you want to use an unsupported email client then find out how to use it and do not sulk when you call in and we say sorry its unsupported but we can help you install Outlook Express or Windows Mail.

[Sir John Luke]

Just to point out - the 'operating systems' are THIRD PARTY products.

[Ben B]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

Just to point out - the 'operating systems' are THIRD PARTY products.

Enough with the technicalities! They are providing an internet connection which requires an operating system to be used. Virgin have chosen to support the operating system which the majority of their customers and in fact the majority of everyone use so that they can support as many customers as they can.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

Just to point out - the 'operating systems' are THIRD PARTY products.

I use Linux which is unsupported and also Windows 7 is unsupported as yet, but without a O/S you have no computer to be supported.


As I said above

Originally Posted by Moldova

If you have to downloaded it, bought it, got it free with a magazine and want to install it on your system then Virgin will not support that product as it is a "THIRD PARTY PRODUCT" no ifs or buts.

[Sir John Luke]

I agree that VM can only support a limited number of products, but it is a bit disingenuous to say they don't support 'third party' products when Windows itself is third party, as are all the users' computers (except the 'netbook offer').

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

I agree that VM can only support a limited number of products, but it is a bit disingenuous to say they don't support 'third party' products when Windows itself is third party, as are all the users' computers (except the 'netbook offer').

Third party products that you put on afterwards which is what I have said throughout this thread, without an O/S you have no computer and the netbook uses XP.

[LaineY]

Originally Posted by Onclejean

A Virgin employee says that Virgin do not support Outlook because it is a part of the
"Microsoft Office suite" which is 3rd party software"
I am passing this classic oxymoron onto Bill Gates so that he knows Richard considers Microsoft Office, the company's flagship product, is "third party software"
As many contributors above have suggested Virgin damn well ought to support Outlook because when they were Telewest they did.

Just a pointer chief!... It still is Telewest and NO we didn't support outlook... we never have. The guys at technical support KNOW fine well that MS Outlook is basically a carbon copy of outlook express... do we want to help you set it up... yes we do... are we permitted to.. No.

Telewest set the support scope on this donkeys years ago.

as for the Richard comment.. NTL Telewest bought the VM name off Mr Branson.

So that company that you used to love and really miss is still that same company with a different name.

[Sir John Luke]

Originally Posted by Moldova

Third party products that you put on afterwards which is what I have said throughout this thread, without an O/S you have no computer and the netbook uses XP.

Be interesting to see what VM do about e-mail support when they start supporting Windows 7, then.

Just to clarify, I think it is perfectly understandable and acceptable that VM only support the most common OS and e-mail client. I just think it is a bit disingenuous to claim this is purely because they 'don't support third-part software'.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

Be interesting to see what VM do about e-mail support when they start supporting Windows 7, then.

It depends if the is anything included with the O/S and if it turns out to be Windows Live Mail thats already unsupported, but if it is up to choose what email client you install then the only support regards email support would be for Webmail and you would have to configure your POP3 client yourself, the same as I and others already do who use the likes of Thunderbird or Outlook.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

Be interesting to see what VM do about e-mail support when they start supporting Windows 7, then

It's part of the reason they are pushing Webmail rather than a specific e-mail client.

The move to the Google mail platform will only increase this shift.

---------- Post added at 11:41 ---------- Previous post was at 11:38 ----------

Originally Posted by Moldova

It depends if the is anything included with the O/S and if it turns out to be Windows Live Mail thats already unsupported,

There is no e-mail client supplied with Windows 7. The only 'official' Microsoft client for 7 is Windows Live Mail so it is likely to become supported. Just as Windows Mail is supported for Vista.

Especially as Microsoft themselves have shifted their focus towards Windows Live Mail

But Virgin might be forced to do basic support for programs like Thunderbird and Opera - especially with the browser ballot screen that is likely to be in W7

[Onclejean]

With regard to John T's last post, I understand his position but personally conclude that Virgin are wrong about the way they respond to customers who want to use Outlook as the email client. Outlook is the email client for about half the INTERNET users according to a July 2009 survey (this includes versions back to Outlook for Dos). On the other hand Virgin is the preferred ISP of only a minority of users according to a similar 2009 survey around the same date. Virgin could at least inform its customers that if they first setup email using Outlook Express then they can easily copy the settings into Outlook. It is childish to respond that "Outlook is third party software and not supported". This seems a different class of problem to John T's example of router configuration, I guess the majority of users do not need to know anything about that, though the growth wireless networks is pushing the knowledge forward.

My conclusion is that for a long time cable ISP's were principally concerned with the supply of TV media and did not bother much about internet customers, though competition from the mobile sector may be changing this.

In the end a matter of choice in your ISP, I suppose. if you are not a TV client.