Expiring Sky email account, cannot recover

[markis1974]

Hi, please help. Complicated one I've been trying to solve from many angles with calls and emails to Sky. Not solved yet so I'll try here 🙂

I am looking into this on behalf of my mother-in-law, regarding persistent issues with her Sky Yahoo email service. As she is not particularly tech-savvy, I am assisting her in resolving this matter.

A primary concern is an email she recently received stating that her email address will be deleted on August 4th if she does not log in. This is highly problematic as she relies on this email address for important communications. To be absolutely clear, this email address IS actively in use NOW, and all incoming mail is currently and successfully forwarding to her Gmail account. This forwarding mechanism is active and working perfectly at this moment.

The critical issue preventing her from logging in to prevent this deletion is that her Sky account appears to be locked. When attempting to log in via the Sky website, the system immediately states the account is locked, even before prompting for a password. This makes it impossible for her to access the account and take the necessary steps to keep her email active. The threat of deletion without clear instruction or resolution for an active customer is unacceptable.

Furthermore, I have attempted to initiate a password change for the account, but this has also been unsuccessful. Each time I try to proceed with a password reset, the same message appears, stating that the account is locked and instructs us to call. This reinforces the complete lack of access and control we currently have over her Sky email account.

It is important to note that she could previously log into this account, and it was during that time that I set up the forwarding to her Gmail address. However, she is now completely unable to log in, which makes the account appear inactive to Sky's systems. I want to stress that despite this login difficulty, the email address remains actively used through the forwarding mechanism, and its functionality is crucial. Given that the email address is actively receiving and forwarding mail, it is clear that the account MUST exist in some form within Sky's systems or still in Yahoo's systems.

We suspect that her Sky email address may have historically been managed under a primary account belonging to her husband. He is currently able to log into his Sky account without any issues and has not received any similar email deletion warnings regarding his own email service. This leads us to believe there might be a linkage or legacy configuration causing her account to appear locked or separate from the primary account, despite being part of the same household.

We have attempted to resolve this issue by calling the regular helplines multiple times, but unfortunately, they seem to be baffled by this specific problem. Therefore, we hope that by consolidating all the facts into this post, a technical team will be able to investigate the issue thoroughly in the background and provide a resolution without further difficulties for us.

We urgently require assistance to unlock her account and ensure her Sky email address remains active and accessible.

Is her Sky email lost? Can this be recovered?

Many thanks for any help here, very much appreciated 🙂

[caesarome]

@markis1974 

Does she see the same message if trying to access this link:

https://www.sky.com/mydetails/account-info

[markis1974]

Yes, from your link, if I enter the sky email, it doesn't even ask me to enter the password, it's straight to this message:

Account Locked
We apologise for the inconvenience, but we have encountered a problem with your account.
For assistance call us on 0 3 4 4  2 4 1 1 2 8 0.

I've called that number, but they don't understand the problem/say I should be able to change the password/say this account is associated to NOW TV (not sure why they say that!)/say they can't do anything... I don't blame them, this seems like a bit of an anomaly.

[Mark39]

Actually, it's not an anomaly, it has been reported here multiple times, but unfortunately if a password reset doesn't fix it (or you're not able to carry one out), only Sky can do so. I've had the same issue myself, in the past.Sadly, understanding of Sky Yahoo Mail amongst Sky advisers is not all it might be, so it's a bit of pot luck as to whether you encounter an adviser who knows what to do. It has nothing to do with NOW TV, as you probably surmise.

You (your mother-in-law) could persevere, or perhaps raise a formal complaint with Sky: https://www.sky.com/help/articles/how-to-make-a-complaint

[caesarome]

@markis1974 

You will need to call them again and when you do don't mention you can't access the email account, just say that the ID is locked to see if that gets you anywhere. Sadly it can take a number of calls to find someone that knows how to unlock any account as I had the very same issue 3 or 4 years ago and it did take multiple calls to get it unlocked.

[markis1974]

Thanks all for taking time to answer.

 The hard thing here is that it's not my account, and getting my M-in-L to call them will only cause much frustration! But the alternative of setting up a new email for her is also going to be hard work in altering all her accounts.

I wonder if, even if the Sky side expires, the Yahoo side remains? BTW, I can still log into Yahoo directly using the Sky email, but only by saying i don't know the password and it then sends an recovery code to a recovery email. I can get in then, but it's very limited what i can then do and it's a bit of a back door method. This method doesn't allow me to access the email from a client app either, only on the website.

[jayach]

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@markis1974 wrote:

I wonder if, even if the Sky side expires, the Yahoo side remains? BTW, I can still log into Yahoo directly using the Sky email, but only by saying i don't know the password and it then sends an recovery code to a recovery email. I can get in then, but it's very limited what i can then do and it's a bit of a back door method. 

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When you get the account suspended message, it's usually because Yahoo have detected suspicious activity and have locked it for their own security and only Sky can unlock it by speaking to Yahoo, but as @caesarome says the process is not well understood by the Sky helpdesk.

It's strange you can log in via Yahoo, what happens if you try to change the password from their end?

[markis1974]

The only way i can log in directly to yahoo is when i say forget password, it then offers me to send a code to my recovery email, i get this then i can log in. However, if i say show me my profile details once into yahoo, from there i should be able to change my password, but it then forwards me to Sky website which of course doesn't work. So as far as i can see, i have no way to change/reset my password because this always goes back to Sky, and that account remains locked.

[jayach]

Strange, yesterday I was able to access the Yahoo configuration pages, but now i get taken to Sky, as you say.

So, can you(she) log in here: https://www.sky.com/mydetails/sky-id , and if so, scroll down and try changing the password from there, it may also unlock the email.🤞 It may be better to do it in a private/incognito tab to avoid cookie problems.

[markis1974]

No, same as usual. I enter the Sky email, and it tells me account locked - so I never get the opportunity to change the password.

[caesarome]

Did you try what I posted and tell them that your account (and not email) is locked ?