Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

Well done Virgin on a monumental screw-up.

I can no longer login to my mobile account, it insists my perfectly valid e-mail address is not even an e-mail address at all. :dozey:

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

11:08
I have just logged ok into my Virgin Mobile account using my ntlworld.com account.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

I dont doubt it, Im sure they managed to recognise ntlworld.com.

That doesnt help me though, since when I enter my e-mail it just says

"That doesn't look like an email address. Please check the details you've entered"

Epic fail.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

It allowed me to log on at the third attempt.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

Turns out from the VM forum that they have indeed screwed up.

Their system cannot cope with e-mail addresses that have a dash/hyphen in them.

Stunning. :dozey:

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

Clearly it is too clever, interpreting the dash as a minus, thus meaning subtract the letters after this symbol from the ones in front, leaving you with a result that, correctly, does not look like an email address.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

not far off those sites and web forms that still don't allow an apostrophe, which is a pain when you have one in your surname lol.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

Stephen Mc'Stephen?

To be honest I've never actually seen an apostrophe in an email address.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

O'something

My work emails have always had my apostrophe in my surname.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

There's no excuse for that, although I know from experience that you can put in what checks you want on a web form and someone will come up with data they say is valid that trips any checks.

The Uni where I work has obviously spent a lot of money on a student information system. Then, after several years of use, we got a student who actually does have only a forename (no middle or surname), and the system refused to accept the entry. We ended up entering a . as the surname.

Even in my own job, I've encountered it. We allow students to download certain software free, but we do need a way of tracking who has downloaded what (some companies require access to the info, but we also need to prepare reports to the Uni from time to time). I developed a simple website that enabled the students to download their software easily. It also captured the relevant information. One of the items we needed to store is the student name (as I do not have access to the student database so cannot retrieve it automatically). When designing the database for the site, I allowed 25 characters for the forename and 25 for the surname. Within 3 days of launch, a student with a 50 character surname had attempted to download something and (obviously) failed.

The restrictions were quickly changed.

Re: Virgin Mobile Login Screwed Up
 

:D