NormalJoe's profile

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

Wednesday, May 29th, 2024 11:30 AM

Resetting passwords for secondary email accounts option not available

I have been a comcast customer for 19 years.

I have one primary account with 3 additional email accounts for family members, a total of 4 email accounts

I moved to a location that does not offer xfinity/comcast, when I changed my service the CSA assured me my email accounts would continue to work

Now with comcast/xfinity/merge and MFA forcing me to update passwords, there is no longer a comcast.net email login to do it and you are forced through xfinity.com

When I go to xfinity.com to reset one of the family member accounts, it tells me my account is inactive (see previous point), but it no longer gives me the option to 'manage' the other 3 email addresses.

I called 1-800-XFINITY, spent two hours and got transfered 3 times then they hung up on me

The CSA were incompetent and did not understand even what I was asking about.

I called back once again and they stated that Xfinity changed their policy and comcast.net emails will no longer work (which is false because my comcast.net email is working).  I asked if they had backup services, or any server rules where I can redirect incomming emails and again they didn't know what I was asking

So the question is, how can family members continue to use their comcast.net emails that they have been using now for 24 years and reset their passwords.?

Official Employee

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548 Messages

6 months ago

Good morning, @NormalJoeI apologize for the frustration. We offer access to comcast.net email after services are disconnected. You can read more about that here: 

 

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/email-activity

 

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-email-only

 

 

 

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

Thanks for the reply.

Lets set aside for a moment how communication to existing customers was absent.

These articles 'assume' the 'secondary email' accounts have logged into the https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite what if they didn't?  How do I recover them?  They have been using 'other' email clients successfully for years.

Since these accounts were additional email accounts set up with my xfinity/comcast account it assumes the primary account owner can change the password, but again it is not offered to me when I log into the xfinity account, as they no longer exist.

Once again, these 'secondary' email accounts require a password reset, there is no option for me to reset them, how do I reset them?  The article states that if the account is inactive you will receive "account not found' which is not the case.

thanks

Official Employee

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548 Messages

@NormalJoe Thank you for the reply. In order for the email addresses to remain active users have to log into the Xfinity web portal once every 12 months.  If the web portal is not accessed once in a 12 month period, that username may be deactivated. Idf the username is active passwords must be reset utilizing the self-service option at: 

 

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/changing-or-resetting-your-password

 

Please send us a DM, if you would like us to review account specifics 

 

Please send us a DM with your full name and address to Xfinity Support. To send a direct message:

Click "Sign In" if necessary

Click the "Direct Message" icon or  https://forums.xfinity.com/direct-messaging

Click the "New message" (pencil and paper) icon

The "To:" line prompts you to "Type the name of a person". Instead, type "Xfinity Support" there.

As you are typing a drop-down list appears. Select "Xfinity Support" from that list.

An "Xfinity Support" graphic replaces the "To:" line.

Type your message in the text area near the bottom of the window

Press Enter to send it

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

I did this, nobody responded.  Why not just acknowledge that Xfinity entirely missed this scenario and post an update in the forums about it.  The tech support people on the phones have no idea how to respond so they put you hold until you eventually give up.  This is a simple problem, they just have to walk the customer through a password reset why is this so hard?

Official Employee

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548 Messages

I apologize for the poor experience when calling in if you still need assistance please send us a DM with your full name and address to Xfinity Support. 
To send a direct message:
Click "Sign In" if necessary
Click the "Direct Message" icon or  https://forums.xfinity.com/direct-messaging
Click the "New message" (pencil and paper) icon
The "To:" line prompts you to "Type the name of a person". Instead, type "Xfinity Support" there.
As you are typing a drop-down list appears. Select "Xfinity Support" from that list.
An "Xfinity Support" graphic replaces the "To:" line.
Type your message in the text area near the bottom of the window
Press Enter to send it

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick

1 Message

6 months ago

I have the same problem, as of tonight.  I can log in to my primary account just fine, but all of the secondaries are locked out, and can't be managed via the primary account's page.  It's a wonderful little catch-22: "in order to keep access to your email address, you have to log in to our website, but in order to log into our website, you have to reset your password, and that's impossible."  

[Edited: "Inflammatory"]

(edited)

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

I am sure this is going on with thousands of customers.  I followed the DM instructions and just waited endlessly and while one person asked a follow up question after 45 minutes he never came back.  I tried to phone in again, and my issue was off script, so they just put me on hold for 45 minutes, and I eventually gave up (which is their MO and happened 3 times in past few days).  Your email accouns and mine are still on the server and likely still receiving messages, they just need to engage to walk through an MFA reset and they refuse to do it.

Visitor

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14 Messages

I am having the same thing happening.  I am pretty sure it has nothing, or little, to do with whenever you last logged into the web portal.  I know this because I was able to log in and restore a primary account I had absolutely not accessed in any way in nearly 2 years.  The system prompted me to reactivate and then I saw tons of spam messages that had been accumulating since my last login.

I guess I'm lucky because when I called and waited 20 minutes to get through, they didn't even take any of my account info and told me that it was a known issue that they are working on and that they therefore could not do anything to help me.  So at least I didn't waste more time on the phone.  That was 2 days ago.  At that point, I couldn't find any other posts detailing a similar problem so I thought they were just trying to get rid of me. 

Visitor

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14 Messages

Update: I finally talked to someone who was able to help me reset my account.  Once I got in, I saw that Comcast had sent me the following email- after already disabling my password so there was no way to see it until I got through the bureaucracy of Comcast support:

To keep our customers' accounts protected, we recently asked everyone to reset their password. In our final review we noticed yours has not yet been changed so we’ve taken steps to secure your account. Please call us at 1-800-Xfinity (from 9:00 am to 12:00 am EST, 7 days/week) to speak with one of our Xfinity customer service agents, who can help you reset your account password.

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

Was this the primary for secondary account?

Visitor

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14 Messages

This was for a secondary account. The CSA agent was surprised I couldn't manage secondary accounts from the primary.  

Basically, Comcast dropped the ball big time with deactivating passwords without notice and with no way to see rge communication. Not to mention nor preparing support employees to know how to help fix this for people.

1 Message

6 months ago

having the same issue. email account has been used regularly on iphone and outlook for years. stopped receiving emails on Monday. Tried all the things to get it back up and running. Nothing worked. about a year ago I had the same issue with a different secondary account and CSA could not help. I just gave up on that account. We have an xfinity account but any email that is not the primary one linked to our xfinity account is not accessible to reset or update passwords. 

Official Employee

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2.8K Messages

@user_m3xi23 Thank you for reaching out to us today over our Xfinity Community Forums! Please remember that sending unsolicited direct messages to an Official Employee of the Xfinity Help & Support Forums is a violation of Forum Guidelines. In the future we ask that you please find the most appropriate public board for your question type and post it there. If needed, we may invite you to send us a Direct Message.

The email address in question, while it isn't the primary email, is it associated with an active account?

 

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick

Frequent Visitor

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18 Messages

6 months ago

Looks like many users are having this same issue including me and i am a current customer not a former. My primary account still works ok but my workhorse secondary account suddenly is frozen and not accessible even through webmail. Xfinity support has been of little or no help so far. Will a Xfinity support agent please contact me and offer some help. This secondary email account is used for a slew of important logins and notifications for me. Help please.

Official Employee

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1.1K Messages

Hey Doc59, thanks for getting back to us and letting us know you are having the issue as well. When you get a chance, can you send us a direct message? The instructions are above on how to do that but I'll post it just in case.

To send a direct message:

Click "Sign In" if necessary

• Click the "Direct messaging" icon near the top right of the page

• Click the "New message" (pencil and paper) icon

• Type "Xfinity Support" in the "To:" line and select "Xfinity Support" from the drop-down list which appears. The "Xfinity Support" graphic replaces the "To:" line

• Type your message in the text area near the bottom of the window

• Press Enter to send it

 

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

6 months ago

RESOLVED!

Thank you to Nicole at CSA who save me more hours of frustration

Root Cause:

  1. Xfinity will deactivate your account if you haven't logged into the webmail 90 days prior to your service disconnect https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-email-only 
  2. While you can easily recover your primary account email, all options to reset your secondary email accounts are unavailable.
  3. The self-service https://xfinity.com/password will not work and keep referring you the the primary email owner for the reset, which given the prior point will not work
  4. The second thing that may occur even if you did log into the web portal is a forced "periodic" password reset email from comcast (goto step 2)

False Statements:

  • Your email account is gone
  • Your email account is no longer receiving email
  • Your email account is no longer supported since you discontinued use of comcast/xfinity services
  • You can only use your primary email account
  • You have to re-purchase xfinity services
  • Tech support cannot resolve your problem
  • You can resolve this by Direct Messaging Xfinity Support
  • You can resolve on your own by https://xfinity.com/password
  • The phone tree when you call 1-800-Xfinity will route you the the right person

How to resolve:

  • I called 1-800-Xfinity.  The menu options do not provide an easy way to get to an actual person.  You have to repeatedly at every prompt say "Technical Support"
  • Once you get to a human, they will not be able to help you as they do not have the tools/authority to reset your account.  Be persistent and ask to be directed to someone who can help.  As I discovered it was the Customer Assurance Team.  While I did not call this number, it seems to be a more direct line and I would start there 1-888-565-4329
  • I spoke with a pleasant and knowledgeable person named Nicole.  I explained the situation about not being able to reset my secondary email accounts.  She understood immediately.
  • She confirmed my primary account information and asked for the secondary email (note this needs to be accurate as well as your cell/contact number as you will need it for the next step)
  • She generated a one-time passcode and walked me through resetting the secondary account by going to https://xfinity.com/password but she needed to reset the account in her end first
  • After several steps and receiving verification codes I got to the screen to reset my password
  • After resettting the password, you must associate an 'alternate email' not the comcast.net email you just reset but a secondary email that can be used to verify the account
  • You will also need a cell number to get MFA/OTP verification codes, it does not need to be the cell number associated with your primary account
  • Enable MFA
  • in less than 5 minutes we were done, after a week of trying to get to someone

1 Message

NormalJoe - I have been trying to help my wife restore Comcast email from prior to 5/20/24.  Using connect.xfinity.com to login.  Can see email from the past week or two, but somehow, all email history prior to that date disappeared.  We have spent 6 hours over 3 days on the phone or chat with nearly 20 different Xfinity agents (we keep getting passed around and bumped back to the beginning of the process over and over - "how can we help you?" after hours of explanation.  Without doubt, the most frustrating business experience I can ever recall.  They have not restored the email despite multiple promises to do so.  They have never called back when they have promised to do so.   Bottom line, still cannot see any emails prior to 5/20.  Why would they have been deleted from the Comcast/Xfinity server???  If they weren't deleted, why can't we get them back? 

Regular Visitor

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9 Messages

It is super frustrating, the engineering/business decisions do not seem to filter down to their support, or they are deliberately choosing to discount this customer scenario.

What I do know is that depending on your email client application (eg: outlook, andriod, iphone, etc), there is a setting in the service configuration that allows you to choose what to do with email on the server when downloaded to your client application (I have an example but cannot attach it in this post.  Check that it is not set to delete email from server once downloaded.  If it was checked, the email would be deleted from server and sitting in your local (pc, tablet, phone) inbox of your email client.

It is not clear to me from your post whether you are still able to send/receive from your wife's email account, nor if it is a primary or secondary account.  If you are able to login to the comcast web mail and send/receive messages then your account is still active.

If you can ever get through to a human, you need to get your call transferred to the 'security team', they seem to be better and understanding how to resolve issues.

hth

.

Official Employee

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946 Messages

user_ga4s44 Can you please send us a DM. You can start by clicking the chat icon located in the top right corner of your forums' page when signed in. Once there, you can direct your messages to "Xfinity Support." Please add your full name and service address to help us locate your account. Let me know if you have any questions. 

I am an Official Xfinity Employee.
Official Employees are from multiple teams within Xfinity: CARE, Product, Leadership.
We ask that you post publicly so people with similar questions may benefit from the conversation.
Was your question answered? Please, mark a reply as the Accepted Answer.tick
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