BEWARFE OF VIRGIN MOBILE. YOU WILL PAY THE $49.99 FOR THE UNLIMITED AND RECEIVE A TEXT SAYING YOU ARE TOPPED UP FOR THE NEXT MONTH, THEN VM WILL TAKE YOU OFF THE PLAN AND SAY YOU OWE $53 MORE BECAUSE YOUR ACCTOUNT WAS SHORT 5 CENTS! YOU WILL NOT GET HELP WITH THE OVER SEAS PEOPLE AT CUSTOMER SERVICE. THEY WILL LEAVE YOU ON HOLD AND NOT COME BACK IF YOU CALL TO COMPLAIN. IT IS NOT WORTH IT. GO TO ANOTHER COMPANY THAT TREATS YOU WITH RESPECT. MKE VM GO UNDER FOR UNFAIR BUSINESS PRACTICES. COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN.

BOYCOTT ALL SPONSORS!!! VIRGN MOBILE IS A SCAM!!!

In Sep 2008 I took a combined deal from Virgin Media, TV, home phone, broadband and a *FREE* mobile. The package was advertised on a flyer that I received unsolicited through my door. I took the deal as it seemed to satisfy my needs at the time. When the installation engineer arrived, there was no mobile and he informed me the mobile deal was supplied from Virgin Mobile, a seperate company from Virgin Media, and that I had to call them to arrange delivery. I did so but was told it cost 10.00 a month + calls. Since I work abroad, I needed a roaming contract and was told it would work OK.

I had to install the router myself as the engineer hadnt a clue, he left a CD for the broadband with basic installation instructions. Luckily I work in IT and sorted it in about an hour. Not impressed.

The phone eventually arrived, but the roaming could not be activated until 6 months into the deal. I cancelled the 10.00 a month DD and asked Virgin Mobile to cancel the contract as it wasnt suitable for me at all, since I only took the phone on the understanding it would work abroad. There didnt seem to be a problem with this.

Nothing. For 3 months nothing. In Dec 2008, they took 90.00 from my bank account and when I queried this, they said since I had cancelled the contract, they were taking the remaining months monthly debits. I complained, several times on the phone to various departments none of whom knew anything about my case. I was just passed piller to post.

I contacted by bank who managed to retrieve the 90.00 from Virgin Mobile. In March 2009, I received a letter and recorded delivery package to return the unused phone with SIM, packaging etc. I sent the lot back to Virgin Mobile at MY expense, and a further demand for over 100.00 quid duly arrived from them!. I called them again, they had no record of the phone being returned but said they would check their 'computer system', where lo and behold, after a 20 minute wait, they find the phone HAD arrived, but hadnt been checked in. They said they would send a letter confirming receipt of the phone, which arrived a few weeks later. Done deal I thought.

In May 2009, I start getting letters from a Debt Collection agency for the original 90.00 + costs totalling 119.37. Completely pissed off now, I just emailed Virgin Mobile again (19 May) but cant chase this up till I am next back home at the end of June 2009.

This tale of woe is ongoing, I'll post again when a resolution is in sight. Needless to say, come the end of the initial 12 month contract with Mr Virgin Media, I will cancel his lot as well and go back to SKY.

Thursday, October 22, 2009
Virgin Mobile Stealing from Consumers
Wow - stealing you say? Whatwould possibly bring about this level of anger at a mobile phone company? Whenever someone tries to take money in exchange for a service they didn't provide I call that stealing. And when a company calls that policy - it just means the theft is widespread!

Last Christmas I got my niece, Jennifer, a Virgin Mobile (VM) phone. On Christmas morning I spent over an hour on the computer trying to figure out how to activate that phone. On December 25, 2008 Jennifer made her first call. The problems started soon after.

As with most cell phone companies we found the actual phones to be unreliable. In less than a year she is on her third phone. Oh - and then there is the problem with payment. We are on a month-to-month system. Each month I put "top up" money on her account and each month on the 25th Jen uses the top up money to pay for the next months service. It was an OK system. It was only OK because oftentimes the VM website would work and I would have to call in a top up. The wait times are long, the system is automated and annoying and if even lucky enough to speak to a person they are in another country, don't always have a good grasp of English and are often not helpful and it times even rude. But it is Jennifer's phone and what she chose and I deal.
So I made the first big mistake. I topped up Jen's account before the 25th in August. I knew she was low on minutes and figured she could ass a few extra to get her to the end of the month. Jennifer made the 2nd mistake. Instead of adding extra minutes she took it upon herself to activate her new account month on the 22nd of August. I wasn't a happy camper! But Jen suffered the consequences and when her account ran out on September 22nd she suffered without her phone until the 25th of September. (Three days without a cell phone to a college student is like a month without food to the rest of us!)

So - that should have been the end of it, right? We should be back on the 25th of the month renewal cycle and all should be good, right? WRONG! Instead, Virgin Mobile decided this was a good time to activate a policy that resulted in them stealing my money. They say we now have to pay this month on the 22nd - and thereby get less than a month's worth of service!

Here's how it goes...

I put money in the top up on the 24th of September. This doesn't mean anything. Top up money can be used to purchase service, ringtones, extra minutes, whatever. It is sort of like an online gift card. On the 25th of September Jen used the money in the Top up to pay for the:
Monthly Plan ChargeCost Recovery ChargeFederal USF$10 fee for Unlimited Messaging

Now, on the 22nd of October Virgin Mobile is sending Jennifer a message that her monthly service is up on the 22nd and needs to be renewed for her to continue using her phone.

WHAT????? I mean seriously? So here I go - online - to see what is going on and I look at the payment history. Very clearly is shows that I Topped Up on the 24th and Jen PAID FOR THE SERVICE on the 25th. Awesome. So I call VM. OUCH!

First I talk to a rep - that first person that answers the phone that is rarely helpful. (Why companies waste money on this level of staff is beyond me. They should learn from DirecTV. Every person that answers the phone can help - and if for some reason they can't they don't wait for the consumer to ask for someone else - they take the initiative to bring a supervisor on the line. Yeah for DirecTV!!!)

But I digress... So of course after about 3 minutes I ask for a supervisor and I get Aileen (not sure of spelling). I fond out from Aileen that she is in Manila, Philippines. She identifies herself as a Supervisor in the Operations Department. She says - that there is a 3 day grace period and since we paid on the 3rd day - on the 24th of September we paid in the grace period and the service continued form there. HUH? 1st, Jen's service didn't continue. She had no service from the 22nd through the 25th. But then, we didn't pay for the service until the 25th which is outside this nebulous and never before reported grace period. Simple - well - sort of. But, NO!

So then I talk to:

Rem - The Floor Manager
Jhen - The Floor Supervisor and
Reynaldo - The Senior Supervisor


YIKES!


I get the same story over and over again - and as I am losing my patience (and you all know how quickly that happened) I am hearing - "since you paid on the 24th" - to which I reply "No, we didn't pay for the service until the 25th!!!" Time and time again.


So here is that I am offered. Jen can have 150 bonus minutes and 1000 text messages. She can use these up until the 22nd (today). And if we pay again on the 25th this may happen all over again. WHAT?????? Jhen says that maybe we can use the minutes and messages after the 22nd, and that my cycle date will change back to the 25th next month - but I paid for unlimited messaging and should have a cycle date of the 25th now - and shouldn't I get what I paid for? But I am starting to waver and ready to give up. I ask her to just send me an email confirming this and I will move on - but she won't do that. I just have to trust them. HA! And so I ask for a number for corporate - so that I can talk to someone else - maybe someone not in Manila. Maybe someone with actual authority to listen and (wouldn't this be wonderful) maybe someone that didn't keep talking over me.

And guess what... yeah - you guessed it - they won't give me a number for the corporate offices.

Well the best thing that happened is that Jhen said (and I am using quote marks because I wrote it down word for word and confirmed it with her) "With the cycle date, when you pay on the 25th that is supposed to be your cycle date". Basically, VM knows they have handled this wrong. They are aware that they are stealing money from me.

They just don't seem to care...


And it seems like I am not the only one with an issue - for WORLDWIDE complaints take a look at:


www.Consumeraffairs.com/cell_phones/virgin.html

http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/virgin-mobile-a713/bydate.html

http://virgin-mobile.pissedconsumer.com/


Unfortunately it seems as if they are stealing quite a bit more than 3 days of service from many people .

Buyer Beware...

(On a final note - and to be fair to VM, who isn't being fair to me - I did reach out to their PR person, Corrine Nosal, at 908-607-4253 908-607-4253 to see if she wanted to comment. She said she would get back to me with a comment or policy if she could, but by the time I posted this I hadn't heard from her.)

This week I tried to apply for vehicle finance only to be told that there is a list on the ITC for late payment on my virgin mobile, I found this very strange as all my accounts run of debit orders and virgin mobile account comes of my virgin money account. The problem is trying to get hold of someone at virgin mobile on there 123 number or any other number on the website. After spending better much of 5 hours trying to get assistance I went to the waterfront store in Cape Town and left it to the sales assistant to try. Even this poor bloke could not get an answer and he has a direct email connection to head office.
Ones we finally established the problem which was fault of Virgin Mobile not mine they said the person who dealt with this was not there that day and would deal with it the following day, which never happened because no one came back to me or the virgin guy and after trying again all over again a day later still no assistance, I asked if someone could please contact me but still waiting. I have never had a late account or listing on the ITC and now with this listing created by a fault of Virgin Mobile my credit history is affected and yet the company responsible do not have the decency to call and assist with the reversal of this listing which is all due to there incorrect debit system. There help line is a waist of time and when you get through the people you speak to just pass you on to the next person who you also have to hold for and knows even less than the previous person and puts you through to another person or what they call champ but should be called chimps.
How do I a passed client get assistance from company?

I cancelled my daughter's cell phone in the beginning of March 2009 with Virgin Mobile because we bought her a nicer phone with Sprint. At the end of July, I noticed a charge on my husband's credit card on July 9th for $103.22 to Virgin Mobile. I thought it was odd since I had spent over 30 minutes with a new rep on July 17th topping up my account that I currently have with them with the credit card in my name. I immediately phoned Virgin Mobile and questioned the charged. After being put on hold for a while, I was told by the rep that he needs to fill out a fraud report. We went through the whole process as he asked me questions...such as "Do you know who made this charge", etc. Satisfied, I waited over a week to check on the situation.
When I called to check on the situation, the woman told me she did not see any notations or reports on my file. Putting me on hold for awhile again, she came back and stated she would help me file a fraud report. She also assured me the phone number the credit card charge was connected to would be disconnected. At this time, I had NO IDEA this charge was for the phone I had disconnected way back in March and threw in the garbage. At no time now or before was I informed it was for the phone I cancelled back in March. She told me the process takes about 7-10 days. In the meantime, I checked my bank statement and found they had also taken another $103.22 on June 8th.
I waited the 10 days and called again on 09/06/2009. After speaking to someone who again had no idea what I was talking about, I demanded to speak to a supervisor. After speaking to another guy, who again had no idea what I was talking about, I again demanded to speak to someone who spoke English and was a supervisor, as I thought I was speaking to one already as requested. "Mark" then informed me this was for the phone I cancelled back in March. He told me I never cancelled it! When I questioned why my credit card was not charged in March, April or May, he could not answer that. He then accused me of using the phone to check my voicemail (my daughter's phone). I then lost my temper. After being put on hold numerous times and argueing, I finally got what I thought was satisfaction. A refund for $206.88 in the form of a check sent to my home address, since the bank account and credit card that was used was now closed. He told me the refund would be issued in 24-72 hours. The next morning, 09/07/2009, I had an email from Virgin Mobile. It said "Congatulations! You just made the switch to .20 per minute" on the cancelled phone!!! Now I was REALLY angry! I spoke with numerous other reps, demanded a supervisor and finally got the supervisor "Jeff". They can never give me their last names nor can they give me their "headquarters" phone numbers that they keep claiming they were speaking to. Now I was told that my credit card was refunded that morning, but only for one month because they could not go back further. A credit card that they were well aware of had been closed!! On a Holiday! Now they told me it was my bank's fault!
From the day before until that day, the account went from not being able to do anything, to them illegally putting fake phone calls and text messages on the account. The phone calls were pulled off of the account from back in March. They were suddenly made on 09/05 and 09/06. They were made to my daughter's friend's old phone that is no longer connected! The text messages were from "dada". When I phoned the number to inquire about charges that began from them too now, they had the exact same accent as the people at Virgin Mobile. Of course all this information is no longer available for me to access. Luckily I printed out most of it. I finally had to report the phone "lost or stolen" via their website to stop the madness.
I informed them I would contact every television station and anyone else who was willing to listen if I did not receive the full $206.88 by check in the mail. They refused. I told them I recorded each and every conversation I had with them as well. He objected to my doing so, and still refused to refund me.
I further noticed that my active cell account has $.15 taken out of it every single day at 3:15 a.m. Multiply illegal credit card charges times millions of customers...that's a lot of money. Multiply $.15 times millions of customers, that's alot of money as well. I have no idea what to do about this situation now. I emailed them and receive no responses.