Angry Virgin Mobile Customer Asks For My Help [UPDATED]
I had a person by the name of “Christopher” post a really serious comment about Virgin Mobile to my blog in the last 24 hours. His charge:
“They are treating their Customers like Garbage, as is apparent by the amount of serious and similar complaints. My point is that this cannot be a coincidence. As an individual citizen it is very hard to get a company who freely bullies their Customers like this to refund me my balance or even treat me with respect. I honestly thought that Virgin Mobile was supposed to be different, now I realize the Marketing gaffe and hype was just that. In reality what they advertise and what Customers are being delivered are night and day.”
That’s a serious charge and I would encourage you to read the entire comment to see his full argument. The question is, does this have merit? “Christopher” does point to a website that seems to have similar complaints. So it would seem that his argument does have merit on the surface. I’d love to hear Virgin Mobile’s side of the story. They can contact me with their thoughts and I can put them in touch with “Christopher.” I’d also love to hear from Virgin Mobile Customers who have had similar experiences, or great experiences with this carrier. I think it would be interesting to know if this is truly a widespread problem or not.
UPDATE: I just had a representative from Virgin Mobile contact me via e-mail:
Hey IT Nerd –
How’s it going? My name is Jeremy and I work at Virgin Mobile Canada. I was just sent your blog post from yesterday with Christopher’s complaint.
If you could connect me with Christopher that would be awesome. Feel free to send him my email, or if you have any contact info for him send it to me and I’ll give him a shout. I’d need to get his full name, phone number, and other details so that I can loop in with our Customer Care team to find out all the details on Christopher’s situation.
We really do worry about our customers when things go wrong and do everything we can to make them happy. Nobody’s perfect, but if we’ve made a mistake we’ll say “sorry” and we’ll fix it. So I look forward to getting to the bottom of this and taking care of whatever has possibly gone wrong here.
Let me know if you need anything else from me to get rolling on this…
Thanks!
I have forwarded the original unedited complaint to them with “Christopher” carbon copied on that e-mail (The original complaint had “Christopher’s” phone number in it. I removed the phone number from the blog to protect his privacy). Hopefully this gets sorted out in short order. I’ll keep you updated as to what happens next.
September 14, 2009 at 8:08 am
They are fully owned by Bell, one of the largest corporate assholes in the country, so what can you expect?
January 12, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Recently I purchased my second Virgin Mobile LG260. In December it stopped receiving text messages. After numerous calls to VM the issue is still unresolved and I do not have hope that it ever will be. I have been told it is the problem of the Bell towers, also that the problem is because of snow. The customer care people have been unfailingly polite and apologetic but that has not resolved my issue. No one seems able to fix the problem or even tell me to throw the phone in the garbage and get another. VM customer care is but a token slogan.
January 29, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Hi,
Virgin Mobile changed their 100 min for $10 prepaid plan to $10 gets you 10 cents a minute! I Dec 2009, I had signed up for $10 100 min plan. On Jan 28, I got a text from Virgin Mobile saying I had paid for that plan. Today, I got a text saying i did not have enough cash on my pre-paid account to pay! When I called them, the rep signed me up for the $10 plan. I decided to look up my account online and then I saw the plan had changed to $10 for 10 cents plan. (this means that I have to pay an extra 10 cents per min on top of the $10) I was really upset, they had basically doubled my plan! I called them back and the rep and the supervisor are saying that Virgin Mobile NEVER had a 100 min for $10 plan! I was told ‘politely’ that I did not understand the terms of the plan! But How come last month, I was not charged 10 cents per min! What can I do?
Thank you
October 9, 2010 at 11:31 am
Hi Krystle, I had the exact same experience. That my $10 i was paying into the $10 plan only paid for the rate – 10cents a minute! In essence i had to pay extra for minutes. That is really misleading!! I looked all over the website and it doesn`t say anything about extra for the minutes. Virgin has all those stupid sayings too for other things. They should have put “remember, this only pays for an awesome plan…you have to pay more for awesome minutes
February 6, 2010 at 1:23 am
I had just discovered that Virgin was charging me a monthly fee for a phone that isn’t in use. The fact is the phone never was, however my cc ended up in the wrong hands and now I’m dealing with cc fraud. I spoke to someone named Wendy (I do have her id number if you need it) and she told me she would do nothing. I asked why I am on a service plan since this was clearly fraud, and she denied me help. She said she couldn’t cancel a service for me. I told her this is fraud, why and how can’t you help? This is unbelievable. She said she would try but no promises. She also said I would have to wait to speak to someone from billing. It’s now been a week and no call. Well I called again today and a different rep said that Wendy had pulled money from my cash balance, but could offer nothing else. I am livid and can’t believe for 2 years a company who I thought was reputable is stealing from me and my children. I can barely get by and I’ve been robbed by a thief and this agent from Virgin. I have a phone that has never been with service and 0 air time but yet Virgin never made the connection that something is amiss? Can you please help me, I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown from this company and all the grief they have caused me.
Who do I turn to? Thank you for allowing me to post on your blog.
Chrissy Crough
February 6, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Just an update regarding my “not receiving text messages”. It took a long tim, almost 2 months, but the problem has been resolved and they credited my account with 3 months of texting usage.