October complaint about Virgin Mobile
I have been arguing with Virgin Mobile and Discover for months.
I started my Virgin Mobile, no contract agreement about four years ago. All of a sudden, in June instead of charging me 10 cents per minute for calls, Virgin Mobile charged me $1 per minute. I only use my cell phone when I am traveling on business, but it so happened that in this instance I used 120 minutes worth of calls to keep in contact with my home. That should be a charge of $12, but when I received the bill, $120 was automatically deducted from my Discover card.
My usual monthly phone bill is less than $8 a month. When I called Discover to get the charges removed from my bill, the person handling their complaints said that Discover had received thousands of complaints about this same thing. During a four or five day period Virgin Mobile's computers had gone haywire and overcharged everyone. The charges were credited to my account.
Today, I got my latest Discover bill and discovered that Virgin Mobile had denied the credit and debited my account again!
First problem, there is no way to talk to anyone at Virgin Mobile. When I called them the first time I talked to an overseas operator who said there was nothing she could do.
Second problem, if Discover receives a complaint like that about charges and if the company that originally made the charges denies them, there is really very little you can do.
So, I have contacted the NJ BBB, second time, to complain. I have sent registered letters to the president and CEOs of both Virgin Mobile and Discover and am now waiting to see what they do next.
Third problem, Virgin Mobile has been automatically debiting my account each month, supposed to be $5.95 for the monthly service and 10 cents per minute for calls. I have a credit in my account for $20, so I am going to leave the account active for another month and see if I get a response from anyone.
I went into my account online and cut off the auto debit program, I hope. I am now afraid to use the phone AT ALL, because Virgin Mobile might decide to go haywire again and charge me $1 per call. ABSURD!
In November, when I have used up another $7.00, supposedly, I will cut my Virgin account and throw away the phone!
I have been a loyal Virgin Mobile customer for four years—but I am sure fed up with them now. I have one of their most expensive phones, which will also now be totally useless.
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