Virgin Mobile
Billing Bad for Consumers

Thursday, October 22

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 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://usashameboard.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.)

Company: Virgin Mobile
Country: USA

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