Good riddance

[altivo]

Done with Virgin Mobile, and glad we're through, even though they get away with about $100 in balance that was in our accounts. They were thoroughly unpleasant and often dishonest, and their service tended to be erratic as well. Voice mail weeks old would suddenly pop up as if it were new, ancient text messages would suddenly be delivered long after they should have died of old age. Billing was sneaky too, and since they insisted on deducting payments from a credit card, difficult to argue with. But they're gone.

New Android phones are here and working. Activation hit a slight snag when the automated system failed due to the old carrier's resistance to letting go, but a call to the new carrier's support got it taken care of within an hour's time. And I must say, they were the most pleasant people I've ever talked with on a support line. Knew what they were doing, too, and treated me as if I was not only valued, but also knew just what I was talking about. I think we're going to like these folks.

So now we get to learn a much more complex phone, and discover the world of the "app," I suppose. I don't actually use a phone much as a telephone, so my old cell phone mostly sat in the car, turned off. I can tell that this one will get a lot more use, even if I never make a call. It has the usual Android features, including GPS, Wi-fi, and a lot of clever tricks in the repertoire.

Comments

[schnee]

They don't reimburse your remaining balance? (And for that matter, they're not legally required to do so?)

[altivo]

Remember, this is the US, where corporations have been allowed to run wild for the last 30 years and do nearly anything they choose. Virgin Mobile's "no contract" service sounded good at first, but the catch was their insistence on being paid a certain minimum amount every three months, whether you had used up your allotment of minutes/SMS or not. In essence, it was like having a contract anyway, though a very low priced one. The charges came out to about $5 US per month of service. They keep a running balance, and deduct a charge for each minute or SMS text used. They also require you to keep a minimum balance on deposit, AND to make a minimum payment every 90 days, even if your balance is not low.

Since I am a very low volume user, my balance would always sit at around $50 as a result of these rules. No way I could use that much service up in 90 days. Though data is included in the deal, their restrictions on what you could do and the limited capabilities of the phones we had kept me from reducing the balance even that way. They also had a tendency to send improper "warning" messages threatening to cut off the services "because you haven't made your minimum payment." They would do this even though they were (required you to allow) authorized to automatically charge a credit card. So they'd ding the credit card for a minimum $15 payment, and the next day send the erroneous warning messages. I think they were trying to get you to make an additional manual payment, which they would have kept.

I complained about this several times, and each time was told it was an "error" and that they'd fix it, but they never did. Then they increased the minimum payment to $20 every 90 days, but didn't go through the proper modifications to their original service agreement to enforce it on existing users. Most were probably bullied into increasing their automatic deduction, but I refused. I told them they would have to issue me a formal 30 day notice of a change to the agreement, which they never did. (Gary fell for this particular stunt and increased his minimum payment. Fortunately he's a much heavier user than I am so he still kept his running balance to about $40 even after the increase.)

The original agreement stipulated that your balance would "carry over," meaning that what you didn't use would remain in your account and you could charge services against it. However, they would not refund the remaining balance when service terminated. So the result was a "no contract" service that still had a termination fee, and the fee in our case ended up being about $50 for each line. Compared to the usual early termination fee for a contract cell phone here in the US, that's still pretty cheap.

[altivo]

Fortunately, one regulation that has still been enforced on cell phone providers is the right of customers to retain their phone number even if they switch to a different provider. I think a fee can be charged for this, but usually it is offered for no charge with the new provider picking up any expense as a courtesy and writing it off to the cost of competition. So we kept our existing phone numbers that we've had for 5+ years and they are now working on the new phones with the new provider. I'm quite pleased about that.

The new service costs more, but is still actually less than what we pay for a fixed landline here. Telephone services of any kind still tend to be unreliable and overpriced in rural areas of the US. Since the return on investment is less where customer density per square mile is low, the phone companies do neglect their infrastructure and avoid upgrading anything until forced to do so.

[deffox]

Suppose it's too late, but it might have been possible to donate your surplus balance to charity. The cell company usually has limits on donations like $30 per month maximum.

http://mobilegiving.org/?page_id=43

I plan on testing it with my Virgin Mobile phone on my next US trip. It's balance is climbing because I've hardly been in the US this year.

They screw with me with the 'your phone needs you' emails. They even turned off my phone once even though I have auto-renew set. Customer service is clueless.

I need a phone on both sides of the border, and prepaid phones often don't work across borders. It's cheaper to have two prepaid phones than upgrade to a plan that will work across the border.

I already dumped Virgin Mobile Canada for Telus. VM USA is actally good compared to VM Canada. I was able to donate most of my VM Canada balance.

[altivo]

They told me the only way I could donate was by the "text XYZZY to this number" kind of donations, and I did a couple of those. I'm very picky about which charities I donate to, though, and the number who have that kind of method set up are pretty small. Defenders of Wildlife was one that worked, apparently. If you start researching now, you can probably have a list built up. Of course, you want to turn off your automatic payments before you start running your balance down or they'll just replenish from your credit card.

Yes, they have some of the worst support I've encountered anywhere, bar none. The US company at least is clearly oriented toward clueless teens and uses equally clueless support staff. They know all about how to get the latest hit tune as your ring tone, but not much else. Certainly nothing about billing, because doesn't your dad just pay it anyway?

[songcoyote]

Heyo!

Good to read this, as my household might be considering switching carriers within the next few months. It's pretty likely we'll stick with CREDO, though, because they really do walk the walk of being a progressive phone company. What company did you end up using? (I noticed that you didn't mention it, and am also curious as to why.)

I smiled to see the icon on this post once I was "inside" commenting :) I still pet the horsey you sent me!

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote