GOOD BYE VIRGIN MOBILE. Hello ????

This is part of a series of blog posts I will be adding that were originally in my myspace blog that I saved before they deleted that portion of the site several years ago.

Original date: July 17, 2008

Current mood:pissed off

So, after just 6 (or was it 7?) months. I am no longer a customer of Virgin Mobile in Canada.
Why?

Quite simple really. They do not want customers.
Or at least that is how it comes across to me, a former one.
 
See, almost every month I have had to contact them about problems. Usually text based. Some months, it is about how the texts I send out are often not received by others. Ironically, this last week, it appears (although I will never know long term) they may have finally fixed that issue.
 
But the one that finally ended the relationship is one that had also been ongoing & I had been told two months ago "its been fixed". Text messages from the company at absurd hours to remind me of stupid things like "dont forget we will be taking $5 out of your account for text messages in 2 days". Like WTF? Do you really need to send me a text for every goddamn thing? More importantly, did you guys actually think 6 AM was a reasonable time to be sending these texts out?
Thats right, 6 AM!! in case you are not comprehending that, I will put it in more understandable times for some of you. 6:00 AM. 0600 hours. Take your pick.

I complained 3 or 4 times about this in the past, the last time (before this month) the customer service rep (I feel dirty even referring to them as such a thing) suggested "why don't you just turn your phone off at night?" WHAT?? Are you telling me I should be forced to turn my phone off at night, possibly miss important calls, JUST so your company wont fuck up & annoy me again????
Needless to say, I wasn't too interested in their wonderful proposal.
 
Last month, they managed to get it right somehow (considering every month prior they had not). I received the messages in the early afternoon. Much much more acceptable. Problem solved, right? Right? Well, of course not.
 
This month, I was very frustrated again & was ready to make a stance since I had not put more money on the phone & my plan would be running out soon. The texts I usually got around the 8th or 9th to remind me of the $5 on the 10th for text messages was never sent. Ironic, since I was planning to cancel my texting anyways, since it rarely worked. HOWEVER, they didn't completely fail me. 12:50 AM on the 13th (sorry army guys, I mean 0050 hours) they texted me to tell me they would be taking $5 out on the 10th?? WTF?? You are telling me this on the 13th?? Uhhh, umm. ok?? Fine, I was irate. I phoned them up only to find out they aren't working at 1 AM, they wouldn't be open till 10 AM. I went back to sleep, stirring & simmering in bed. Probably not long after I finally got to sleep. 3:43 AM ANOTHER FUCKING TEXT!!!!! Seriously. At quarter to 4 AM they felt compelled to remind me they would also be taking the money out for my actual phone service. Well, jokes on them, I don't have any $$ in there, because I was planning to argue with them anyways. But as you can guess, being woken up at 3:43 AM after just barely getting back to sleep put me in a sour mood that morning. I phoned them around 12 PM (1200 hours). When it was all said & done, the guy on the other end goes (paraphrasing) "I understand your anger, this isn't an ordinary problem, I am putting this thru right to the top". I was told it may take 24-48 hrs for a response. That was Sunday @ 1 PM (1300 hours).
 
FOUR OR FIVE calls to them later, I have not heard back from anyone. Not even so much as a cookie cutter "we are working on it, sorry for the delay". Yesterday, I they phoned while I was in a Rogers store. I was literally minutes from buying a new phone. The woman who answers convinced me to give them 1 more day to get back to me. She deserves a raise for actually trying. But, working for Virgin Mobile, I suspect she probably will get demoted because she actually gave customer service. In the end, I told her that I expect a response, even if its a nothing special response by 1 PM today. She said that was more than acceptable considering the issue. 1 PM came, 1 PM went. NOTHING!
 
So, I phoned them one more time. More or less to say goodbye. The guy I got assured me it was being dealt with. I assured him it was not, because if it was, I would have received some sort of interaction with them by now, and I had not. He tried to tell me that I am a valued customer. He claimed they cared. Yet, they showed no signs of such things. I felt unwanted. I ended my conversation with him by going "well, you can tell the people up top, that as far as I am concerned this case is closed. I am done with you guys. Bye". As I was hanging up, he was yammering on "sorry to hear that, thank you for calling.....". End.
 
For a company that holds approximately 600,000 of the approximately 17,000,000 cell customers in Canada. You would have assumed they MIGHT actually want to keep one of them. Surely they wouldn't abandon them. If anything they would have been bending over backwards to try & keep me.
 
Now, I know I wont deal with Telus ever. I am sure they are co-owned by satan. I cant deal with Bell, since I screwed up with them many eons ago. So, its Fido or Rogers, who ironically are the same company. I actually liked some of the things Fido seemed to offer from the pamphlets I read of theirs, and to top it off, no less than 3 of my friends have them already & all fido-to-fido calls are free. An added bonus. They were also the customer service award winners for 2007 in the cell phone industry in Canada. Perhaps THEY would care to have one more customer? I know one thing, they cant possibly do any worse than Virgin Mobile did.


UPDATE (added in 2019) - I ended up going with Rogers. Been with them now almost 11 years.... and while some mild frustrations have risen over the years, I have never been as angry with them as I was with Virgin. It is a mild shock to me to see Virgin is still even in business..... granted I think I have met like 1 person in the past 5 years who uses them.