April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Cell Phone Saga

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Whilst I dearly covet the iphones, blackberries and other techie, gadgety oh so cool cells the phones and the plans they require are sadly beyond my current means. In the interest of economy I therefore did a comparison on prepaid plans and phones. Virgin.ca seemed to come out the winner. And as I had already previously had a Virgin phone and was impressed with the customer service I choose to go Virgin again.

I looked up their site and chose the Samsung R610. A cute little slider phone with camera and MP3 player. While no smart phone it would be serviceable and the MP3 player would help drown out the embarrassingly TMI phone calls of fellow bus passengers.

I ordered online, paid up front for a month of service and waited for delivery. The phone arrived within a couple of days and then on the second day died. Apparently I had bought a goldfish.

I phoned customer service and was told that while they could send out a return box going to a kiosk would be much quicker and easier and they would be happy to help. Unfortunately they were not happy to help at all. Eventually a call was placed to Virgin and the person on the other end assured me I would have a return box in 3 days. Fine.

10 days later no box. Gentleman at the call centre promises rush order and agrees to put another month of time on the phone as this month is running down.

2 days later a phone call in response to an email. Management type. Promises box immediately. After many calls and many call centre people with no authority to do anything except commiserate I get a gem. She tracks down a box number with which I am able to get Purolator to confirm. Box arrives March 18th, fully a month after original delivery. I sent it back the same day. Finally on March 27th I received my replacement phone.

In the interim I had again sent an email and received this in response on Sat.

Thanks for writing in and sorry for the delayed reply!

I took a look into your account and saw that everything had been straightened out and a credit applied for the inconvenience. EXCELLENT!

Thank you for your patience and please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Have a great Sunday!

Cheers,

Rob,
VM Team

A credit applied for the inconvenience?! The credit was the month they put on to make up for the fact that my original paid for time was going to run out before the issue was solved which it in fact did. Not only that but they put my number back into the pool and suspended my account!!

All this time, effort and Purolator cost not to mention my soured view of Virgin.ca could have been avoided by simply allowing me to exchange the phone at a kiosk in the first place. Does Richard Branson still own Virgin Mobile? Wonder if he knows his company is so wasteful and the customer service so deplorable. I’d phone and let him know but he probably wouldn’t take my call.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness
~ John Kenneth Galbraith

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Comments

  1. Geez, I forget how lucky I am to have our telephone, internet, and cell phone services provided by a provincial Crown Corporation, SaskTel. I guess it’s yet another thing for which to thank Tommy Douglas.

    Sorry you’re having troubles, though.

  2. Yup, sadly, I too thought that I made the right choice with Virgin. Until I had to deal with their customer service…

    I was on an old pre-pay plan, where they debit my VISA every month (instead of me always topping up). Said plan became no longer available but as long as I still had it, I could keep it. Then one month, they debit my VISA and don’t credit my phone. Through their horrific customer ‘service’ lines, I’m told that no one can help me immediately, but someone will definitely call back the next day. No one ever called back. By the time I got someone to help me, they had debited me AGAIN without crediting my account. It took another month to get someone who would simply reverse the debit to my VISA so that I could shut down my VIrgin account.

    I feel your pain. I wanted to track down Richard Branson and yell at him for his company of buffoons.

    • Ya don’t you love the well I can’t do anything about that today but if you will just be patient. Um no, I’ve been patient now I’m moving on.

      This is what happens when real customer service is replaced by call centrers whose purpose is to get you off the phone and out of their face in as little time as possible.

  3. I too give mild kudos to SaskTel for their NOW affordable pay as you go service. Getting texts is free, and 15ยข/message or $13/month. You only have to apply a $20 cell card about every 2 years if all you do is GET texts, and phone every 59 days for a second to a line that picks up.