Virgin Mobile - I'm furious

EGBR

I feel so pi@@ed off with Virgin.
So, heres the thing. I have an iPhone 7 and Sim card only contract with Virgin Mobile £10 a month, unlimited data , unlimited texts plus 120 mins calls. Great deal. Love it.

A new sim card arrived a few weeks ago, installed & working. Oh, wait, its taking ages to connect online. So now, connectivity for data is so slow, quite often can't access web, news, FB etc...... as i travel alone quite a bit and rely on access it is very frustrating.
Finally contacted Virgin today & guess what , the ONLY way to improve connectivity is to upgrade my contract, pay quite a lot more because apparently they are upgrading their system & i won't be able to access 4G with the Sim they sent!!!!!!
Is it just me being cynical or is this the most underhand way of persuading/ making you to pay more! Anyone else have a similar issue. Cant decide whether to walk away now or go back & argue the toss. Feel its futile.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated or even knowing others have been caught out.

Plus - it's raining again.
FED UP!!

wunferall

EGBR wrote: »

I feel so pi@@ed off with Virgin.
So, heres the thing. I have an iPhone 7 and Sim card only contract with Virgin Mobile £10 a month, unlimited data , unlimited texts plus 120 mins calls. Great deal. Love it.

A new sim card arrived a few weeks ago, installed & working. Oh, wait, its taking ages to connect online. So now, connectivity for data is so slow, quite often can't access web, news, FB etc...... as i travel alone quite a bit and rely on access it is very frustrating.
Finally contacted Virgin today & guess what , the ONLY way to improve connectivity is to upgrade my contract, pay quite a lot more because apparently they are upgrading their system & i won't be able to access 4G with the Sim they sent!!!!!!
Is it just me being cynical or is this the most underhand way of persuading/ making you to pay more! Anyone else have a similar issue. Cant decide whether to walk away now or go back & argue the toss. Feel its futile.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated or even knowing others have been caught out.

Plus - it's raining again.
FED UP!!

I don't think you're being "done" necessarily. I suspect rather that you have been on that plan for some time and now it's an old plan; I remember Virgin's allowances changed (again) last summer IIRC but your plan even for sim-only is extremely cheap by current standards. For a recognised brand like Virgin anyway, even if they too are an MVNO.

In fairness I think that you've done well to keep such a high data rate combined with U/L texts & 2hrs calls for a tenner for any length of time. MSE's latest sim-only deals page (below) suggests that as you said, Virgin's current pricing would indeed be considerably more expensive.

Your options are (as you know) to upgrade your Virgin package or shop around. The uSwitch link I enclose might help, and will show you just what a good deal you had been getting.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-sim-only-contracts

https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/compare/sim_only_deals/

AndyPK

I have a 6S and vm sim only.

So why did a new SIM card arrive ?

EGBR

Yep, I do realise its a great deal. I suppose I'm just annoyed that they did this in an underhand way & didn't say upfront what the consequences were.

Im shopping around but because we have other services from virgin its likely that in the long run it'll be cheaper to stay but ill lose the unlimited data!

EGBR

Thanks for the links

Frozen_up_north

The £15 pm, 2500 mins and 24GB of data looks like the only viable option if you want to stay with Virgin Mobile. The fact they refuse to offer spending caps (was that not part of the Digital Economy Bill?) and the ban on tethering, would stop me touching them with a barge pole.

AndyPK

Have a look at plusnet.

EGBR

Just wanted to feedback what actually happened. After chatting again to Virgin & looking at other options (some posted here - thank you) I decided to cancel my contract.

When I rang the cancellation line I chatted to a very nice employee who said they would look at my sim to see if there were any problems. After 2 mins he came back online to,d me to take my SIM card out wait 5 mins and reinsert.

Guess what! Normal service resumed. Good outcome but tortuous journey to get there.
I am currently in Arisaig ( North West Scotland) slaving my Ipad with my phone & have good speed & able to download. I hope this might help anyone else in the same predicament .
Regards
X