The dreadful Virgin Mobile (PAYG) - I'm free at last! and I'll never go back.

ButtersUK

I've had a Virgin PAYG (SIM ONLY) account for years. Just for emergency/occasional use.

They've never been the cheapest but for occasional use that was OK.

Recently they've been sending everyone a new SIM card - a purple one to replace the previous red one.

If you Google 'Virgin Mobile Community forum' you'll get taken to their site and it's worth doing just to see how many unsatisfied and frustrated customers there are.

As part of their reorganization they've issued a new 'Daily Plan' which, in short, means if you make a single call or text in one day it costs £2 - and if you did that every day for a week it would be   £2 x 7 = £14 a week. Thats not cheap.

I won't go into a load of boring detail but, briefly, I tried to contact them using their 789 number from my mobile. After a very long wait I was put through to an offshore advisor who gave me totally incorrect advice.  I decided to leave Virgin (or to try to leave them) and It took three letters to their Complaints department in Sunderland (the last two being addressed to the Complaints Director) before eventually I received a call back. They agreed to refund my £32 balance (despite my being told  by the 789 advisor that NO refunds are given) and they agreed to cancel my account.

And, yes, I did receive the cheque for £32 - but getting the account cancelled took a bit more work.

But now, I'm free of Virgin Mobile. Never to return.

By comparison, Asda Mobile are fantastic ... easy to contact, a UK advisor every time, and they use EE, so decent coverage. And it's only 8p per minute.

It does seem that cheap and easy PAYG is becoming a thing of the past.  O2 have stopped their 3p / 2p / 1p plan for new customers and THREE have also stopped their 3p / 2p / 1p plan for new customers.

There are a couple other options but none seemed free of some sort of drawback hence me sticking with Asda. I have several spare/emergency phones and just need to make one chargeable text or call every six months to keep them active.

Luckily I do have the original O2  "321"  plan on both our main phones - I just hope they continue to allow their use for the foreseeable.

Chino

ButtersUK said:

And, yes, I did receive the cheque for £32 - but getting the account cancelled took a bit more work. 

But now, I'm free of Virgin Mobile. Never to return.

You complain, but it seems that you had a good result from Virgin Media in getting your unused PAYG balance refunded; most PAYG providers refuse to refund unused PAYG balances.

I'm also unclear why you felt the need to contact VM to cancel the account. As it was a PAYG plan, all you needed to do was to stop using it.

ButtersUK

Yes, Chino, you're quite right, I did complain to Virgin Customer Services, albeit in doing so I seem to have met with disapproval on your behalf ... and feell fully justified in so doing as I felt that the difficulty (on numerous occasions) in trying to get a reply from a 789 advisor was regrettable and then, when I did get through, the advisor gave jme totally wrong information insofar as she told me, incorrectly, that I was going to be transferred on to the, £2 per text/call, 'Daily Plan' and that I couldn't cancel and reclaim the balance of £32  and that I would just have to use it on calls or texts (at £2 per call or text).  She said I should have been told about the new SIM and the new plans beforehand  - but I did not receive such notification - the SIM arrived out of the blue and long after the period allowed for me to have a chance to consider my options - so, according to her, I was stuck with a new SIM that was going to cause me to pay £2 per call whether I liked it or not. The advisor seemingly had no other course of action at her disposal so I decided to put the case to to Virgin Complaints Department.

My first two letters were acknowledged (I was told to expect a follow up response) but no follow up communication was received despite my giving them full details of my circumstances and several contact options. Eventually I had a text which said they couldn't call me as they were only a text messaging service - and no letter was received by me. Only on the third occasion did I get a call by an advisor and they did listen to my outline of the difficulies I'd experienced and they did agree to refund the balance.

I was told that my wish would be granted and my online account would be closed (I decided I wanted no further associations with Virgin, hence the request to close the account) but, again, I had to make two more attempts in order to actually have it closed and to have my number removed from active service.

I would add that, as I mentioned above, I posted on the Virgin Community Forum and received a reply from one of the staff/team members who kindly looked at my case and told me that the 789 advisor was mistaken in telling me that my charging structure would change to £2 per call/text and that it was always the case that I would remain on my original pricing regime (an old Heritage plan consisting of a combination of call rates of 25 pence and 40 pence per minute).

And so, Chino, to conclude, I actually don't think that Virgin Mobile aquitted themselves all that well  - I didn't want to wait 90 days to allow the plan to lapse - I wanted to be shot of them straight away - if you had spent the amount of time and effort dealing with them that I did  you might have felt the same.  And, trust me, I feel pleased to be completely free of their services.

And if you care to look on Trustpilot as well you'll see that VM have achieved a 3% Excellent score and a 93% Bad score. So it's possible I'm not the only one feeling the way I do.

alanjones60

Regarding stopping on the 02 321 tarrif. You will be able to stay on it. I had the 02 text and web tariff,and was on it for years,was not forced off it,i joined the 02 321 tariff. So they should let us stay on it.

ButtersUK

Indeed, Alan - we certainly hope so.

I do, occasionally, get notes from O2 advertising their £7 a month plan with x number of minutes and texts included (can't remember the figures at the moment). Apparently it's only available to existing customers who are on PAYG. But all the time they allow us to use the 321 arrangement then I, for one, will stick with it.

And althought the PAYG customer service advisors seem to be located in South Africa - (and offshore customer service centres don't always make life easy for UK customers) -  I've always had good service from them in the past whenever I've called them..

alanjones60

Same here. I will be staying on it to. In my other pbone,i have 3s 321 tariff. No sign of 3 chucking me off that also

ButtersUK

You did well, Alan, to keep your THREE account going, given that they subsequently withdrew it.  Having a phone on an alternative network could, I imagine, get you out of trouble every now and again. I haven't actually found myself in a reception black spot for quite a while (but then, with this virus I haven't been out anything like as much).

And I'm guessing that Chino has nothing further to add following his/her initial apparent disapproval of my complaint to Virgin - he/she hasn't been back here since - or if he/she has he/she hasn't commented.

ivinsp

Just curious if you were aware of the ability to transfer to another provider @ButtersUK (it's as easy as texting PAC to 65075) once your number is transferred the old account is automatically cancelled but @Chino is correct you don't usually get credit that you've bought refunded, once it's purchased as credit it's deemed to be credit to use with them and no cash so you're fortunate to receive that refund! Paul

ButtersUK

No, Paul, I wasn't aware of the procedure you speak of. Thanks for mentioning it.

But, having seen the tremendous number of dissatisfied people on the Trustpilot site and on the Virgin Community site (and that includes current customers, prospective customers trying to open accounts without success and customers trying, equally unsuccessfully, to leave Virgin) ... I'm not all that confident that the transfer would have gone smoothly - but I am just speculating there, maybe it would have been OK.

And, yes, we all agree that there is no contractual right for a customer with a PAYG  account to have their balance refunded in cash - but, as we know, they did and I would guess they did it for a couple of reasons:

Firstly they must realise that their offshore Customer Service facility that deals with 789 calls has been very poor in responding to calls and, in my case, when the call was eventually answered I was given 100% wrong advice regarding my calling plan. Furthermore, they should have sent me notification of the intended change of SIM and associated changes to the plan ... but it failed to arrive, despite them having my contact details.

Additionally, the first two of my letters to the Sunderland Complaints Department were, initially, acknowledged but then subsequently ignored ... it was only my third letter that elicited a response.

And finally, it took several attempts for them to actually close the online account as they'd promised to do,  it took a number of communications from me to achieve it.

Maybe they also realise that their new Daily Plan charging structure isn't especially fair insofar as a single call or text in any one day would actually cost £2!

So, yes, as you say, it could well be that I was fortunate to have had my balance returned but I admit  I did feel sufficiently irritated and aggrieved by their abysmal customer service that I wasn't keen to let go of that particular issue .... admittedly not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but nevertheless frustrating when they're supposed to be a comminications company but seem reluctant to communicate effectively with their customers.

pmduk

I suspect Virgin want to go the way of some of the newer networks and not provide PAYG at all, They have history in gently encouraging cuztomers to leave by increasing prices and I suspect that is what is behind this Daily Plan. 

ButtersUK

  ^ ^ ^   Hit the nail on the head there!

That's what the 789 advisor told me on the phone (but then she also told me other stuff which turned out to be totally wrong).

EDIT.

And just to prove that their left hand seems slightly unsure what their right hand is doing - I just this minute received a letter from Sunderland Complaints Department (dated yesterday the 22nd ) telling me they're sorry I'm not happy with the service I'm getting from them and that I can be confident they'll do everything they can to ensure it's put right  and that a 'member of their customer complaints department will take ownership of my complaint ' etc. etc ....  and get back to me by phone or text (that'll be tricky coz the number is disconnected now).

Clearly they haven't realised that, over a week ago, we mutually resolved our differences on the phone, and that they kindly cancelled the account, refunded the balance and terminated the phone number.

Again I say that, in the grand scheme of things, none of this is earth shattering stuff, but it does remind me that I'm glad I left them and won't be re-joining any time soon.

FURTHER EDIT

OK, I thought it polite to contact them to tell them what I wrote above - and after a wait of half an hour listening to "music" I did get to speak to an advisor who was polite and efficient and who assured me she has now closed the complaint and confirmed the account and phone number were all now cancelled.

Let's hope that really is the last I hear from them.