Not so fast, Virgin Mobile

[rpm]

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Cellular/1703.html

 

[ColinR]

To me this is really petty, yeah sure, let the small stuff fly, and the big will follow. This is gonna cost US money, taking the stuff off the shelves does not cost nothing..

 

[lordnokon]

What happened to freedom of speech??

 

[paulka007]

Thats a bit steep if you ask me... Really now must we argue every little point that this . should be here.?

 

[bwana]

To me this is really petty, yeah sure, let the small stuff fly, and the big will follow. This is gonna cost US money, taking the stuff off the shelves does not cost nothing..

I'm sure they'll be able to just stick a label over the offending text.

ASA should have realised there's no such thing as immediacy in SA - imminent is the closest we have.

 

[Tns]

well it does suggest that you can call after following those steps.They should have added a extra bit stating activation takes x amount of hours

 

[HavocXphere]

Just like the cops that prefer to nail people for speeding instead of catching the real crooks.

 

[Charlie.]

It *is* misleading and it *is* a problem.

Imagine that you're a software developer slash information technology manager at a SMME and your boss announces his intention to go on a business trip to Durban the next day. Just as you're thinking, "Cool, an opportunity to actually do some work while the boss is away," he throws a curve ball: you must get his notebook to connect to the Internet, wirelessly, and do it *now* so that he won't miss any mail while he's away. You secretly wish for a little more time, but, being an uber-geek, you say "No problem," and jump on your bicycle to go buy him a PCMCIA Edge card and a Virgin Mobile SIM, complete with airtime, to do just that. When you get back to your office, you walk in the door with a smug look on your face imagining how impressed he'll be when all this comes together. You whip out the l33t-looking PCMCIA device, slot it into the PC and start opening that VM-starter-pack. Now you're really on your toes, so you pre-empt the need to put the SIM into a real phone to activate it before you put it into the PCMCIA device. Time for that bulleted list... bullet one is easy, no problems there, but after that, your stuffed. No calls, no SMSes, no data. Nothing. How the f**k were you supposed to know that it wouldn't work? Now, instead of giving the boss a working click-the-connect-button-and-surf solution, you have to try to explain to the boss how he's going to have to fight to get it working on his own.

That's not my idea of fun. I know. I've been there and done that.

Ok, I'll be fair - I don't know the first thing about cell phones. I only make calls on mine. Ironically, I don't do VCR's or DVD players either. Give me a PC, Windows, Mac, Linux or Unix and I'm happy!

 

[Mike_De_Lange]

^^ Too much to read.

But I agree this is pety. Does this guy have nothing better to do than to file lawsuits? Douche bag!

 

[stoke]

No, it's not petty, and this is not a lawsuit.
They were misleading on the product offering, and they must fix it.
That's the whole point of the ASA.
Beegup Mr Brimelow, and shame on you Virgin.

 

[DragonLogos]

well first off its not an advert, its just the words on the starter pack - also there is a point that they missed, so hopefully it can be overturned

 

[killadoob]

surely they can add, do it quick but not before you have phoned us to activate

how hard can that be

 

[Skeptik]

They could also add a few other things, like the call you have to make is not free, the highly misleading and haphazard VRewards system - which doesn't work as advertised. And what about the standard rate charge for the 1st 5 minutes which drops to the discounted rate .... but VM has calculated that most of us call for less than 5mins a day!!

 

[Skeptik]

.. and did I mention the lossy call quality and the highly compressed voicemail that is often unintelligible.

 

[kris860911]

That was a stupid story. Does not deserve comments. Especially with Neotel's imminence

 

[bothapn]

Well.. the guy that complained will probably sue of he trips over his own soap in the shower so yeah...
A month ago I found out why our adsl line was not kind-off allowing connections (but got an ip)... I was never told by Telkom that I should "activate" the line. How about that$#%%#$#

 

[DragonLogos]

That happens a lot, perhaps they are losing money to the self install and are keeping this information back as a fire break - someone needs to write an article about it

 

[HavocXphere]

On second thought the VM activation was a pain. I called the call center like 5 times and it took 24h to sort. After that I had fairly few problems.

 

[Charlie.]

He's not suing, he just reported misleading advertising - something that should be stopped...

... like Telkom calling their you're-lucky-if-you-get-400kbps, shaped-all-to-hell 512kbps ADSL service a "broad-band" connection...

... and ISP's calling a 30GB account "uncapped"...

... and many, many more advertisements that plague us consumers.