Virgin Mobile on track

the uphill battle it faces to attract high customers,
Click to expand...

Don't want to tread on any toes, but if your business plan hinges on attracting high customers, then maybe the mobile phone business is not necessarily where you should be focusing your efforts. :)
 
There price plans are way expensive......only have 2 nokia phones on offer.
 
The sad news is when I signed up with Virgin in Des 2007, they promised me 3 things that I couldn't resist.
- Ultra low: 50c/Mb Internet access with no contract.
- Unlimited Free SMS'e
- "We don't steel your money" (Prepaid never expire).

Now they have changed their minds:
- Bandwidth is up to 60c/Mb, this is still very low for not signing a contract for 24months like other providers.
- Unlimited changed to 1000 SMS's / month... still ok, I never break the 400 barrier.
- But the hardest hit: You have 3months to use up your airtime or it will expire....

The thing is because their bandwith is so cheap, and because airtime didn't expire, I saved up for that "working-holiday" I wanted to take, and sit by the beachhouse, going about doing all my work over a 3G connection... I manages to save up to R1500 airtime, because I mostly SMS (free of charge) and don't really call on this phone.

Now they have stabbed me in the back. What are they going to do next? Oh and this is all during the 24month contract... what is the use of the contract if it doesn't make the conditions of the contract fixed...
 
Waste I feel your pain.

The biggest mistake that I ever made was signing that 24 month contract :mad:. Virgin is pathetic, you call their call centre trying to sort out a problem, they promise to call you back but don't even make the effort.

The biggest problem that I experience with this service are the voice calls. Your phone is on but when people try to reach you they are unable to as it is "engaged". Then there is the constant dropping of the call while driving. They are just inferior compared to Vodacom and MTN.

I predict that this company will never make it out of the red. They may have attracted many customers because of 1000 free SMS’s etc but many of these new customers will no doubt leave as soon as the two years are over.

Please let everyone you know how hopeless this company is, stay far far away. They can ignore me as an individual but I will do more damage to them through word of mouth than they can imagine, ironically telling the truth about Virgins incompetence is a strong enough deterrent to most people except for the truly adventurous :erm:.

One more year then no more Virgin!!! :D:D:D
 
Hey Mr Virgin CEO, here's a clue - Fix your service levels!!!!!

Virgin is shocking in this regard! I can't wait for my contract to expire.
 
Thanks LS.

I'm situated in Bloem and it the service interruptions are actually minimal here. I must agree the call centre people are not very thorough with their "promises". But before I flame on about that, I just quickly want to add something to my list:

- Itemised billing, they just added it to my account and I had to pay for it.

I had to call them 3 times to get this sorted, from the first call they promised to remove it and credit my money. But it just stayed until the third time, they actually removed it. But this is not where it started... let me tell a quick tale:

One day I while minding my own business, I received a SMS from Virgin: "Itemised Billing will not be free anymore, please reply "Yes" to this number to continue to use this service." This SMS puzzled me, I never had Itemised billing before, so if I don't have it I guess I don't need to opt out. But I called the call centre anyways, just to confirm. I ask the lady to remove Itemised billing from my account. They lady told me I don't have itemised billing on my account, so she has nothing to removed. That sounded fine as I expected.

A month passed and what do you know! In my mail I receive an Itemised billing report with my account. And the extra R12 has been charged to my account. So this is where it all started, I had to phone 2 more times for them to actually remove the itemised billing!! And of this date they still haven't paid back my money.

The thing that bothers me the most is that they just added something to my account and started to charge for it! And then I had to resolve it myself, and it still took 3 months before they actually did it. They have 230 000 subscribers, so they just stole: R2 760 000 x 3 = R8 280 000 from all their subscribers! And some people has not yet stopped their itemised billing, so they are still making free cash with this...

Where can I lodge and consumer complaint?
 
Guys I know waht ur talking about but the same goes for MTN I've been at all 4 networks and I hate to say it Vodacom is still the best and the most expensive and dnt forget the most stingy network I hope Virgin will manage to sort out these teething problems which has been going on from day one but I guess it has a lot to do with staff being changed on a monthly basis and therefore there is no consistency they need to firstly look at making the employees happy and then the rest will follow......dats just my two bob
 
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