I recently had to move my mobile account around (long story), so I decided I want to try Virgin Mobile out. I had 4 mobile phones (family and friends) that I needed to move, and I wanted to get a wireless broadband account.
It all started reasonably harmless, and I ran into a few issues that although they were a pain, I did expect them. Just by the nature of the fact that I have now succumbed to just accepting that all Telcos are pathetic at what they do! Things like; “Oh we can’t move your number across, but we can’t tell you why. But you need to call your current carrier and fix it”, ummmm WTF!!! or when the number does port across to the new carrier, they actually do it by disconnecting from the old carrier, and then when the new carrier gets around to it, connects it. In the meantime, there is 6 hours of phone not working and if anyone rings me they get a “This number is no longer connected” message – oh that is awesome for business!!!
But those issues (believe it or not) were somewhat expected. But what finally did my head in, which made me move get out from Virgin was this;
So, I have 4 phones, and I wanted to see how I would go on pre-paid instead of post paid – call it a social experiment. but a couple of the phones were high usage phones, so I was buying $49 packs for them, the others had $39 and $29 packs and I had a $29 wireless pack. So that was a monthly spend of (roughly)$200. But guess what? Virgin has this AWESOME policy of only allowing $200 to be charged on a pre-paid account per month on credit card.
Here is the scenario: I am in sunny Melbourne to watch the Formula 1 Grand Prix, and it is the day of the race, and as I try to call the group I am with, my credit runs out. No problem, I can either call up Virgin and put more credit on, or I my preference, I hop onto their site from my iPhone, and its a simple matter of going to the recharge page. Two attempts, and I get a cryptic error message saying that there was an “Internal Error”, so I decide to call up Virgin call centre. They have 3 attempts with 2 different credit cards and they get the same problem. Girl of (un)Help desk does not know why so she needs to speak with her supervisor. 10 minutes later she comes back to tell me this great policy they have. Now mind you, this is for a scenario where I am not complaining about a service, in fact I am happily wanting to hand over my credit card and GIVE THEM MONEY!! There is no issue with my card, in fact, either of my cards. I have the security codes, and everything matches up.
What is their suggestion? “You will need to go into a Virgin store and buy a credit voucher”, my response, “So, you want me to leave the racetrack where I am at, find a cab on race day to find a Virgin store which is unlikely t be anywhere nearby, and purchase a credit voucher, WITH MY CREDIT CARD?!?!”. Virgin, “Yes, that’s correct sir”. Do they not see the irony & illogical recommendation they have just provided?!?!
That was Sunday, come Monday, I was in the first Optus store I could find to move all my numbers to Optus (and yes, all you observant people, I do realise my own irony that Optus owns Virgin, but what’s the alternative? Telstra?!? Please!!!).
This whole experience taught me nothing, but once again it makes me think that if there was a carrier out there that provided phenomenal customer service, they would blitz the scene. I believe Telcos provide only 2 things; 1) Telecommunication products (and most of them are very similar to each other), and 2) Customer Service (and all of them are crap). There has to be a better way!!!!
