Virgin Mobile USA

It all makes sense now.

Virgin Mobile has horrible customer service. When you call you rarely get an answer. When you do get an answer their tech support knows very little about their service.
They state that you get 800 kb per second but you almost never get above 12 kb. They will claim that it is a problem with your computer. I tried it out on multiple PCs with different Operating Systems and still had difficulty connecting and when I did get connected I still did not get above 12 kb. When I told them this they said they could not help me.

Within the past week, I had decided to to check out Virgin Mobile's Broadband2Go wireless internet service and discovered, this is more scam than legit. First off...the intial packaging the USB device comes in, states "Unlimited 3G Internet Just $40/Month". Sounds good. At least on the packaging. Hook up was very easy as well as the connection. But once connected to the site, it's a whole different story.

The Unlimited $40/Month package does not exist. Instead, it now becomes a Unlimited $50/Month package (Does this seem like a Bait and Switch Scam?) with two other cheaper packages to choose from. A $10/Weekly package and a $20/Monthly package that offers so much megabites for the entire month--and of which, can be gone through within a matter of a couple of days (depending on how much one uses the Internet). Budget wise, neither one of the latter two, stated packages, are the least bit practical. The Unlimited usage package, would be the more practical choice of the three money wise. That is, if one can actually get the service.

I myself, chose to try, at first, the $20/Monthly package (Which by the way, is proclaimed by Virgin Mobile, as a Wal-Mart Special) just out of curiousity and because I had a $40 Top-Up Card which needed to be used. So I applied that card to the Broadband Service and registered my Bank Credit/Debit card for the purpose of later use when I wanted to upgrade the plan for Unlimited usage.

Not only did I find the $20/Month package worthless. But I also discovered the connection, to be just as slow--if not slower than the old Dial-Up Service back in the day. And many times, the connection, would quite suddenly be dropped and I would have to go through the motions to reconnect.

But not one to give up so easy and lick my wounds, I decided to upgrade the package to the $50/Month Plan--just to see if it would be any better. Only now, when I use my Bank Credit/Debit Card to make the upgrade, I instead, receive a glaring message that there is a problem with my card and to double check the information I had given when registering the card to see if it is correct. Which I did...and it was correct. I then contacted my bank to check with them if there was a problem with my card and whether or not, I just might be over my limit. My Bank told me that I wasn't. I also found out, that Virgin Mobile had in fact, been issued the funds of $50 plus, much to my surprise, charging an extra $4 to my account as well.

Once finding that my Bank Card had in fact been charged, I immediately called the 877 number and spoke with a Virgin Mobile Boadband2Go Customer Representative and told her the problem at hand. She was very cordial and sympathetic as well as apologetic--but denied, that my card had been charged by Virgin Mobile. She admitted, that they do have my Bank Credit/Debit Cad on file, but it was not charged for any amount only to follow with a statement, that my Bank was mistaken--A total of $54 was never charged by Virgin Mobile. And yet, I had been able to download the bank statements, which clearly shows the charges made by Virgin Mobile on Sunday, May 29, 20011 at 10:19 PM PST. Plus the extra $4 from the hours of 10:27 PM to 11:00PM PST.

Is there fraud involved? I honestly suspect there is. The Virgin Mobile Customer Rep., never did offer to check into the problem as to where the $54 had gone too. Yet she did deny my request to do so--Since, as she kept saying, Virgin Mobile, never deducted the funds from my card.

And yet, my current bank statement, says otherwise. So perhaps, there should be some sort of investigation, handled by the State Attorney General's Office, leaning towards the alleged business practices of Virgin Mobile.

Something needs to be done--Now my next door neighbor is on the phone with a Virgin Mobile Rep.. It seems, that 310 minutes of just purchased cell phone time, mysteriously vanished.

Will it never end?

Virgin Mobile Broadband2Go is FRAUD, plain and simple. I paid $70 for a USB stick because I was assured the coverage was good in my area. After almost a year of throwing away $50/mo on a useless unlimited wireless plan, I am finally bailing out. In the last few months alone I have had no service for at least 10 days a month. Today alone I have had to disconnect and reconnect at least 20 times because the signal fails after a few minutes if I can connect at all. I have called for support at least 10 times, been through the same pass the buck, uninstall, reset, all of that. Ive been assured that I am in a good service area, been told someone from "engineering" would call me, who never did, you name it. Now Virgin is advertising 4G! They can't do 3G! DO NOT BUY THIS SERVICE OR ONE OF THEIR DEVICES! They should be investigated for fraud.

Broadband2Go certainly is a consumer fraud bait-and-switch. They claim Unlimited and 3G, but when you get it home, you find it’s limited to 2.5Gigs/Mo (which you exhaust in a week if you look at a few youtubes a day) and their 3G, even with the max four bars, which I had, still makes youtube stutter since it never gets above one Mbps.

Saying Unlimited in Huge letters, then mentioning the limit in such small ones is a pure lie. and a logical contradiction. The Max you could get, mathematically, is about 8 Gigs/mo, far from Unlimited. Saying Unlimited and limited in the same breath is a total contradiction. I know it can't be totally unlimited, but their limit and speed is so tiny it's far, far from the price of the modem and service. I can quit the service but I'm out the price of the modem.

I don’t see how they can get away with this bald lie. It amazes me. But then, the banksters aren’t being prosecuted so I guess everyone else is going to figure crime pays, too.