Virgin Mobile kiss off two customers

Regarding our little issue with Virgin Mobile that I mentioned last week, Virgin have not bothered to reply to my email. Apart from their Totally Friendly! Totally Quirky! autoreply, that is:

Hi Sarah

Thanks for taking the time to send us feedback, we really appreciate it!

We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Cheers
Virgin Mobile Team

*******************************************************************

This email, and any files attached to it, should be treated as totally top secret between the sender and the addressed recipient/s. If you are reading this but think that you probably shouldn’t be, please delete this email, dispose of any printed copies & agree that we’ll never mention it again. We’ve done our best to scan this email for any nasty viruses, but what with technology and all, we can’t absolutely guarantee it. Why are you reading disclaimers anyway?

*******************************************************************

I'm afraid an auto-reply doesn't really cut it.

I phoned them today, only to be told that only Gam can discuss the issue with his bill. So Gam phoned them, and he was basically accused of inventing the story of the Optus network outage, during which he was billed for 9 calls totalling 34 seconds that never went through. Given that Virgin use a cheap foreign call-centre it's not surprising that the 'customer service' rep had never heard of the Optus network outage- although I'd be surprised if we were the first to complain about being charged for calls on that day that never went through. The person Gam spoke to reckoned he was getting through to my voice-mail. I don't have voice-mail, but Virgin do play a sassy (read: fucking irritating) pre-recorded message that basically tells you the person isn't answering their phone, and then charge you for the privilege of listening to it. Seriously. But on the day the Optus network went down, even that wasn't working, yet Gam got charged $6.30 for 34 alleged seconds' worth of calls that never connected (although the 'customer service' arsehole reckoned they did). After a period of arguing, the 'customer service' person gave Gam $8 off the bill and Gam ended the call. Gam never got to mention the fact that there is a general problem with calls cutting off and he was in fact charged for $14 worth of calls totalling 94 seconds. He said after fighting even the charges on the day the network was down he figured they wouldn't acquiesce to cutting the whole $14 I calculated he shouldn't have to pay.

I will be sending one final email to Virgin.

Given that they didn't reply to the first email I ever sent them, or the email I sent last week, I doubt they'll bother responding to the one where I tell them we're going to pay out our contracts and switch providers. Probably to Telstra pre-paid, unbelieveable though that sounds- I've worked out that even in a worst-case scenario where I use as much credit as Gam, our combined costs of $60 per month will be $5 cheaper than what our typical costs have been with Virgin. And that's being generous and excluding the odd blow-out in call costs such as the time my mobile suddenly lost the ability to send and receive SMSes and I was forced to make phonecalls when I usually would have just sent an SMS. Not to mention, if we switch to Telstra pre-paid we'll be able to call each other (and my parents, and my cousin Rachelle) for free- and when we were on Telstra we never had a problem with calls mysteriously dropping out, thus forcing us to redial (though I'm sure if Telstra stumble upon the idea and realise they can charge people for multiple call connections on a single call then they'll probably start dropping the quality of their service too). There's no way I'll use $30 worth of pre-paid in a month (where the free calls apply), but it's about right for Gam, so even if I use my $30 over 50 days and can't call for free for 20 of those days, Gam will be able to call me.

Gam would have got better value calling a phone sex hotline than going with Virgin. We're not under any illusion that the customer service is better with Telstra (who send all of their customer service reps chasing down customers who departed because of the shitty service, if our experience with their home phone and internet services is anything to go by), but we were relatively happy with the pre-paid mobile service we had with them- and at least we won't be paying quite as much for the privilege of being pissed off.