Virgin Mobile Customer Service is Terrible!
I bought an LG Rumor Touch phone at Radio Shack and had no coverage whatsoever at my workplace, where I primarily intended to use it, even though their coverage map shows "good" signal strength and "BEST" high speed 3g coverage in that zip code area. Accessing the customer service is a nightmare. I hate "ALEX" with a passion! (just keep pressing zero at all of his prompts to finally talk to a live person, tho none of them are native English speakers, which I found extremely vexing!) I've since learned from other websites' complaint forums that many people share my sentiments.
The customer service people all seem to be reading from a canned script to address your issues and will not deviate from it no matter how much you argue with them. Requests for a supervisor only kick you off to another inept person who will make you repeat ALL of your information, and then proceed to tell you that they can't do anything to rectify your issue!
The coverage area claims you are on the Sprint network, but the Radio Shack salesperson told me that Virgin Mobile only has access to about half of Sprint' cell towers! Their advertising is misleading to say the least. Needless to say, I have returned the phone and gotten a refund for that, but I find it dishonest of VM to refuse to refund a prorated share of my unused monthly fee. (I paid $40 for the monthly unlimited plan) I had only had the phone for 3 days, the coverage was NO WHERE NEAR what they claimed it would be and the phone was buggy as well-(kept freezing up and slow to exit Java apps).
I feel that VM is guilty of false advertising, which is illegal in the USA, and that I should have been issued a partial refund of my unused monthly plan amount. I have canceled the account and told them to STOP the automatic debits from my bank account, but based on other complaints I've read, I am keeping a close eye on my account for unauthorized charges. STAY AWAY from Virgin Mobile, because you will not get your money back from them if their service sucks in your area.
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Admin Note: Try Kajeet Instead
You can get the LG Rumor 2 as a Kajeet phone instead. Don't know if the coverage will be any different (also Sprint-based I believe), but the customer service is supposed to be good.
Get 1500 Minutes, 1500 Messages & 30MB Web Access for $30/Month from
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