Virgin Mobile

Summary

Virgin Mobile plans offer good rates and good deals on prepaid cell phones if you're within their coverage area.

Their prepaid wireless service emphasizes entertainment feature or "hipness" by offering access to MTV and Comedy Central content among other things.

You can purchase their phones and airtimes cards from many major stores such as Walmart and Target or you can purchase them online where they have good deals on reconditioned phones and extra airtime units.

Virgin is generally known for taking a basic service like air travel or train travel (in the UK) and improving it with excellent customer service. Usually you pay a small premium for that extra level of service, but it can be worth it. We've actually tried and liked their plane (Virgin-Atlantic) to London) and trains (Virgin train) to Birmingham. I'm sure their future space flights will also feature excellent customer service. So, can you get the best of all worlds with a Virgin Mobile prepaid plan – cheap phones, good coverage, great rates and all the latest features?

Decide for yourself.

Coverage

Update: I no longer find the gaps in coverage listed below. Network. I'll move the rest of this info to an archive.

Virgin Mobile relies on the Sprint Nationwide PCS. You can now check out street-level coverage for Virgin Mobile in the USA.

Rates for Virgin Mobile Prepaid Plans

Their rates have dropped and gotten simpler since I last checked. Currently (January 2007), you have a choice of "pay-by-minute" and "pay-by-month" talk plans as well as pay-by-minute and pay-by-month text plans.

Pay-By-Minute Talk Plans
You can choose an 18 cents per minute flat rate or pay 6.99 per month to be charged 10 cents a minute. If you choose the the 6.99 monthly option then you also have to pay some taxes and surcharges in addition, so it really costs more than that. You start with a minimum initial balance of $20, and you have to add (or "top up" as they call it) $20 at least every 90 days. That comes to a minimum of approximately $80 a year. That's a minimum of 444 minutes (80 / $0.14 per minute). A pretty good deal, if you don't talk much on the phone. You can top up your minutes via online via Paypal, or with your debit or credit card. There is an automatic top up option that add $20 when your account get to below $5. You can also buy airtime cards, called "top-up" cards in stores like Walmart and Target or online at Amazon.com.

Pay-by-Month Talk plans
These are as expensive as standard cell phone plans but you prepay for them and there is no contract. Taxes and surcharge apply. The rates range from $14.99 per month for 100 minutes per month to 59.99 per month for 600 minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. This give a yearly cost between $180 and $720 per year. Additional minutes cost 18 cents per minutes but are charged in chunks of $4.50 at a time (i.e. for between 1 and 25 minutes over you're charged 4.50).

Day-2-Day
There doesn't appear to be a by-the-day plan anymore.

Phones

There is a good choice of Virgin Mobile Phones on their website ranging from 19.99 (or even free for a very basic Nokia if you buy $20 of airtime) for a basic phone to $79.99 for a basic camera phone or 99.99 for a good camera phone. These are pretty good deals when you consider that there is no 2 year contract involved.

Additional Info

Text messaging

Text messages generally cost 5 cents to receive and send, but you can lower that by paying a monthly fee ranging from $1.99 to $9.99.

Virgin is one of few prepaid cell phone companies which offers a phones (the Switchback and the Wildcard) with a qwerty(typewriter)-based keypad to more easily compose and send text messages.

Entertainment

MTV and Comedy Central content is available. Your airtime will be deducted while using those service.

If you're into entertainment, you might enjoy a quick look at some Virgin Mobile commercials I found on YouTube. (I had some time on my hands.)

Customer Service

As I mentioned at the beginning, Virgin has a reputation for great customer service. I expect that to be the case here as well.

You can check out the . . .

Latest Virgin Mobile Deals

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