Virgin Mobile 2

I've been a long-time customer of Virgin Mobile. You can save a ton of money if you go to their website and do some research about the plans before you sign-up. To give you the best "pay as you go" rates in the business, Virginmobile has outsourced their customer service department. DO NOT, AND I REPEAT DO NOT depend on their customer service reps for friendly, efficient, or money-saving advice or recommendations. If you are not computer or internet savy, Virgin Mobile is not for you! Almost every aspect of their service can be managed on the VM website. Selecting and buying phones, choosing a plan, activating your phone, swapping your phone, changing your plan, earning free minutes, altering settings, and looking at and buying accessories are only a few things that can be done, by yourself, from Virgin's website! This all sounds great!! Does it not?? IT IS NOT ALL GREAT!! If for some reason, after 10 or more years of loyal service, you should have a problem and have no other choice but to call their customer service department, get ready for some of the worst mannered, ill-tempered, and most incompetent people in the mobile phone industry! After swapping my old VM phone,for a phone that could access the web, I had to call them because the new phone would not access their network. For 2 weeks I was being charged for a service that I could not use and they could not fix. After they opened an investigation that lasted for 72+ hours, the problem was still not resolved. When an investigation fails, they escalate the investigation. Finally after doing my own investigation, because of their failure to fix my problem, I realized that for some reason VM had turned-off my access to international calling in my "service-settings". This is one of the things that you can not change using the website, when I called customer service and told them what they needed to do, it was fixed. Why could they not fix this simple problem? I was just glad my phone was working properly! I then had to call to try and get reimbursed for the money that was being charged when my service did not even work. When I explained to a customer rep that my problem had been fixed and I needed to get back the measley $1.50 (.10 cents per day for the 15 days my phone did not access the service) he said, " I see now that your problem has now been fixed and I think that you knew that you could use your service". I realized, after further explaination, that he was not listening to what I was saying, and I asked to speak to his manager. He told me to hold and after 2 to 5 minutes the same guy came back and told me the same thing over again! Again, I asked to speak with his manager and he said,"ok, please hold forever". After 10 minutes on hold, he finally just hung-up on me. I called back and talked to another customer service rep that listened and returned the money lost when my service was down. The moral of my story is, if you know how to be your own customer service rep you will save a ton of money with this outfit, but if you have to call VM, your at the mercy of the disgruntled employee at the other end of the line!