Let it be known, I created this account specifically to write this review...
Now, to be fair, my account was actually with Helio. However, Virgin Mobile took over Helio long before I signed up with them. My girlfriend added me to her plan, which she had for nearly a year prior, and she said that it went way down hill after the buy out. Regardless, I dealt with Virgin Mobile the entire time. Many of my problems involved the phone itself, which was a Helio phone. Still, it became Virgin Mobile's problem when they allowed people to continue to receive these pieces of garbage.
My 4 1/2 month tenure with Virgin Mobile was nothing short of hellish. I estimate my number of calls to customer care in that period approaching 100. This is NOT an exaggeration. My problems varied greatly, and pretty much every problem you can dream up, I had it. My phone went bad just weeks into me signing up. It began as a "text messaging not working" issue, and ended as a "completely shot internet issue" when one of their reps permanently destroyed the internet connection on that device. Somehow. That's the kind of stuff that happened regularly; I called with one problem, and hung up with a new one. The replacement device they sent me was a refurbished phone, which worked properly for about a week. From there on out, it was one nightmare after another. I had text messaged not send and receive for no reason (which caused me big problems), internet not working for nearly half a dozen different reasons, outages related to the entire network, our plan, AND just my line. Again, it was one problem after another. Then came the customer service....The lowest ranking people are actually nice. That's where the praise ends. They are horrible at speaking english, they know NOTHING about their products, and their procedures are excruciating. Once you get to tier 2, they get shady. I was lied to repeatedly about various things. I had one guy promise me a brand new Ocean 2 phone, going as far as to say the order was placed, only for the next guy to tell me they cannot even do that. I had another guy tell me they could waive the ET fee, and the next guy tell me they couldn't do that either. I had them promise credits on our bills that never showed up, and even when they did, I was lucky to get half of what they claimed. These people literally had me in tears and on the verge of a nervous breakdown on multiple occasions. Finally, I got a zeroed out bill (which amounted to about $140 credit; a fraction of what was actually owed to me), and bailed.
Not only was their handling of my problems grotesquely unprofessional, some of it was illegal I'm sure. What I have shared is merely scratching the surface. Everything about this company is horrendous, all the way down to the hold music, which repeats the same three songs at all times. I swear if I hear "All The Small Things" by Blink 182 ever again, I might literally lose my sanity. Stay as far away from these people as possible. Lets put them out of business in fact. They still have my girlfriend cause we cant afford to hack any more fees at the moment. I will forever look back on June to October 2009 as a living nightmare, and one of the absolute worst times of my life (and I've been through things the average person can't imagine). Again let me stress, I am NOT embellishing. This experience was unfathomable. This site should be changed in that we can give 0 stars, specifically to accommodate Virgin Mobile. Even then, it would be offensive to other things receiving 0 stars.
