Virgin Mobile

But I am seeing some buy their phone, 300 minutes plan for some areas.

If they won't answer your questions, why go with them?
Bob

I have two post-paid lines with T-Mobile. But I needed a line for my mom, who did not have a cell. She could not get a signal in the house, so I tried out Virgin.

Mainly, I have horrible customer service with them. My mom could never get help so I had to do it, meaning when things went wrong she had to wait for me to visit to call Virgin.

Three times they messed up on getting her voice mail to work, and it was a problem on its end because after a fourth call the competent CSR fixed it.

Also, they were supposed to put me on a plan that rolled over minutes. Come to find out six months later that she was not on roll over minutes. They had put her on the wrong plan.

Virgin said they would give me a $20 credit, but refused to give my mom the 500 or so minutes she had earned and not used.

So on that I told them to cancel the account and I got my mom a Net10 phone. On her Net10 they deduct $15 monthly on the account and her minutes automatically roll over. So no muss, no fuss.

By the way, I had $90 in the Virgin account that was unused. When I canceled the account they said they don't give refunds. While I know I could have pursued that in a lawsuit, who has time to do that. So they kept the $90.

Virgin's logic was that I could use the $90 for other services. They don't address the inconsistency that if I cancel the account, how they can legally keep the $90 cash that's mine.

Oh... you can look on Wikipedia who owns Virgin Mobile, I don't think it's Virgin.

Sidenote: Every time I called Virgin it sounded like it was India, and one time when I asked the CSR said she was in the Philippines.

Sometimes the accents were so thick I could not understand what they were saying. And because of the language barriers (English is their second language) most calls were "sterile" and unfriendly. Nothing wrong with straight and to the point calls, but sometimes a friendly voice is nice to hear.

Even though that Proffitt (sp) dude has a 159,000 forum posts, he was trying to tell you to do your own work or if you had questions, call the carrier.

He was not going to answer your question which I understood to be your asking if anyone had experience with Virgin and if so, how was it. Seems a logical question to me and something you would not actually call the carrier about, at least not if you want an honest opinion.

I wrote an article that was published in a magazine. It was about 2011 and all the new phones, services, ways of charging people, etc.

I said that prepaid is becoming better every few months or so. Prepaid is getting better phones and providing extremely competitive call and data plans (unlimited).

There's two things you need to search. First, determine which prepaid works in your area. That can be determined on the Net. (Search the carrier's "coverage area.")

Also determine who provides the prepaid its "towers" so to speak. Many prepaids lease spectrum from the big carriers (it's big business to "rent" spectrum to these small companies). Also, many prepaids are owned and operated by the big carriers. For example, Sprint owns Boost Mobile.

As to handsets, carriers are getting better phones every few months or so. It really depends on what you want in a phone. For example, there's Android-based handsets coming out. While they are not full-featured Android versions, such as the inability to play flash files on the Internet, they are still nice phones compared to old prepaid phones (the clamshell phones of 2002. LOL).

Another example, MetroPCS now has a 4G handset. While many people may not be in the market for that, it's interesting there is now a 4G prepaid phone.

So check around. I'd type in the carrier's name you are thinking about and the word "complaint," in Google, to see what comes up.

There's also lots of prepaid review sites that have lots of information.

Even on YouTube you can type in the phone you are considering and there's always someone who has posted a video of it in operation.