Dear Virgin Mobile:

Forgive me for contacting you all this way, but so far my efforts to get assistance in all the usual fashion have failed, including the contact us form on the Virgin Mobile website.

I am extremely disappointed in your mobile broadband service. In late October I purchased the usb Novatel device and used the service for one month. It was great. But in December I got free mobile internet for a time and did not reup until January 29th, when I discovered that the usb device no longer works. I was told another device would be fed exed to me overnight. That device wasn’t even shipped for 2 days (so much for overnight) and then fed ex wouldn’t deliver it because your customer service agent screwed up the address. This is the second time I have had a problem with Virgin Mobile and fedex. At christmas I ordered my son a cell phone. It was early December and should have been easily delivered before Christmas. It wasn’t shipped until late December to arrive on or after the 28th. I canceled the order and bought a phone in a Radio Shack instead, but it took until January to get a refund on the canceled order.

So now I am out $80 for the original USB device, which worked for only a month. I have requested a return of the $40 monthly fee I paid on January 29th and haven’t been able to use at all. It hasn’t been refunded. When your products and service work, they work really well. But for me this has been a very expensive experiment where I have essentially paid $160 for internet service for one month, which is overpriced by any standard.

In the mean time, the shiny new phone that I bought for my son and that he loves has a battery issue. We’ve had it for less than 2 months and it won’t hold a charge. I know that if I call your customer service number I am just going to be disappointed and frustrated again by the ineptitude. That’s $140 for a phone that worked (really well) for about a month. This is becoming a pattern. Perhaps you need to put disclaimers on your products that they are meant for one month’s usage only. I picked your company instead of adding my son to my T-Mobile account because you had better prices. But now I am seeing that you really do get what you pay for. In the many years I’ve had T-Mobile, I’ve never had a product break though I keep my phones long after the contract period.

All I want is a credit on the broken usb device so I can go buy another one in a store and not deal with your shipping problems and my son to have a phone that charges. But your customer service manager was incompetent, arrogant, and a few more words that I don’t want to put in this letter. I just want my service and devices to work the way they are supposed to and you would have a loyal customer. Instead you have a very upset and decidedly poorer customer with no value to show for it.

Sincerely,
RQ

(fyi- this was emailed to every Virgin Mobile & Novatel exec whose address I could find. If you all want to help, perhaps twittering and facebooking this to boost the signal would be lovely).