Do Not Buy A Virgin Mobile Phone Online – It Is A Major Hassle
So on Thursday, I purchased a new phone for my mum online through Virgin Mobile, because she now spends about $15 per month on prepaid, and for another $4, she can use her phone as much as she wants, and she will get a new phone. I ordered online to make use of the 3 months free access, which is a saving of $57 – which is a quite bit.
I ordered her he Samsung Wave, on the $19 Easy Cap plan, which gives her $50 of credit, and 50MB of data, which would suit her well.
Our family is not one that regularly buys physical products online, but a few weeks ago, we decided to replace our 10 year old fridge. Harvey Norman stocked it for about $2200, while online; we could buy it for $1600, so we did. We put the order through, and by the next day, it was delivered and installed. It was so easy, and we didn’t have to do any manual labour or anything.
So based on this experience, because it was a fridge, delivering a small phone would be much simpler right? Well, was I wrong about that!
First of all, let’s take a step back. I was previously on Virgin Prepaid, and needed a new phone, and I wanted to use the internet on the go. I went down to my local All Phones retailer, picked out the phone I liked from Virgin, had a demo of it, and purchased there and then. Doing the paperwork took a while, but once done, I had my new phone in my hand walking home. In a few hours, my prepaid credit was automatically transferred over to credit on my Post-Paid plan and I was able to make calls, and browse the internet on my brand new Nokia 5800.
So you can see it was a quick and easy process. Ordering online, however, was a different story. As I said at the start, I ordered the phone online on Thursday, and it wasn’t until Tuesday 10am I received the phone. Although that’s 3 business days as they said on the website, it took 5 nights to get delivered – which is a long time for a device we rely on everyday. We got a phone call on Friday from Virgin, just to confirm our order, and it was put through the delivery process on Monday, and received Tuesday (according to the Messenger Post website).
So I had the experience of buying a Virgin Mobile in store and upgrading my prepaid to post-paid, and buying online, upgrading from prepaid to post-paid with Virgin Mobile. The only difference, in store took half a day, online took 5 nights.
However, the problems with ordering online do not stop there. I now have to active the service, and transfer the original number over, which will take a few hours (like it did with my phone). However, I cannot do this because Virgin had to do a major system update today didn’t they.
—
Update: I sent an email to Virgin Mobile, on Wednesday, they called my back a few hours later and got the service activated. However, the My Account section looks a bit suss (information missing), so hopefully everything went to plan. The good thing is that my mum now has a phone to use.
However, I do think Virgin will call me back in 2 weeks to confirm that the commitments are carried over from the new post-paid sim card to the old pre-paid simcard. Logging into My Account with both phone numbers, bring up the same information – I wonder if it can make a call.
Update 2: By ordering online during the time of system updates was probably a bad time to order a new phone. But after I upgraded my phone from the Nokia 5800 to an Xperia Arc, it only took a 14 minute phone call, and I got the phone the very next day (a Friday)
Is it really such a hassle for you? From your post you do seem to be afraid of manual labor so I am suprised you went through the arduous task of writing a post about it on here.
I think you should talk to the people of Christchurch/Brisbane/Northern Queensland to find out what a real hassle is. You might not be so quick to complain about an order which said it was to be shipped in 3 business days actually arriving after 3 business days…..
I would be interested to hear your opinion in regard to when any upgrade should have taken place… my bet is any time that didnt inconvenience YOU.
A company of that scale is operational 24/7 they have to create downtime at some point for crucial updates…. someone is always going to be affected.
Get your priorities straight before throwing a tanty.
So I have had a similar bad experience from Virgin mobile. I’ve been trying to order a phone for 3 days now, but cannot. If you go right now to their website, order a phone, and choose pay with paypal, it says, cannot receive a token. If you try to pay with a credit card, it says your address and zip code don’t match. Called Virgin Mobile yesterday, and they were more than happy to take the order over the phone. However, I could not get the “EXTRA10” discount code applied. They said for me to wait 5 to 8 business hours for the website to be fixed. I tried several times last night, but it wasn’t fixed. Tried this morning, and it still isn’t working. I work in I.T, and if I left our websites down for 3 days with no order capabilities, I’d be fired the first day.. let alone 3 days and still no bueno.
James, going on past experiences that I have mentioned in the post, ordering online was a real hassle. Virgin does over-exaggerate the word “quick” in their order process when you can compare it with “quick” when buying a phone in store.
I wrote this post, while I was waiting to activate the phone because it needed to be done, otherwise my mother wouldn’t have a phone. She hadn’t had one since Thursday, as her prepaid balance had no credit on it because we were moving to post-paid.
I agree with the fact that this issue seems small compared to what happened at QLD, and NZ, and I give sympathy to those friends that I know who live in QLD. I know many people who live in those areas that were affected. I even spent 3 days constantly covering the QLD Floods on this site because how close it was too me.
http://www.jackcola.org/blog/119-qld-floods-news-updates-pictures-and-videos and http://www.jackcola.org/blog/120-qldnsw-floods-recovery-updates-and-images-from-friday-14th-january
Even though I mostly cover tech, the QLD floods was the most successful story on this site (until the dropbox walkthrough)
My opinion to when any upgrades should take place is when there will be minimal disruption. I know that the timing wasn’t perfect (for me), but Virgin should have implemented a better change management process, and pulled out when it was going to take 1.5 days longer.
And by the sounds of what I was reading on Whirlpool, the system didn’t have thorough testing. http://whrl.pl/RcC6hO You may be aware that it was postponed 3 weeks ago. A rep on whirlpool said it was postponed so they could add more functionality into the system based on feature requests from Whirlpool members. What this tells me, is that Virgin put together a quick system. Implementing a major new system that affects every customer and only giving three weeks to implement and fully test a new system is incredible short. When they implemented it, they found it didn’t work. They should have restored the previous system and ensured their new system works, and made changes.
I worked in one of Australia’s largest supermarkets in IT for the past 6 months. Let’s say if their online shopping had a downtime of what Virgin had, think about the millions of dollars they would have lost in Sales and customers, because people would have ordered online with the competition store. The customer may like the other online store better, thus they have lost a customer. Look at the effects.
Another example, Facebook. 500 million users. Imaging if Facebook was done for 3 days. What would happen? The world would go mad, and probably switch back to MySpace or sign up to Twitter if they already haven’t. And Virgin is small compared to Facebook.
Also look at the impact NAB had when a file corrupted.
Virgin should have implemented the system already and then just flicked a switch and had a downtime have 10 min max. They shouldn’t spend 3 days implementing a system they created in 3 weeks. The company of the size of Virgin could have implemented the new system a little better – it is possible to do. They should have got the customer online and then fiddle around with the backend stuff.
I admit that upgrades do go wrong sometimes, however, they should have a quick backout plan to restore the system.
A downtime of 10 minutes max? Wow. I now doubt that you actually do work in IT and I think this post is your literary equivalent of liking the sound of your own voice.
No major system upgrade is EVER the “flick of a switch” – don’t be a muppet. I bet you’re Gen Y, huh?
Keeks, yes I agree that downtime does happen, software and hardware fail, things may not go so smoothly, but there are ways to avoid it.
*Redundancies measures
*Backups
*Fail-overs
*Fault tolerances
and there are many more measures you can put in place.
The main point I am trying to make is that there are way’s to ensure critical systems (like the system virgin was updating) is up 100% (or close to it) to the customer.
Having a system down to the customer for 3 days is really unacceptable.
Just imaging the impact the following would cause if a billing/account system was down for 3 days for another company.
*A Bank – EFTPOS, Credit card transactions wouldn’t go through, can’t transfer money into other accounts (retail will come to a hault)
*Airline – couldn’t make bookings or organise flight schedules
*Facebook – people will go nuts
*Sharemarket – people wouldn’t be able to trade – think of the billions people would lose
*Google – email, ads, apps, analytics down
What I am saying is that Virgin should have used more resources to ensure the system is up.
It may look functional to the customer, but the backed may still have issues.
In terms of “flicking the switch” I was referring to what it should seem like to the customer. The backend is a whole different story. Like I said before, have it up for the customer, then play with it in the background. Why can facebook implement a new message system without taking the whole message system down, why can the change how photo’s are displayed without stopping photo uploads? Why and how is that different to Virgin?
I saw this article because i myself just ordered one of their phones online and i got worried, until i read it. they say 3-5 business days so obviously if you ordered it on thursday your going to have to eliminate the weekend when counting how many days until you get it. if anything im impressed, they sent it to you on the 3rd day when you could have had to wait another 2 days. and as for their system update…it happens, i wouldnt call that a hassle. jeez and i thought i was impatient.
Hi Ariel,
Although, it was delivered with the the time frame, the point of ordering online was much more difficult and time consuming than it was ordering in store, or buying a fridge online.
Not only this, I have sent them numerous emails about incorrect billing, and it was much harder than it should have been.
Thanks for blogging your story. I do think you are a little harsh, however – like you – I would have thought that a clever company would process new orders with extra zeal, since its an important time for customer satisfaction.
I ordered a Galaxy S2 & got a Galaxy S! I didn’t pick it straight away, so had opened the box … The next day I realised it was missing features & was the wrong phone.
I had to be pretty forceful about my consumer rights, but eventually they agreed to send me the right phone. Still waiting … its been 2 weeks since I posted it back to them in the satchel that they provided. Am about to follow up.
… The cynic in me thinks that they were trying to get rid of a heap of older models that nobody wants. Who would order a Galaxy S when they can get a S2 on the same plan? … and a few other things make me supspicious – aparently the ‘code’ in the phone was an s2 code, so they didnt believe that I has an S until I walked into a store & showed them … hmm
Apart from the above, and the crappy call center service, and the crappy reception from my house, I am otherwise delighted with virgin!
Interesting that I have not yet had to pay them a single dollar. I wonder if that means that there does not yet exist a business relationship?
Hi,
Your situation sounds a lot worse than mine.
But yes, you’d think they’d have a reliable system, to dispatch orders.
I hear that phone companies rather keep existing customers, than sign new ones up, but you’d think when someone wants to sign up, it will just work.
I was worried to when I signed up and didn’t get a bill for three months – they don’t send one out if it’s less than $10, and because I had credit, and three months free, it was a bit spooky.
Try this, ordered new iPhone on an expensive plan to replace my samsung wave which still had 10 months of contract to go but broke without any good reason so needs replacing, first lesson samsung phone are crap.
Agreed to pay the $250 to end that contract early in order to upgrade, today is the 18th business day that I’ve been waiting for my new phone delivery, still not here, I call every 3 days to listen to the same thing ” oh it’s still in transit sorry” then “oh you should receive it today it’s with courier now” then 3 days later, “it’s still in transit” AGAIN!” last phone operator I spoke to rudely suggested ” why do you even bother ordering over the phone when you can just walk into the shop and get one?!” my response ” no Perth stores have one in stock!, perhaps I just need to change supplier aftervall these years you dumb shit! I hate virgin now!
I have a Samsung Wave as well. It’s still a decent phone though. I would prefer it over an iPhone. In fact, would prefer a Nokia 3310 over an iPhone.
My question to you is, why would you pay $250 to end your contract? If you have 10 months left, that’s $25 per month – and I assume that’s what you pay – because I would probably be on the same plan as you.
You my as well keep the contract/plan you are on, and put that simcard in your new iPhone, and give the new plan and number to someone else to use – so they get a free phone to use for 10 months.
Next time you call, ask to speak with a senior manager, and get them to fix the problem, and to contact the courier to find out where it is.
Hopefully it all works out for you.
same thing is happening to me n i paid next day shipment. i asked to speak to manager i was told they in meeting i was also told because my phone in transit which is a lie fedex said its only labeled made that i cant get my money back till it comes then i have to send phone back n so on. what a dishonest company
im have same issue. i call every day n paid for over night shipment. 5 days n for past three days i get the same response you have
I needed a phone asap…it’s a long story..
I ordered over the phone, and after 5 business days and continual follow ups and escalation, I have cancelled my order. I actually hope they’re so screwed up that it arrives and I get the opportunity to refuse the delivery so that they have to pay for return postage!!!
Screw you Virgin! Honour your promises and I’m farkin sick of speaking with Philippino’s, their accents, their continual apologies, call reference numbers etc etc!
I’ve lost patience with this ‘lucky country’. We may have been lucky in the past but look at all our roads, politicians, utilities, banks, public transport, hospitals..the list goes on….all farkin corrupt…look at the infrastructure of large democracies like india and the usa…we’re slipping as a country and slipping fast to a third world level. Zimbabwe probably has a better selection of grocery products than coles and woolies together!
Hi Chris,
Sorry to hear that you’ve had a bad experience.
I have just come back from Europe, and I have to say, France and Germany had better food, roads and public transport than Australia, and it was cheaper and had better quality.
Drove 500km today in Australia, and I could hardly read my phone the road was so bumpy (I was the passenger). You couldn’t feel any bumps going 170km in Germany.
Wow. There’s so much racism here. Can’t believe some Australians still live in the middle ages. As if your accent is the best there is in the world. I guess this tool doesn’t realize that these Filipinos are just doing what they’re told by their White managers who by the way are most likely Caucasian of British origin. I’m pretty sure, someday, this effin tool will rot in a nursing home where these exploited and underpaid Filipina care givers are the only ones caring for him, changing his diapers and helping him defacate; Because these other Aussies don’t give a damn crap about him. Unbelievable.
I ordered a phone from them last week Monday and it still hasn’t even left their warehouse. I even paid extra for next day shipping. So, I feel your pain.
Have you contacted them by phone to see what’s going on. Also ask for a free month worth of service for the trouble you faced without getting a phone the next day as they promised.
Let me know how it goes.
Hi there, I just purchaced an online order through virgin mobile.. I’m still waiting on my phone to be shipped.. and it’s been two day’s. I’m not too worried because I know I’ll get it. But you however, just need to be pacient. I understand a phone is important to EVERYONE in today’s society, but if it was that big of a hassle to wait 5 whole days… then that’s just impatient. it’s not that bad.. it wasn’t a month. or your order didn’t get lost. you eventually got it. and everything worked out for you. not everyone’s service is the same 🙂 just remember that!
You know when you place orders online, everything goes smoothly. It just didn’t go smoothly this time.
i ordered 2 new phones about 3 weeks ago and still havent got them, 2 samsung galaxy s2 4g at that totaling about $603 or some crap and an extra $12 for expedited shipping. tell me what a hassle is dude
Have you called them? Did they provide a reason why you haven’t received it yet?
Do not buy on Virgin Mobile. I would like to recommend this website to you http://www.android-enjoyed.com/. They are selling quality smartphones and accessories for it.
Hahahaha I read it and I’m not sure where the hassle was lol.
I’ve ordered phones online from Virgin 3 times and never had a problem and they’ve always been prompt for example this time I ordered a phone Monday night and it arrived Wednesday.
I have ordered another phone from Virgin, the Samsung Galaxy S7 in March 2016, and it was delivered on time, in which I was satisfied with the entire process. Keep in mind, this post was written in 2011 – a lot can change in 6 years!