Tag Archives: virgin mobile

My New Cell Phone – Samsung R610

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Thanks to Shawn at Virgin Mobile, my problems are *hopefully* (fingers crossed) fixed. Of course my cell phone is still dead because of it’s “swim”. So I have spent FAR too many hours trying to figure out what cellphone and what cellphone features I wanted.

I am sticking with Virgin Mobile. Their prices just can not be beat. And they throw in voicemail, call display, 3 way calling, call forwarding, call waiting for free – even on a pre-paid phone.

I kept my old cell phone number so if you had it before, it’s still good.

I decided to treat myself a little. No I didn’t get a blackberry – don’t be silly. I did get the Samsung R610.

A photo of the Samsung R610

It’s a mid-range phone, between a basic phone and a full blown smart phone. It slides open to use, so the keys are always protected (no accidental calls!). It has a 1.3 meg camera, nice big colour screen, and has a memory card for saving pics, music, videos, etc.

Virgin Mobile has a mobile web browsing plan, unlimited, for $7/mth. I signed up so I can try it out for a month to see what the mobile web is about. I am thinking about making a mobile version of a couple of my websites, so now I see what it actually looks like. It doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, and I hate texting on the stupid number pad, but I’m not going full blown into an iPhone or a Blackberry right now. I probably went over kill on this one, but we’ll see.

I could have got the phone for free with a 3 year plan, but I don’t like signing my future away anymore, but I’ll stick with Pay as You Go for now (I mostly just call Jeff at his office or at home).

I’ve already played with Twitter and Facebook on it. And it has weather so I checked the weather to verify this rain was forecast ;D So far I like this phone. The camera takes a decent picture. I think surfing the web with it eats the battery super fast, but that is probably to be expected.

OH! and I bought a case too with a belt clip to keep it safe! (and DRY!)

Virgin Mobile is trying hard to lose me as a customer

Product Reviews,

I love Virgin Mobile. I have had no complaints in the 3 years I’ve had my cell. They have good customer service, and a really cheap pay as you go plan.

But now Virgin Mobile Canada is pushing me out.

I had a credit card set up with my account so when I’m getting low on funds, it automatically tops up my account by $15. That credit card expired in July so I called in my new credit card.

The customer service woman was unable able to attach my new credit card to my account. When I gave her my address, she said it doesn’t exist in her computer. Pardon me? After a back and forth battle of me repeating my address in different formats and orders, she said she’d have to pass it on to their billing department and they would call me back.

Almost 2 weeks later I dropped my cell phone in the toilet :oops: and it doesn’t work anymore.

So now I need a new cellphone.

I researched all my options, all the cell phone types and even looked at the packages offered by other cell phone providers, but I jumped right back to Virgin Mobile and selected a phone that was a notch better than my old cell.

I tried to buy it online at Virgin Mobile but it wouldn’t accept my credit card. Either of my credit cards.

I called in to Virgin Mobile again and got no where. Virgin Mobile can not charge my credit card because they don’t have my street address in their database. If I alter my address to just use one of their streets, then my credit card company refuses the purchase because the address doesn’t match my address on their accounts.

Thinking that maybe we were somehow wrong, I looked up the addresses for our postal code on the Canada Post website. Canada Post has one extra entry in their database, and that is the one for our address. Somehow Virgin Mobile does not have this highway in their database, so I bet not one of my neighbours’ has Virgin Mobile service either.

The customer service rep promoted my original request to urgent. That was last weekend. I still haven’t heard back.

I didn’t use my cell phone that often, but it was a comfort thing – knowing I had it if I needed to call Jeff (can’t call him from work since it’s long distance from a land line), or if I had car problems, or some other emergency. It was nice to have when we traveled too.

My only other option to stay with Virgin Mobile is to find a store carrying their cellphones, and then always topping it up with phone cards. I checked the only store in town that carries Virgin Mobile cell phones and they did not have it.

Are you listening Virgin Mobile Canada? Your customer service reps are great, but I choose not to move to a new address so your database can verify my address.