I’m not normally someone who writes long tirades about how poor a company, product or service has been, but my experience with Virgin Mobile was SO horrific that I really feel a moral obligation to warn people about what a lying, incompetent company this was to deal with.

The saga all began in May of 2008. I had never been a heavy cell user, but I was getting into Twitter and Facebook and I wanted a phone with which I could text and take pictures while I was out and about. Basic Internet service was a plus, but I wasn’t ready for the expense and the complexity of a SmartPhone, and didn’t really want a contract, so I set about looking for a no-contract phone that would nevertheless have all the features I wanted.

After many days of researching the different companies, I set upon Virgin Mobile. I did come across a lot of vehement reviews about their customer service, but I figured all the companies I had looked into had some complaints, so it would be okay. How wrong I was.

I went to their web site and looked at the different phones they had. I wasn’t impressed with the selection at all. T-Mobile and other no-contract companies had a lot more phones, nicer with a greater variety of features, but they were all much more complicated than I needed, and I wasn’t ready to invest $300+ on a phone I wasn’t sure I would use all that much. At the time, Virgin Mobile only had two phones with a full QWERTY keyboard, which was a must for me. I hate texting things with a number pad with a FLAMING passion. After reading reviews about their 2 QWERTY-keyboard-having phones, I ultimate chose the Kyocera WildCard, because it was cuter and had very consistently positive reviews. Unfortunately, what I realized in retrospect was that all of those reviews were from over a year earlier, when the phone had first debuted.

The phone arrived overnight, which I found impressive. I was able to set up the account fairly painlessly and opted for unlimited texting with their most basic voice plan and a data pack to be able to surf the web. All was well and I was happily texting and emailing the same day and posting to Twitter. I was surprised that their built-in mail and IM carriers didn’t include Google or GMail, which made it a little cumbersome for me since that’s what I use, but with web access, it was still close to perfect, I thought. I was happy with the purchase.

… for about three weeks. That’s when the Internet stopped working and started giving me an error message that it couldn’t connect to the network. I called Virgin Mobile’s customer support line for the first time. They have a very irritating, perky-sounding pre-recorded answering service they have patronizingly named “Alex.” Alex has that flaw that most of those systems have, where it will say “Pick from these 4 selections.” And none of the selections apply to your situation. Its main job is to keep you from reaching a live advisor, which unlike Alex, the company has to pay. It will irritatingly attempt to troubleshoot your problem, by which I mean, it will make you jump repeatedly through a bunch of useless hoops that have nothing to do with your actual problem, then finally relent and transfer you to a live advisor.

(I don’t want to sound ethnocentric, so I will just say that all their first-tier live advisors have names like “George” and “Nancy” and “David”, but speak with accents that aren’t from parts of the world where “George” and “Nancy” and “David” are common names for people. Skepticism is prudent, is all I’m saying.)

The live advisor “understood my problem” and “apologized for the inconvenience” a lot. This was, I was to learn after many hours of technical support, part of the script. They tell you they understand and apologize a lot, to make you feel less irritated about their lousy service. When you’ve heard “I understand and I apologize” for the 40th time, though, all it does is make me want to throw a chair at someone, Jerry Springer-style. The phone also had a few other glitches, such as freezing in the middle of texting, and randomly deleting my contacts.

Anyway, they couldn’t figure out what the error message was, so they “launched an investigation to fix the problem.” This was, it turned out, four “investigations” later, Virgin Mobile codespeak for “Uh, I dunno and I’m tired of this call, can we get off the phone and you can call back in a week or something?” But I was trusting and I said I’d wait the 3-5 business days happily. As is probably obvious, the problem did not get fixed in 3-5 business days. I had to call back numerous times more and eventually, some time in early July, I was able to connect to the Internet again on my phone. I breathed a sigh of relief.

That lasted a little under two weeks. The same error message started occurring, and I was once again unable to connect to the Internet. By now I had figured out that it was a problem with their Opera mini-browser, which was several versions older than the most current version. They “launched another investigation” and SWORE they would contact me within 5 business days to let me know the status. Of course, they didn’t fix the problem, and didn’t call me back. I called them again, and asked what was going on, and they then told me they were going to “escalate the issue” to “their highest level of technical support” and I should wait another week. I gave them over 2 weeks to be sure, and nada.

By now it was early September. When I called back this time, they insisted that it was a defective phone, and pleaded to let them send me a “new” one of the same make and model. I relented, thinking lightning wouldn’t strike twice. I was wrong, and by the way, that was one of the first of the more glaring lies they told me – a representative later admitted that they don’t send out new phones as replacements, but “refurbished” used phones. Anyway, I got it the next day, mailed my old one back, and got my service running again, and lo and behold, the Internet worked again.

… for two whole weeks.

Yep. Different phone. Same error message.

Also, by this time, their mobile Internet had also stopped working. They alleged to be able to check Comcast email directly on the phone. I have a Comcast account I never use, so I set all my GMail accounts to forward a copy of my messages to my Comcast email address, so I could at least check my email on the go, which I could never do with  no working Internet access. The software on the Kyocera WildCard “required a software update.” Except the update would always fail – the TRUTH is that the hardware on the WildCard is just too old to support the software. This is very likely the problem with the Opera Mini-browser error message.

Another “investigation” that lead nowhere, I called back and asked if I could simply pay to upgrade to a better phone. I was told that, no, I could only exchange this phone for one of equal or lesser value. By now, it was early Ocrtober, and Virgin Mobile had figured out the Kyocera Wildcard is a hunk of junk and had lowered the price of the handset dramatically. There were no other phones in their lineup with a QWERTY keyboard. So between the services I paid for that never got used and the phone itself, I ended up spending over $300 anyway, and now was being told all I could have was either another Kyocera Wildcard – uh, no thanks! – or a phone with a worse camera and no keyboard, aka not at all what I wanted.

“So you’re telling me my only choices are to get another phone that doesn’t do what it says on your web site it does, or a phone I don’t want that doesn’t have any of the features I asked for?” I asked the live advisor, “Frank.”

“Basically, yes,” he admitted. “Or you could always just buy a whole new phone!” Well, I appreciated the honesty.

By now I decided this wasn’t worth the hassle and that maybe I would just get a cute phone to give to my 11-year-old for when he was away from me at youth group or friends’ houses or something in case of an emergency. So I picked one that had a lot of “media” services and looked and worked a lot like an iPhone – the Shuttle. They mailed it overnight.

BUT WAIT!!!  That should have been the end of that, right?

Except it arrived without the charger or manual. I couldn’t power it on. It came totally loose inside a huge box, rattling around the whole time. I wasn’t even sure it worked. My son had been in the hospital requiring stitches that week from a really bad fall, and I had taken a couple of weeks to even open the box, so by now it was late October. I called back and demanded that they send me a charger. They agreed to do so, and overnighted it.

They sent me a car charger. Still no manual.

I called back again. They sent me the manual. Still no actual charger.

The holidays and the flu were upon me, so after Thanksgiving, I called again. I informed them that the Kyocera Wildcard’s hardware no longer supports the software that will run most of the services it’s advertised as running on the web site. The live Advisor, “Darren,” ignored this, but promised to mail me an actual charger.

2 weeks passed. No charger was forthcoming.

I called back early- to mid-December. They couldn’t send me another charger because they’d already sent me the car  charger. When I said I didn’t ask for or want a car charger, and that no one could reasonably expect to always charge their phone in their car, and that I just wanted one I could plug into the freaking wall, they had to “open an investigation.”

I was. Not. Happy.

Weeks passed. No contact from Virgin Mobile to speak of. Pressed by the hectic schedules and demands and expenses of the holidays, I continued to use the WildCard for emergencies only. By now, the IM chat client on the phone had stopped working as well – and half the time it wouldn’t even send text messages, either. The Tracfone I had bought for my grandmother for $9.99 worked better than this. VirginMobile also sent me threatening emails to return my old phone since I “had my new one” (that I couldn’t use) or they would suspend my account. I called them, annoyed, and this time, “Mary” assured me that “a note was placed on the account so we would not suspend you.”

You can probaby guess what happened next. Early January. Still no charger. Account got suspended.

I called them again last night. They politely informed me that my account was locked because I had to return my old phone before I could activate my old one, since the waiting period for returning the old one had expired. I said, no, I wasn’t going to be without a cell phone for days, maybe weeks, when I had just paid for another month of service and the delay was all Virgin Mobile’s fault.

They offered to “open another investigation.” I told them if my problem wasn’t solved tonight, I was canceling my account and detailing my horrid ordeal in front of 20,000+ people on my blogs, Twitter, Facebook and various other message boards. Five hours later, aka a whole day of work lost for me, and several times hung up on, ”Rick” unsuspended my account and assured me all was right with the world. I fully intend to buy a Blackberry this month, so I figured I would fix the phone up for Shorty, downloaded a ring tone and whatnot, and went to bed. I tried the Internet and it worked, after all.

This morning I get a phone call to my Google Voice number, and I noticed it only rang on my home landline, instead of on both my landline and the cell phone like it’s supposed to. You guessed it. “Network error” in making calls. I called Virgin Mobile again, in an exhausted monotone. After jumping through Alex’s automated hoops, ”Ronnie” walked me through the steps I just told him I’d gone through, a second time. Both to no avail. “Ronnie” then offers to “open an investigation.”

I told him I wanted to cancel my account IMMEDIATEY, and get the month of service refunded. He transfers me to Bill, who actually sounds like he’s reallly named Bill. Bill sounds like he’s on some serious hardcore Xanax, but at least he doesn’t tell me he “understands” and “apologizes.” He just cancels my account, though he does not want to refund me the money for the service pack and wallpaper I bought for Shorty the night before, he does refund me the $30-some-odd for the monthly service. I thanked him, then told him I needed to get off the phone, to be able to post my absolutely nightmarish experience with his company all over the Internet and hopefully save other people from a similar fate.

Bottom line: Virgin Mobile knowingly lies to its customers. Their phones are outdated, and cannot support the services they peddle. They KNOW this, yet the Kyocera Wildcard is still available for sale on their site. Their phone customer service is designed to keep you away from live help as long as humanly possible. Their agents lie to you and blow off your concerns, and when they don’t, they do not have the knowledge or ability to fix any of the numerous technical issues their terrible phones have. This is theft. I have put the phone up for sale on Craigslist, and I’m buying a Blackberry. And for my kid, I’m going to go ahead and invest in another $9.99 Tracfone. As cheap and basic as that service is, it’s LEAGUES better than anything Virgin Mobile sells for ten times as much. VirginMobile is a deliberate thief, and everyone who works there should be ashamed of themselves. Please, I urge you, if you are going to buy a no-contract phone, for the sake of your own sanity, GO WITH ANOTHER PROVIDER.