Virgin - bizzare pricing v. coverage schemes

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Peter - 29 Sep 2006 16:31 GMT

I've just spent a load of time on the phone to these people.

Referring to PAYG and

https://www.virginmobile.com/vm/callCostsSpecial.do?isoCountryCode=it&paymentPla
n=PAYG&x=16&y=10

one can see that the list of countries supported on roaming is very
different (better) when paying by direct debit, over paying by
conventional top-up.

There is a catch: you have to prepay your phone with £150 before it
will roam.

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Usenet User - 29 Sep 2006 18:43 GMT

> I've just spent a load of time on the phone to these people.
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> There is a catch: you have to prepay your phone with £150 before it
> will roam.

Only if you fail their credit checks (or are within the first three
months of a contract service vs. DD PAYG). I've had DD roaming
activiated for two handsets recently without a deposit.

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Garry Richards - 29 Sep 2006 19:27 GMT

If you have paid 3months bills this doesn't apply.

Please include the full story not a corrupted edition.

> I've just spent a load of time on the phone to these people.
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> There is a catch: you have to prepay your phone with £150 before it
> will roam.

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Peter - 29 Sep 2006 19:52 GMT

>If you have paid 3months bills this doesn't apply.
>
>Please include the full story not a corrupted edition.

I am afraid most of the "corrupted edition" comes from Virgin
themselves, like them telling me that their GPRS is not for internet
access but only for WAP. Only to have another "support" person confirm
it's a load of complete bollocks.

Also this info should be clearly stated on their website, not have to
be extracted with a long phone call.

I tried to find out whether selecting the DD payment opens up the
blocked VPN ports (as it opens up the roaming coverage; an obvious
marketing decision) but the man refused to look into it. He just said
he doesn't know about technical things but is "quite sure" that only
the roaming coverage changes from paying by DD.

I don't know why Virgin, an otherwise friendly outfit, employs these
people without having a clear escalation path for technical questions.

The Virgin topup website is a model of simplicity compared to all the
others. Just select the amount and click; on the others you have to
supply your inside leg measurement even though paying with a
pre-registered credit card.

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Usenet User - 29 Sep 2006 20:51 GMT

> I don't know why Virgin, an otherwise friendly outfit, employs these
> people without having a clear escalation path for technical questions.

I think this is true of almost all telcos and other companies these
days. If you want something routine answered, then the call centres
are fine. If you want anything that strays from their scripts or
canned responses you've got no hope.

That said, I know O2 get a lot of flack for customer service on this
NG. I've dealt with them for the first time over the last couple of
weeks -- their (UK) call centre have been top notch; small queue times
(< 60 secs) and problems resolved/questions answered there and then.
(Their email customer service, however, is absolutely useless).

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Soruk - 30 Sep 2006 11:51 GMT

>I tried to find out whether selecting the DD payment opens up the
>blocked VPN ports (as it opens up the roaming coverage; an obvious
>marketing decision) but the man refused to look into it. He just said
>he doesn't know about technical things but is "quite sure" that only
>the roaming coverage changes from paying by DD.

The reason roaming is opened up on DD connections is due to the way
roaming is billed - for PAYG roaming realtime billing is required between
Virgin and the roaming partner, and it appears not many are set up to do
this. In contrast, a DD connection doesn't need to be real-time as all
that matters then is the charge for the call arrives and gets billed.
Practically any carrier that can manage roaming at all can do this.

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