Virgin Mobile Online Store ~ Makin' My Life Easier... Until I Really Needed Them...
Written: Feb 13 '05 (Updated Jul 30 '06)
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I hate phones. No. Seriously. I despise them with a passion. I also have a long-time habit of jumping in my car and driving to parts unknown out of boredom. I also have a habit of wanting to order food delivery on occasion. This results in having a phone out of necessity. I can't take a landline in the car in case of a break down, and I see no sense in having two bills (cell and land-line) so I opted for a cell phone. Now, since I leave the damn thing turned off unless I need to use it, it would be silly to pay an outrageous monthly bill whether I use the damn thing or not, wouldn't it? Enter Virgin Mobile.
Virgin Mobile offers a pay-as-you go system. I paid $59 for a basic phone and pay 10 cents per minute no matter where I'm calling or what the time of day is (after the initial 25 cents per minute for the first 10 min each day). Outrageous if you're a phone-a-holic, extremely cheap if you use it maybe once a month like me.
Ok, so what about the on-line store? Hey, I'm getting to it. How this service works is you buy a top up card and add it to your phone. The catch is that you must top up your phone every 90 days (with at least $20) or lose your phone number. It is a major pain in the butt to find a Best Buy or other brick-n-mortar and buy the damn card. So here we are then.... skip the pain and log onto Virgin Mobile USA. Oh yeah. Now we're talking! Now, you can top up with a credit card using your phone touch pad, but that's just a pain with my Rheumatoid and bad eyesight... doing it at the site itself is soooo much easier. It's also instant.
The site is all about cool reds and whites mainly. A very kicky-fun look which I like a great deal. You can buy your phone initially here if you want, top it up whenever you need, check your balance remaining, see who ya called and how long ya talked... and (here's the best part) spend hours listening to really cool ring tones and voice mail messages which you can then purchase.
I love this silly stuff!
Because of this website I have separate rings for my daughter and for Tom (you know, so I can avoid their call if I want... ow! Stop it.. just kidding!). Rings that are not real common. They have spacy rings, tropical rings, exclusive MTV rings, songs... hundreds and hundreds to choose from.
My real favorite find though is the voice mail messages. You can have your favorite celebrity answer your phone or any number of silly, off-the-wall things. This costs a one-time fee of $2.95 and it is automatically downloaded to your phone in less than 10 minutes. No hook up necessary (they know who you aaaare...) You can get a wake up call from Comedy Central or daily jokes, games and screen savers for the higher end phones... just a ton of fun stuff!
Since the product is all Virgin Mobile phone related, I feel I should say a bit about the phone and service. I've had expensive phones with the major carriers and I have to tell you, they were no better than this phone or the connection. I've never had a billing problem since there is no bill, they have never double-dipped my credit card, and the dropped calls are actually a bit less frequent than with, say, Sprint or AT&T.
Also, if you order any accessories, such as a cool tropical face plate or a hands-free dealie, they arrive(d) the very next day. Can't get any better than that....
After about 7 months of usage, I have to give Virgin Mobile 5 stars for both the product and the website. If you already have one of their phones, do be sure to go browse around all the cool additional thingies... if you do not but are like me and use your phone rarely, this is the best plan I've found. Check it out. I think you'll like it too.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com
**Update 10/12/05
After having my phone stolen, I have to come back and reassess this online service. I went to the website and emailed them to temporarily put a hold on my number since the phone had been stolen, telling them I would re-instate the account when I got around to buying a new Virginmobile phone. They responded to call them. Repeatedly I tried to explain that if I had my damn phone so that I could call, then I would have no need to call.. but the phone had ion fact been stolen so how the hell was I suppose to call them?!?
In short, they never did suspend the number, the thief used all the minutes I had left, AND the website tried to auto-bill a CC on file when the balance got low even though I had gone in and changed my settings there to NOT EVER auto-bill....
Down to 2 stars for VirginMobile, and I have decided to go with a different provider...
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Net 10 Review
http://www0.epinions.com/content_245239811716
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
drdevience
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Member: Lori Leidig
Location: Sweden
Reviews written: 647
Trusted by: 782 members
About Me:
Game over.
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