Virgin Sucks.

First point: Have you ever noticed that you can make a reasonable assessment of a company’s customer profile from the choice of music they play while you’re waiting half an hour for one of their service agents to pick up your call? In the case of Virgin Mobile (part of the Virgin Media empire which is part of the greater Virgin empire) it’s evident that their average customer is under 25, of generally low intelligence, and paddles in the cultural shallows while dutifully following the life-road laid out for them by the corporate world. 

Second point: Have you also noticed that the corporate world is very skilled in boosting your ego and serving your confidence with carefully crafted language and images in their promotional material, aided and abetted by soothing, well modulated, clearly trained voices when they force you to listen to seemingly endless and mostly pointless recorded messages when you try to talk to them by phone?

This is, of course, all to give the impression that the corporate world really cares about our needs and interests, while the systems they use (and sometimes the personnel) at their customer interface give the opposite impression. They clearly don’t give a tuppeny toss about their customers’ needs and interests except insofar as it’s deemed necessary to serve their own profit motive.

So, I’ve had a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phone for eighteen years. A few weeks ago I started receiving texts from them telling me that I needed a new SIM in order to continue to receive service. It would take too long to go into the finer details of what subsequently transpired; suffice it to say that my many attempts to sort this issue out have resulted in nothing more than a catalogue of closed-mindedness, unhelpful attitudes, and sheer incompetence. And I’m not exaggerating one jot.

Today I gave it one last try. I finally got to speak to somebody and was asked a load of ‘security questions’, every one of which I answered correctly. ‘You do not pass the security checks,’ said the operator, ‘and so I cannot continue this call. Thank you.’ And then the phone went dead. And that was after I’d waited half an hour to speak to somebody on a paying call because, unlike some of the better companies, Virgin Media don’t have a toll-free customer service number. 

I’ve had this experience with Virgin Mobile several times over the past eighteen years, but this was the worst of all. And so, to anyone thinking of moving in their direction, the absolutely unmitigated advice has to be: Don’t. Have nothing whatsoever to do with Virgin Media. They really do suck, big time.