I bought a new phone from Virgin Mobile last week and after receiving it in the mail I tried to activate it through their website. It was just a matter of swapping the service from my old phone to the new one. What was supposed to be a simple procedure turned out to be a two day exercise in patience.
First, a background. I’ve been using the prepaid Virgin Mobile service for the past seven years and about three years ago I gave up my landline service since I don’t make many calls. From home, I just use Skype to make phone calls which is cheaper than the minute by minute rates of prepaid cell phone service.
Last December, I bought a Virgin Mobile cell phone from Target but was unable to use it because of programming problems. It turned out that Target hadn’t scanned the phone into their system so Virgin Mobile didn’t recognize it and couldn’t activate it. So I had to return the phone. It was a disappointment because the phone I’ve been using was already two years old.
So finally last week my budget accommodated the purchase of a new cell phone so I ordered one online from the Virgin Mobile website. After having problems activating it myself, I finally called their technical support line via Skype (Skype doesn’t charge for toll free numbers). After going through several layers of Virgin’s voice recognition system, I finally talked to a “live advisor”. When they tried to activate my phone they found that the new phone’s serial numbers were already in use. I informed them that it was not possible because I have a new phone and I ordered it directly from Virgin Mobile. The live advisor consulted with her supervisor and said that they were going to open an investigation which was going to take between 24 to 72 hours. So I was resigned to the fact that I have to wait a little while longer to play with my new phone. I took the reference number from the investigation that they were going to start and waited. I called them again the next day but there was still no resolution to the problem. Finally, 48 hours later when I called again, they found the problem and fixed it, and my new cell phone was finally activated and ready for use. YAY!!! By the way, Virgin Mobile’s tech support is based in call centers in the Philippines. I complimented the live advisor for her American accent which made her laugh. These call centers train their staff in imitating an American accent even though their Filipino accent is still detectable.
Let me tell you about the features of this phone. Since Virgin Mobile is a prepaid service, the technology of their phones are in my opinion about two years behind the latest feature packed ones like the IPhone, Blackberry Curve or the Palm Pre. In the case of my new Virgin Mobile Shuttle, this is the first phone they have that records video, years after the Motorola Razor did it. Granted, the Shuttle records up to 30 seconds while most phones record only 15 seconds. The shuttle doesn’t even have a texting friendly keypad, just a regular numeric keypad. They have a newer model called the X-TC that does that but doesn’t record video. The Shuttle also has an MP3 player which is also a first for Virgin Mobile. However this phone doesn't have a touchscreen or downloadable apps. There is no way of connecting the phone to a computer so I also had to buy a micro SD card. I found a great deal on a 4 GB one at Kmart. It’s the biggest size that the phone can accommodate. After loading up some music and while playing with this feature, I found out that regular MP3 player headphones do not fit in the Shuttle’s headphone jack. The plug was too big. With a little bit of internet search I found out that most cell phones use a 2.5 mm. plug as opposed to the 3.5 mm. plug that MP3 players use. The next day I went to Radio Shack and found an adapter for the headphones and they worked perfectly. Problem solved. Jeez, the extra accessories are making this phone more expensive than I anticipated! I also copied some pictures from my computer to the phone and used one of them from the Wrigley River Run as my wallpaper. I still haven’t used the camera to take pictures or video, but those are the least of my concerns. At least my phone is fully functional now and I’m pretty happy with all its features. But oh! What a wait I had to endure! Certainly not a case of instant gratification.
p.s. I just finished converting a whole movie from an AVI file to a .3G2 file that my phone can play and after a file transplant from computer to phone via the micro SD card, the movie plays wonderfully on the phone, albeit on a small screen. But this was just an experiment and I sure am learning a few new things.
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