On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 22:27:18 GMT, tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A.
Horsley) wrote:
> I never use the full $20 in each 3 month period anyway, why
> on earth would I want to top up more than a few hours before the
> deadline? (Could it be so that virgin mobile gets more money in the
> bank sooner? :-).
Maybe if there was a reason you couldn't add minutes at the very last
possible minute. If you fail to add minutes by the expiration time
you will lose any minutes you have banked on your account. If losing
any accumulated minutes on your account isn't important to you just
let it go. When the expiration time comes and goes without any money
all that will happen is that you'll lose any banked time and your
phone will cease to work until you fill it with more time. I gave a
friend of mine a prepaid account with over $220 in credit. I
cautioned him that if he failed to refill by the due date that he'd
lose all the money in the account. Well, he forgot to fill (even
though five days before your account expires you get a message every
time you place a call warning you of it) and he didn't. He lost the
whole deal.
Path: telecom-digest.org!ptownson
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:29:35 -0400
From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Virgin Mobile Unusual Charges
Message-ID: <telecom24.481.9@telecom-digest.org>
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In article <telecom24.480.6@telecom-digest.org>, tom.horsley@att.net
(Thomas A. Horsley) wrote:
>> Anyone else notice anything unusual on their Virgin Web logs? Before
>> I call them, I would like to know if I am the only one.
> No mysterious charges for my vmobl phone. The only thing I get is
> annoying emails and calls to my alternate line trying to convince me
> that I need to "top up" starting about 3 weeks before the actual
> deadline. I never use the full $20 in each 3 month period anyway, why
> on earth would I want to top up more than a few hours before the
> deadline? (Could it be so that virgin mobile gets more money in the
> bank sooner? :-).
It's even worse, they get more *total* money, since the next 3-month
period starts when you top up, not when the previous 3-month period
runs out. So if you top up when they first warn you, you'll end up
spending $100/year instead of only $80.
I just topped up this morning, and discovered that I can save
$5/quarter by signing up for the auto-top-up. If you do this, the
requirement is dropped to $15, and they'll automatically top up every
90 days or when the balance drops below $5, whichever is first. Since
my balance is now over $70, I don't think the low balance condition
will ever hit me, even though they've raised the per-minute rates (it
used to be 25 cents/min for the first 4 minutes in a day, 10 cents/min
thereafter, but now the 25 cent rate last for the first 10 minutes, so
I'll never see the 4 cent rate).
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Joseph (JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com)