Mystery shopper: Virgin customer service, mobile internet advice
Our mobile mystery shopper grills a Virgin customer service rep on a series of mobile internet questions. Find out how he did in the latest instalment of our mystery shopper series.
For more details on our mystery shopping series, including the questions we ask, the dream response to our customer service query, and a run down of how Virgin compared to the competition, head over to our summary page.
Virgin Mobile, customer service, internet advice
‘Is this your first time with Virgin?’ I was asked when I got through to Mary (as I will call her here). I’m pretty certain there’s a joke to be had there but probably best I steer clear.
Once I established it was indeed my first time, Mary took down my post code and checked to see if I would get coverage in my area.
This was soon confirmed and we got straight down to business and I was told that I would get a 1GB limit on my contract, before I was assured that 1GB ‘would be more than enough for someone that has a job’ – which was a bit of a strange thing to say and I’m not exactly sure what Mary was implying by it.
Once she had gone through the plan, she moved on to handsets and told me she would find the most expensive one available free on that tariff – coming back with the HTC Wildfire and Sony Ericsson X8.
The ‘hard sell’
She then spouted some of the booklet information saying that the HTC was ‘quietly brilliant’ and saying the Sony was like having a walkman in your pocket. She talked through both handsets in a vague and impassionate way, not really persuading me either way.
With this out of the way, Mary became determined to make me choose between them, even resorting to a round of ‘eeny meeny miney mo’ to try and make me commit to a choice.
When I repeatedly told her that I would have to think about which one I would rather have, she decided the Wildfire was the best for me ‘so let’s go with that one’ as if I would just accept her judgement and buy what she told me.
At this point the sell was getting so hard I was no longer sitting comfortably. I decided to get as much information about the costs out of the internet allowance and then get away before Mary decided that I had to buy anything else.
She told me that if I went over my limit it would cost me 30p a day (she didn’t mention this would have its own limit of 25MB for the day but I think I’m splitting hairs now).
She made another attempt at forcing me to sign up right there and then before I managed to make my escape. Mary made the uncomfortable sales pitch an artform and I felt a little violated by the time I hung up.
Virgin customer summary
For the most part, when I asked the questions the Virgin customer service rep gave pretty reasonable answers. But she was far too focused on closing the deal and forcing me to part with my money then and there – which is a big no no when it comes to providing good customer service.
To read the rest of the mystery shopper series take a look at our summary page, where you can also get an overview of the customer service questions we asked and the ideal response we were looking for.
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Joe Harris
It seems like you talked to someone slightly better than ‘Keith’ who I spoke to yesterday. I called to ask them why (after the updated Android Twitter app burned through my 1GB bundle {grr}) they were charging me more than the advertised £2/day internet cap.
Keith repeatedly told me that I had been viewing ‘premium’ sites and that’s why I was being charged (utterly false and not even possible AFAIK). I tried to politely explain that I had been doing no such thing. After much back and forth I decided that Keith had no idea how mobile data works and asked him to put me through to someone who did.
When he came back told me that “I can’t put you through, but anyone else will tell you the exact same thing I have.” So I asked to speak to his supervisor and when he came back he told me that I could not speak to anyone else but that I was “free to ring back and speak to someone else who will just tell you the same thing.”
Now starting to see red I explained to Keith that I was not going to hang up until he put me through to a supervisor. After threatening to terminate the call he eventually went away and came back again and promised me a ‘manager callback’ within 24 hours.
5 hours later I got a call from ‘Karen’. Thankfully Karen knew a little bit more about mobile data. The short version is that the £2/day cap does NOT apply to customers who have the 1GB bundle. This means that the bundle effectively ‘explodes’ and the 1025th megabyte onwards cost you £2 each. The cap only applies to people who use the 25p daily tariff.
So I have my PAC code in hand and I guess I’ll have to give 3 a try. 10 years with Virgin and 3 months after getting a smartphone I’m off. Oh well…
Joe