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Thread: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

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    Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    I'll keep this brief (he says with crossed fingers)


    Basically, I'm on a £25 a month Virgin Mobile contract, in return for which I get a (1gb capped) unlimited internet, text and call bundle.

    For several months I've had to query my bill, for a £0.30 charge raised against the unlimited internet portion of my bill.

    Upon querying this, it's been explained to me that due to my bill refreshing on the 14th of the month and the unlimited internet allowance not being added until the 15th, the 24 hours of usage between the two dates is charged to my account.

    Virgin lady (who got rather rude towards the end of our call) states Virgin are happy to refund, as long as you query it. It won't be done automatically.

    My question is - are Virgin Mobile allowed to do this? I mean, if customers are having this done to them and not realising, how much £££ is this worth to Virgin? Surely, a credit should be automatically raised to correct what is clearly, a known system error?

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Wow that sounds cheaky, im on my first month of my VM £25 contract for my hd2 so will certainly check my bill for this when i get it. I dont think that is allowed because surely you are paying for a months worth of 'unlimited' data and x minuts/text so it should all be applied at the time your contract starts, not after.

    They arent doing anything legally wrong though as they are welcoming refunds like you say, however morally its terrible and a bad business practice that probably is giving them a significant amount of cash if it happens with the majority of their customers.

    Are you sure your contract is 1gb cap? Cause i thought mine was too but each time i check my allowence (789) it says i have over 1000MB left, should say <1000MB IMO, also remember there is a cap of 10,000 IM you can send! I saw this in the T&C and cant believe that, cap for 1gb and surely if you send loads of IM you reach that cap anyway .
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hicks12 View Post
    Wow that sounds cheaky, im on my first month of my VM £25 contract for my hd2 so will certainly check my bill for this when i get it. I dont think that is allowed because surely you are paying for a months worth of 'unlimited' data and x minuts/text so it should all be applied at the time your contract starts, not after.
    this was the point I attempted to make with the brainless advisor, she couldn't understand what I was getting at. When she claimed it was industry wide, I explained how I'd been on a similar bundle previously with Orange and never had any issues like it.

    They arent doing anything legally wrong though as they are welcoming refunds like you say, however morally its terrible and a bad business practice that probably is giving them a significant amount of cash if it happens with the majority of their customers.
    again, I'm not sure of the legalities, but a free allowance should be that, I was hoping to see how wide-reaching this is, the consideration of reporting it to the relevant ombudsmen for possible investigation is a serious one at the moment!

    Are you sure your contract is 1gb cap? Cause i thought mine was too but each time i check my allowence (789) it says i have over 1000MB left, should say <1000MB IMO, also remember there is a cap of 10,000 IM you can send! I saw this in the T&C and cant believe that, cap for 1gb and surely if you send loads of IM you reach that cap anyway .
    yep, 1GB cap, 3000 text cap, I didn't notice the IM limit, but I don't use the phone for that anyway

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Well i will let you know of my results from my bill which should be here near the 28th i believe.

    Their support is pants, just like Virgin media as a whole!. My dad rang up (has to be in his name >.<) as i ordered it online and it said VM customers get 2 months free linerental, you just need to ring up when you received the phone for them to apply it. Dad rang up and took over an hour as she was for some reason denying the free rental and that all they offer is LANDLINE!!! Like hold on, it says 2 months free on your mobile tarrif not land line and as it the site hid the data under many links it took me awhile to finally find it (she still did not believe us), we eventually gave up and rang up later and got someone else who managed to do it eventually .
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    HI there

    I came across this thread as I too have been charged the 30p again and again when on unlimited internet. Got the same reason as you did which frankly is not good enough.

    I was interested to see if you tried taking it any further. I know its only 30p but it pisses me off that I bet they are doing this to loads of customers and getting away with it!

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Hi,

    Same problem (£25 tarriff with 1GB allowanace) and same explanation given when I queried it. In my case, it wasn't just 30p though, I got charged on several days with charges adding up to £1.50. When I checked previous bills, I'd had the same problem. They refunded and assured me it wouldn't happen again.

    Its a bit annoying having to check each month and then ring their customer services, being charged 10p for the privilege.

    This month, just a 30p charge. Instead of calling, I've sent an email asking that they resolve this issue permanently. I'm sure it won't be though.......

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Well to go one step further how about this.

    Yes i from time to time get the 30p charge at the crossover days of my unlimited allowance being added and i have had to ring them to sort which they have done.

    But in the last few days i have had a major cockup from them over my internet allowance. on the 5th 6th and 7th of Sept i got charged the 30p and because i did a lot of downloading on the phone with apps and music i went over 25mb each time and was billed £2 for every mb after that 3 days and am now facing a bill of £177 which has knocked me for six.

    The only reason i knew this had happened was because i got a text of them saying my account had been suspended and should ring them , which i did and was told that because the bill hadnt yet been processed i would have to either wait for them to ring me or id have to ring again in a few days.

    Well i tell you i had one sleepless night last night and becasue nothing has been sorted today either ill have a sleepless one tonight too.

    The guy i spoke to was pretty good but said his hands were tied until the bill was produced so he could see where id been billed the extra, he then went onto say if there has been a mistake by virgin then id be reinbursed. Which is hardly reassuring as its a definate mistake by them as i have unlimmited internet (well1gig) which i very rarely use more than 200mb a month and i had 800 mb left on my allowance the day this happened.

    Playing a waiting game now , fingers crossed its sorted , so word of warning it may be a inconvenience but check your account regular to avoid this stress im having.

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Ignore them for 3 years. Then invoice them for all of the charges with 8% interest, compounded. Make some moeny out of them being completely unreasonable.
    "In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    thought id post back here(even though its very late), noticed my bill last month was £33.40!!!! When its meant to be £25 p/m, this is due to them charging me for the day of internet like you guys are so it is nationwide with VM. Ive noticed on almost all my bills a surcharge of like 30p-£2 and since I am not the account holder (wasnt old enough at the time) my dad gets the emails so i dont check, have sent an email now about it because i dont get time to call them .

    Complete tards if you ask me... who do we contact in regards to trading standards and stuff? IIRC you dont contact trading standards or ofcom directly. But if this is happening nationwide it needs to stop!.
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Don't expect a reply if you email them. I sent an email complaining about the overcharging and received a response 18 days later kindly advising me that I should have sent the email from within my account. So I logged in and have since sent the email a further 2 times with no response (another 13 days).

    There is a complaints procedure. I think you have to contact: www cisas org uk (fill in the dots).

    However, you have to wait 8 weeks without the issue being resolved before you can complain.

    There's obviously no incentive for them to fix this issue. They must be making a pretty packet out of people who don't notice this overcharging. Even if most people are only overcharged by 30p a month, multiple that by the number of people on their so called 'unlimited internet' package, and I bet its a fair old sum every month. And I bet most people are being overcharged by more than 30p each month. Seems I'm now being overcharged by about £1.50 each month, so if that's typical.......

    I notice they were on watchdog the other day......Perhaps thats the route to go......

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    I'm logging in my virgin mobile account tonight to see all my previous bills as I'm pretty sure I've got some charges as well as my last bill was £25.30 and before that it was £26.40.

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Yeah i rang up today as someone left a voice mail saying to ring up as they cant deal with it via email (yet i gave them more details via email than i do by phone!). Sorted it after 30minutes, the women kindly told me its a normal thing where the minutes/text are added and the data and free stuff(aka virgin to virgin stuff) is added within 24hours, i challenged her as to why this is and she denied knowing why but said she would put in a report to the communications department to check this out (doubt anything will happen but oh well).

    On my account, got charged 30p for like 1 or 2 days every month for the past 4months!. One of them i got charged 30p a day for the whole month..... THEY FORGOT TO APPLY MY FLIPPING DATA! Oh how annoyed i was, how does an automated system fail that?.

    But yeh, all sorted for me and my dad suggested to contact watchdog or something cause like thats what its for so i sent an email their way. If anyone else has had this then please email them aswell because it really needs to stop!.
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    Just an update my £177 bill , well it took some sorting i tell ya , no one i mean no one in customer services said they could help as the bill hadnt been generated on their system yet so i had to wait for the bill to be auto generated before someone could look at it and help. Well After quite a lot of stressing and lots of ringing it eventually got sorted and to be honest it took an email from which an british call centre called me back from that i got the solution from, (The foreign call centres just were no use at all)
    Well they did admit that this was happening to loads of customers due to a glitch in the system or something i cant quite remember as i was pretty frustrated by this time. But anyway the lady who did ring me back was very helpful and said shed keep an eye on my account for the next 3 billing periods to make sure it didnt happen again which is a bit reassuring.
    To be honest if it happens again in any form whether it be just a 30p charge even, i wont be renewing with them when my contract expires .

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    yup its stupid, i have to say i went with VM purely because it was cheapest at the time and i didnt want to wait.for a good redemption type rental to.come.out and didnt fancy faffing around with bills this time.most annoying contract ever lol.... more charges, poor support and the signal.varies so much month to month that i can either have a great signal.or.no.signal. I can say that i wont be staying and i will be avoiding tmobiles.network like the plague as they throttle internet to 33kb and images are.compressed!


    ps.sorry for the full stops, keep.pressing it on my.phone hahaha
    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    I received a voicemail advising me to ring up at the start of the month (before using any data) to check that the data package had been added ???? As mentioned above, this is because it can take up to 24 hours for the new data package to be added to my account. Otherwise, I may be charged 30p for 1 day. In my case, I may get charged on the 14th of the month.

    So just ring up, pay 10p for the call and you can avoid the 30p charge. You might have to avoid using any data until the package has been added. What a load of cr@p.

    On top of which, I get charged randomly. For example, I got charged 30p for 5 days running in June even though nowhere near my limit.

    And still no offer of a refund. Almost like its my fault for being so stupid as to use data without ringing and checking that its safe to do so without being charged.

    I intend to raise a formal complaint, although it seems I have to wait 8 weeks without the issue being resolved before I can. Still a little while yet. In the meantime, I've sent them yet another email asking them to stop fobbing me off with ridiculous explanations and to refund me for all the overcharging. On past experience, after about a week or so, I should get another load of nonsense back.

    Also sent an email to watchdog......

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    Re: Virgin Mobile - unlimited internet - Spurious charges?

    I've checked all my bills and they've charged me various 30p charges on 6 of the 8 months I've had my contract.

    I've been liasing with them via email and their support forum but it appears their scripts they're using don't take into consideration the fact these charges are totally 'wrong' when my tarrif states "unlimited internet - 1 Gb" on it.

    If I do not get a reasonable solution and reply from them shortly I'll be complaining to higher powers to get it rectified accordingly.

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