Re: Virgin - bizzare pricing v. coverage schemes

If you have paid 3months bills this doesn't apply.

Please include the full story not a corrupted edition.

"Peter" <nowhere@anon.com> wrote in message
news:7ueqh297akl7fv5nrk55dg0j8psi5shppd@4ax.com...
> I've just spent a load of time on the phone to these people.
>
> Referring to PAYG and
>
> https://www.virginmobile.com/vm/call...PAYG&x=16&y=10
>
> one can see that the list of countries supported on roaming is very
> different (better) when paying by direct debit, over paying by
> conventional top-up.
>
> There is a catch: you have to prepay your phone with £150 before it
> will roam.
>
>
>

Peter wrote:
> I don't know why Virgin, an otherwise friendly outfit, employs these
> people without having a clear escalation path for technical questions.

I think this is true of almost all telcos and other companies these
days. If you want something routine answered, then the call centres
are fine. If you want anything that strays from their scripts or
canned responses you've got no hope.

That said, I know O2 get a lot of flack for customer service on this
NG. I've dealt with them for the first time over the last couple of
weeks -- their (UK) call centre have been top notch; small queue times
(< 60 secs) and problems resolved/questions answered there and then.
(Their email customer service, however, is absolutely useless).

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:52:33 +0100, Peter <nobody@anon.com> wrote:
>I tried to find out whether selecting the DD payment opens up the
>blocked VPN ports (as it opens up the roaming coverage; an obvious
>marketing decision) but the man refused to look into it. He just said
>he doesn't know about technical things but is "quite sure" that only
>the roaming coverage changes from paying by DD.

The reason roaming is opened up on DD connections is due to the way
roaming is billed - for PAYG roaming realtime billing is required between
Virgin and the roaming partner, and it appears not many are set up to do
this. In contrast, a DD connection doesn't need to be real-time as all
that matters then is the charge for the call arrives and gets billed.
Practically any carrier that can manage roaming at all can do this.

--
-- Michael "Soruk" McConnell
Eridani Star System

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