I bought a phone a few years back, it was from Bell and Virgin mobile. I was pretty happy with the service until one day my phone suddenly had no service while I was at home. I had no Idea what had happened and I thought it was a problem with my phone.
I run a business and not being able to receive calls was not helpful at all, it had to be fixed. I thought the problem was with my phone so I took it in to have it checked out, when I got to town it worked great and the technician couldn't find a problem, but as soon as I left the city I had no service.
I went back the next day and explained what had happened, the technician told me to try a new sim card and I did with the same results. Months went by and I still had the issue, I talked to Virgin support which were next to useless, I had to wait between half an hour to an hour before I could talk to anyone, and when I finally did talk to a person they kept shuffling me around to someone new and I had to explain my problem each time.
I researched online trying to find an answer and finally after days, weeks, and months of searching I finally found the cause. Bell, Virgin had a cell tower close to me when I bought the phone which they either sold to another company or tore down because it wasn't used enough. There is a cell phone tower map which you can view and you can select each year to see which ones were in your area. The tower that was giving me service was no longer on the map which is why my phone had terrible service one day and continued to stay that way.
After explaining to Virgin what I had found they claimed it was not their problem and that my phone still worked perfectly fine when close to a working tower. The agreement sheet that I had signed was not breached in any way and if I were to end that agreement I would have to pay a fine for breaking the contract and terms of use. After some serious arguing I folded and paid the fine, cancelling my contract and completely fed up with the whole thing.
I had three company phones and I had to cancel and pay the fine for each one. I thought it was over and I wouldn't have to deal with Virgin anymore, but I was wrong. I still had my phones but when I tried to go with another provider they told me all the phones were locked by Virgin and I had to get the codes to unlock them so they could be used with another provider.
After waiting for hours trying to get unlock codes from Virgin, they told me that the phones were their property (Even though I paid for them) and that if I wanted unlock codes it was going to be 50 dollars for each code. This is completely criminal in my opinion. I paid for one phone and threw the other perfectly good other phones in the garbage and had to buy new ones.
I had always had a good experience with Rogers but I found a better deal and went with Virgin and learned from my terrible mistake, the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence.
Scott Goerz
