Complaint Review: Virgin Mobile

I qualified to recieve a free smart-fone w- 250 free minutes per month from the government Lifeline program. Upon recieving my phone, I read the terms of service manual. In addition to being hard to understand, and impossible to get a customer service representative on, and impossible not to frequently drop calls, I was feeling very suspicious, and there were numerous red flags that I am not going to discuss all here.

I went picture taking. By the time I had 145 pictures in there, my memory froze up. So I was in a predicament where I have to move these pictures out. Customer Service told me that we could not hook it up to an external memory device, and we cannot put a memory card into it eithor. By doing the math i found out how expensive, .25 per picture, already approaching 40$, that it would be  to move these pictures out. I was also struggling with numerous issues, not being able to figure out how to do anything on the phone, and not having any funds to do the rest. I am in a serious financial hardship. so I decided to put money into the phone in piecemeal fashion, save it up, until I can figure out what to do with these pictures. I made the right decision to not let them ever get ahold of my credit card or bank information, because I have reason to fear what would happen. I made a most terrible decision by ever letting them have any of my money.

As soon as I topped up, they immediately took out $1.50, right that very minute. I initially put in $10. Immediately checking my balance page, it was already showing $8.50. I called Customer Service to find out what was going on. They said that I had ordered 1 mb of online time which had expired after 24 hrs. because I had not used it. The reason I had not used it is because I had not ordered it, nor was there any dialogue, warning, notice box to show up and let me know that money was being deducted from my account. I could only hope that I had pushed a wrong button and maybe this would never happen again, but it did, again and again. They keep taking $1.50 out of my account quite regularly. I only have $5.30 left in there, not enough to move my pictures out. I never saw my top up money, they ate it like a wild dog, waiting on another wild dog, whoosh it was gone. Further more, I was not aware that they were charging me for texts recieved which I have not opened or read, there were just two, totalling .20. They took out $4.50, and accused me of ordering 1mb of online time, that expired after 24 hrs., after I did not use it. And I swear that I have never ordered any kind of extras out of them. The only thing that I have done was to use the 250 free minutes they give you. I have never been able to figure out how to do or to afford to do anything else on the phone. I was trying to save up money to move some pictures out of it in order to unfreeze the memory. I swear, I never ordered anything, I just did the basic 250 free minutes, and I am not lieing to anyone or myself. I have not been able to figure out what is causing this to happen. I keep researching my activities, and researching my reciept, trying to figure out what is causing this.

Virgin Mobile Assurance Wireless Lifeline is stealing all of my top up money. They refuse to give me a real explanation, or fix the problem or refund my money. They are an absolute overt theif, and they know it, and from the looks of it, people on line know it also.