Nancy tells Consumerist that she and her husband recently bought shiny new phones from Virgin Mobile, and were quite happy with their service. Well, until Nancy’s phone stopped working entirely. She tried the normal technical support channels, but encountered a run-around that lasted for almost two weeks. Two weeks during which Nancy lacked a functioning phone. She gave up on the normal channels, read our guide to sending an executive e-mail carpet bomb, and sent us a copy of her original missive.

(Note: She did not include the addresses she sent the letter to.)

Dear Virgin Mobile Executives,

When I heard about your new phone plans, I was very excited. This was exactly the kind of cell phone plan I had wanted for years. I preordered phones for my husband and I as soon as they were available on 5/12.
I activated my phone on 6/4 and I was very happy with my service until June 25th when my phone mysteriously stopped sending or receiving text messages and I could not place or receive phone calls.

6/25 – I called customer service and they said my phone and text services were inactive and they would activate it and my phone would function within 4 hours. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

6/26 – Called in and I was told that in the Sprint system my phone number was expired so the cell towers would not recognize my phone number. A ticket was put in for me and I called to check on it on 6/28 and 6/30.

6/30 – I was told the ticket was escalated.

7/2 – I called in and I was told to call technical services directly. They sent my problem to a network engineer and I was assured this would be fixed in 24 hours. It was not.

7/6 – I called the technical service line again and the person I spoke to could not fix my problem. They sent a ticket to a higher department.

I have been without use of my cell phone for 12 days now. Can my problem be escalated to someone that can fix it? I have spent hours with the customer services reps and they have not been able to fix my problem. The best solution they could offer was to change my phone number. That is unacceptable to me. This number is my main form of contact and I should not have to change it with every person or company I have ever interacted with because of a system issue with Sprint/Virgin Mobile.
I have already invested over $500 in phones and top up cards to become a Virgin Mobile customer. Won’t you help me stay a Virgin Mobile customer?

I look forward to your reply. I am available at:
Email: *****
Address: ******
******
Home phone: ******
Work phone: ******

My Virgin Mobile Phone #: *******
My Virgin Mobile Pin #: *******

Respectfully,
Nancy

The next day, Nancy wrote us back with an update.

I got a voicemail from [redacted], an executive care agent, at 7AM PST. I called her back on her cell phone at 9AM PST and she returned my call shortly before 10AM PST. She said it was a system backend issue that was also affecting other customers. A team of technical experts are working on manually rebuilding the affected accounts and she sent an email this morning to have my account put to the top of the list. Hopefully my account will work by end of today but she said she would give me another call by end of business to let me know what happened.

Twelve hours after that, she sent another update:

I got a call back from [redacted] around 3pm and she said it would be fixed by the end of today. I reprogrammed and activated my phone just now and it functions again! They also gave me a $50 credit for my trouble. I’m delighted to say the least! Virgin Mobile executive care solved my issue in less than 24 hours.

A great, and swift, answer to Nancy’s original brief and informative EECB. Great work, it’s wonderful to see that our methods worked.

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