Double Blind

It just keeps on getting better and better with Virgin Mobile. Previously (October 7, 2010) I had reported that they had done a stealth change in their local calling area – the area local to an Aldergrove, BC phone number no longer included Chilliwack, much to my annoyance.

After three phone calls to their support line (and I will point out the only positive part of this experience was that I managed to reach a live human being script-reader within 60 seconds of dialing 611), the third representative actually figured out that my problem was not that I was being charged with local incoming calls (as I had the unlimited incoming calls option), but rather I was being charged long distance in my local calling area.

Much to my amazement, they actually credited my account with about $50 of prepaid time a couple days ago. Unfortunately, they also managed to change my plan from what it was set to, to a $1/day plan for unlimited incoming and 30 cents a minute for outgoing. Absolute brilliance.

The whole cause of this charade to begin with, the Aldergrove local calling area, has not changed. Calls received in Chilliwack still are considered long distance. I have no idea if/when they will fix their local calling area tables, but I am not going to bother waiting since I already have committed to not giving Bell/Virgin Mobile any more of my cash as retribution. I was considering using the credit card charge-back option, but that would have likely resulted in hidden costs and risks from my side.

During this entire time, I made a few phone calls to explore what my options are (since the main cell providers have significantly better plans available than what they post on the internet if you know who to call or what to say) and will be picking up a new phone (as I was sorry to hear that my 5 year old telephone apparently was grossly outdated) and subscribing to a relatively cheap (roughly $25) Rogers voice plan, which includes enough minutes, caller ID, voicemail and useless (to me) text messaging. I thought about data ($30 for a gigabyte), but decided against it.

I will be “porting” my phone number which is described in painstaking detail at wirelessnumberportability.ca and I will be very curious to see whether this actually works seamlessly or not. I’m not holding my breath for an easy transition – I just might have to resign and get a new phone number.

And yes, the new provider actually has Aldergrove as a local calling area that has Chilliwack clearly marked as local on the map.

I am sure it will just be a matter of time before Rogers screws up (just like they did before when they got rid of Chilliwack from their Vancouver local calling area for no good reason other than to raise long distance revenues). At least geographically, Aldergrove is the center of the Lower Mainland and it is unlikely that there will be any more local area change tricks employed to pull more cash out of my wallet.

Hopefully by the time that my lengthy contract commitment expires that the new entrants (Wind, Mobilicity and Shaw) will have a sufficient foothold and, heaven forbid, I might actually get some sort of data plan then without having to spend hours on seeing how I can get an acceptable rate.

As a final note, trying to pick a cell phone is a woefully complex task. I hate touchscreens and have big fingers, so you can tell why I have an aversion to text messaging. I’m more concerned with features such as battery life, weight/feel in pocket, voice quality (both for me and the person on the other end), how easy it is to access the phone book and call people by pressing as few buttons as possible and how good/intuitive the user interface is. There is almost no way to test this other than by buying the phone and taking a giant leap of faith by looking at specifications and relatively unbiased reviews.

True to my form, I bought a “dumb-phone”. I wanted something dumber, but even the dumbest of cell phones these days have a lot of “smarty” features. I’m not yet ready for anything really smart on a phone – that’s what my Asus netbook is for.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.