107 comments

  • Susan

    Thank you, with your help I was able to get my account number and port my phone number to a new carrier!

  • Diane

    thank you for your answer… I would rate it a 5… just not sure where or how?

    • Hi Diane,
      Thank you for your kind comment and nice rating πŸ™‚

      Best regards and have a great weekend!
      -JD

      • Kristi

        Thanks J. D. so much for your step by step instructions. The companies sure don’t make it easy! Now I can switch my mother’s phone to my plan. Will save her money and upgrade her phone!

        • Thank you for your comment Kristi. I am very glad that the tip worked and that you were able to upgrade your mom’s phone and save her money at the same time!

          Have a great week πŸ™‚

          Best regards,
          -J.D.

  • Emily

    I also followed these instructions; thank you! They worked just fine. The person I spoke to at Virgin was very nice about it but they do ask why you need the account number, which left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Seems they are holding it a bit hostage since they probably know your reason for wanting it is to switch carriers. I told them I had to change carriers because I was moving out of their coverage area. Not exactly true – I’m changing partially because I do get poor coverage at my location, but also for a few other reasons, including the fact that they hold things like account numbers hostage. But I recommend this white lie if you are uncomfortable explaining your reasons. It means they can’t try to talk you out of making the change.

  • Michelle

    Thank you so much! And I followed Emily’s advice and found a city out of the coverage area, easy as pie!

  • Mark

    Thanks! These steps made it very easy to get the account number. We got two Nokia Lumia 520 windows phones and unfortunately virgin mobile doesn’t work with them. AT&T has a nice $25 + $5 data prepaid plan though that is working well, so we did the porting in a store and it took less than 10 minutes (the store employee actually used this website to show us how to get our account numbers) thanks again for your helpful instructions!

    • Hi Mark,
      Thank you for your nice comment. I am very glad that the steps were helpful and that is really cool that the store showed you this site πŸ™‚

      Thanks again and have a great weekend!
      -JD

  • CMR

    This definitely works. I suggest that you don’t tell them you want to change carriers or they will give you a very hard time about it. When they asked, “May I ask why you need your account number?” I said, “No.” They didn’t have anything else to say after that and I got my account number without all the hassle.

  • Jessi

    Most definitely a FIVE!!! This process took me less than five minutes with absolutely NO HASSLE!!! THANK YOU! Just a tip for anybody who feels uncomfortable with telling them you’re switching providers, just tell you want the account number for your personal store of information πŸ™‚

    • Hi Jessi,
      Thank you for your nice comment and the good tip. I am glad everything worked so well!

      Have a great week πŸ™‚
      -J.D.

      PS I noticed your email name, do you write novels?

  • Jodes

    This worked perfect! And they didn’t even ask me why I was needing. The call took only took 2 minutes. thanks!

  • Chad Warner

    Thanks, it worked. It took 8 minutes on the phone. The first person asked why I needed the number, and I said to port to another carrier. He transferred me to the floor supervisor. She asked why I was leaving, and I said due to poor voice coverage at our home. She wanted to troubleshoot, but I told her other Virgin customers had the same issue at our home. She was then very helpful. At the end, she said if I ever came back to Virgin, she would make sure the coverage was better. Ha ha!

    • Hi Chad,
      Thank you for the nice comment and the good tips πŸ™‚

      Which carrier are you switching to? I switched to US Cellular and have been quite please with the coverage in our area, thought when we go to more urban areas it seems like Verizon and AT&T are hard to beat.

      Have a great weekend and thanks again Chad!
      -J.D.

      • Chad Warner

        We switched to MetroPCS. So far the coverage seems better. The biggest difference is MetroPCS has WiFi Calling, so our calls use WiFi when possible. That’s a big help, because we’re not relying on MetroPCS’ towers when we’re at home; our phones just use our WiFi.

        So far, we’ve found MetroPCS’ support (online and phone) even worse than Virgin Mobile’s. Hopefully we won’t have to contact them often.

        • Hi Chad,
          Sorry it took me so long to respond to your comment!

          How are you liking MetroPCS now that you’ve had it a few months?

          Best regards,
          -J.D.

          PS That WiFi calling is a GREAT feature, I wish all carriers had it.

        • Chad Warner

          We’ve had a lot of trouble with MetroPCS. After a lot of service issues, MetroPCS admitted that they had sent many customers bad SIM cards. They finally replaced ours and grudgingly agreed to pay for them. After that, our service was much better. Customer service, on the other hand, remains the worst I’ve ever dealt with, passing previous record-holder A&T. We’re staying with MetroPCS for now because of the low cost, but we’ll keep evaluating alternatives.

        • Hi Chad,
          Thanks for sharing the info about MetroPCS, I hope they improve their customer service!

          Best regards and have a great weekend,
          -J.D.

  • please give me my accoutt number

    • Hi Glenn,
      Thank you for your comment. I do not have access to your account number, however, with the instructions listed in the blog post above you should be able to get the account number from Virgin Mobile!

      Have a great weekend,
      -J.D.

  • Christine

    Thank you it work great.

  • Andy

    Just did this today and it worked. They gave me the account number with no problems. Thanks!

  • Jamie Bell

    very helpful! and yeah, they did ask why I need my number…I just told them I needed it for my personal record keeping

    • Hi Jamie,
      Thank you for your nice comment! I am very happy that you were able to get your Virgin Mobile number successfully πŸ™‚

      Have a great weekend,
      -J.D.

  • Charles B

    This took 45 seconds, just said I wanted it for my records as I keep track of all of my account information. (9/5/2014)

  • If you don’t want to bother calling them, there is another way to get your account number!
    I found this on another forum:

    It’s also accessible from within the session cookies. If you’re using Chrome, you can do the following:

    1.) Right-click the page;
    2.) Select ‘Inspect Element’;
    3.) Click the ‘Resources’ tab;
    4.) Expand the ‘Cookies’ group;
    5.) Select ‘www2.virginmobileusa.com’, and;
    6.) Check the list that appears in the right pane for the Name ‘ban’. The nine digit number you see assigned in the Value column next to that Name is your account number.
    7.) Tell everyone you know that Virgin Mobile is aware of this issue and still chooses to make it unnecessarily difficult for their paying customers to obtain their account numbers. Confound Virgin Mobile USA’s plans, and a pox on their houses.

  • Chazz McDazzle

    Ahhhhhhh, thank you!!!! Virgin was good to me but I needed to switch and they seemingly keep the account # from customers to make it more difficult to switch providers. I rate this a 5. I rate info given by virgin a 0.

    • Chazz McDazzle

      Oh, and they didn’t ask for a reason as I started out saying, “I need my account #, I’ve been having a hard time finding it.”

      • Excellent Chazz, glad everything went well!

        Best regards,
        -J.D.

        PS what provider are you switching to? I switched to US Cellular and have been very happy with them (they have great coverage in my rural area)

  • Liz

    Adding to the long list of happy commenters to say that this worked like a charm! Thank you for the tip!

  • Dennis Ray Nestor

    Thank You!

  • Alejandra

    Thank you JD for the tip! Unfortunately, I called too late. Virgin does not have 24 hours system and that is when I say THANK YOU PETER!!! I was able to find my account online!! πŸ™‚ I never knew this forums were so helpful!

  • april

    This is great!!! Thanks!!

  • Trevor

    Virgin Mobile was very polite in getting me the information I needed to port my number to another carrier. I was kind of fearing this step as I had heard horror stories, but I experienced none of that. Great interaction. In fact, other than spotty service in many areas I find myself daily, VM has been a great carrier for me. Thanks for your advice!

    • Hi Trevor,
      I am glad to hear that you had a good experience with Virgin Mobile πŸ™‚ I like them too, I only wish they had better coverage!

      Which carrier are you switching to? I switched from VM to US Cellular, and now to AT&T.

      Have a great week,
      -J.D.

  • Fernando

    I just called customer service and used the steps mentioned at the very top and it worked. and I also used the steps mentioned by Peter and they worked as well. It was the same account number given to me by customer service. Good luck to everyone ! I switched to Tmobile lol

    • Hi Fernando,
      Thank you for your nice comment. I am very happy to hear that both methods for obtaining your virgin mobile account number worked well for you πŸ™‚

      How are you liking T-mobile?

      Best regards,
      -J.D.

      • i switched back to virgin within a month . tmobile was horrible . but now im here again trying to switch from virgin mobile to another carrier. dont know where im going tho!

        • Hi Fernando,
          I’m sorry to hear about your phone carrier woes πŸ™ have you checked into FreedomPop? They have some pretty good deals going on right now!

          Hope you find something that works well for you πŸ™‚
          -J.D.

  • Nick

    Just a little advice don’t tell them you want to switch carriers. VM doesn’t have the phone i want so i want to switch. When i told them that they tried to transfer me to a different department. When i told them no the person gave me the number.

    • Hi Nick,
      Thank you for the helpful info!

      What phone and carrier did you end up switching to? My most recent carrier is AT&T with a Samsung Galaxy S5 Active phone and so far I really like it πŸ™‚

      Have a great week,
      -J.D.

  • John

    Thank you Peter!

    I was not looking forward to having to deal with Virgin mobile customer service again.
    You saved me the aggravation I really didn’t today!

  • Steve

    Thanks for this tip – I too got “why do you need your account number”, which irked me. I opted not to give a reason, and the Virgin rep read the number to me at high speed, forcing me to ask her to repeat it. Not a great customer service experience.

    Thanks also to the commenter who posted the cookie tip – I was able to verify that I had gotten the correct number.

    • Hi Steve,
      Thank you for the report and I am glad to hear you were able to get your VM account number using both methods! Sorry to hear about the unpleasant customer support though πŸ™

      Have a great week and thanks again,
      -J.D.

  • Bonnie

    Thank you for the helpful post! After searching VM’s site everywhere, I did a search and found this – worked great. I will stay and look around a bit! πŸ™‚

  • Debbie

    Thank you for the tip! I called Virgin and was fortunate to just have them give me the number no questions asked. I was breaking my head on the site trying to figure out where the number could be. I agree with Chazz they hide the number to make it harder to leave. Once again thank you for making the process easier πŸ™‚

    • Howdy Debbie,
      Thank you for your nice comment, I am very glad the Virgin Mobile account number tip worked well for you! πŸ™‚

      Have a great week and thank you for visiting my site,
      -J.D.

  • Bill

    Peter’s tip worked great. I never had to call VM, and I was able to port my number to Verizon in a matter of minutes.

    Thank you!!

  • Willy

    I called Virgin, and within 3 minutes I had the account number. Thanks for this advice, it’s silly that VM doesn’t just display that number in your account page.

    • Thank you for your comment Willy. You bring up a great point, VM should definitely just display the account number in plain sight for their customers!

      Best regards,
      -J.D.

  • Ashley K

    Followed these instructions. Told them I just wanted the account number when they asked why. No big deal. I was on the phone for less than two minutes! Thanks!

  • Joe

    Peter,

    I have Internet Explorer, not Chrome. I found the ‘ban’ after adapting your Chrome directions to IE.
    1. Login to your VM USA account
    2. Right click the page and Choose “Inspect Element”
    3. Goto Debugger tab
    4. Scroll down to line number 208
    5. Line 208 is: $j.cookie(‘ban’,’999999999′ , {path: ‘/’, domain: cookie_domain});
    6. The account number is the nine digit number”999999999″

    Thanks Peter. Saved me the call to VM.

  • Dorothy Martorano

    Thanks so much for this technique. It gave me just what I needed (I was close, but couldn’t quite figure how to get to a human). Truly great.

  • Laurie

    Thanks sooo much! Worked like a charm! I sure wish I’d googled this question an hour ago instead of wasting all that time searching the VM website and my phone! I appreciate the time you took to carefully detail it here! You ROCK!

  • kaee

    this worked well! they had me on the phone for a while(assuming others were trying to get away from Virgin Mobile) lol.

  • Fernando Germanotta

    thanks :-))

  • Wendy T.

    This works amazingly well! However I will say Virgin Mobile is difficult to work with. It is impossible to find your account # on their website, and when I called to get it…she put me on hold for 5 minutes while she “researched”…then asked why I was cancelling. Also prior to this I had Straight Talk call them to research and the VM CSR told him her system was down and would be for 3 hours. I called and got right through with your steps. No system down time. πŸ™

    Thanks for your help!

    • Hi Wendy,
      Thank you for nice comment. I am very glad you were able to get you account number via the steps listed πŸ™‚

      Have a great weekend and thank you for visiting my site!
      -J.D.

  • Mick A.

    Thanks for this. This process still works. I did tell I wanted the account number because I got a new phone that does not work on VM, and they gave me the number. The rep even asked take sure I had paper and pen handy. Best of all, a few minutes later I was up and running on Consumer Cellular. The CC service plan I chose costs a little more than VM but the phone choice is better.

    • Awesome Mick!

      What phone did you choose with Consumer Cellular? I am always looking for good deals on phones/plans but I am unfamiliar with CC.

      Best regards and have a great rest of the weekend,
      -J.D.

  • Michelle A.

    This information is very useful. I waited almost 24 hours to port a VM number to Straight Talk, only to learn that my VM phone number is NOT my account number; that was the holdup. I finally saw this help forum and was able to ask a live person before my account expired at the end of the month. The info on getting the number WITHOUT calling Virgin Mobile was even more helpful. Thanks again!

    • Hi Michelle,
      Thank you for your nice comment, I am very happy the steps worked for you!

      Have a great rest of the weekend and thanks again for commenting πŸ™‚

      Best regards,
      -J.D.

  • Ben someone

    For those of you that don’t want to call virgin and tell them no, I don’t want to stay. Log into your virgin account, right click anywhere on the page, choose view source, then search for “ban-id” (without quotes) your account number is the 9 digit code between and

  • Jeff G.

    I would like to add that if you have multiple accounts with VM and are trying to get your account number via the cookie method, you may need to clear the existing cookie before getting another number. I am transferring both mine and my wife’s phone from VM, but kept getting the same account number for each account. Clearing the cookie before logging into her account allowed the second account number to pop up. Otherwise this worked flawlessly.

    Thanks!

  • Debbie Cree

    I wish I had read these comments first. I told my son to follow the instructions and he told them that he was switching to another company. They kept him on the phone, trying to talk him into staying, they would not give him an account number. Finally after nearly 20 minutes, they gave it to him. What a pain!!

    • Hi Debbie,
      Thank you for your comment. I am sorry to hear about the trouble your son had πŸ™ but I’m glad he did get the number he needed!

      Hopefully the rest of the week will be better πŸ™‚

      Best regards,
      -J.D.

  • Zombie

    I called. The first person I talked to asked me why and I told her the phone selection is bad and I don’t want an iPhone. She transferred me to another person who kept me on the phone for 15 minutes. He was polite offered me a month of service free plus 6 months with $20 off my plan every month. I already am on their VIP plan (they let me use service for 2 weeks before charging me for free.) I do like them alot and have been with them since 2004. I just don’t like the phones and I want a new phone. He said he’d call me back at 1pm. What sucks is that I want to go to Boost but they won’t let me take my number with me. Sucks. They gave me my account number after the 15 minute call. The guy on the phone made sure I had my account number before we got off the phone. Everyone on customer service has always been nice to me. Thanks for the help!

    • Hi Zombie,
      Thank you for raking the time to share your experience!

      I was sorry to hear that you were not able to take your number with you πŸ™ However, I am glad you were able to get your account number! πŸ™‚

      Since you have been such a longtime customer, you might want to post a review of Virgin Mobile. I think they would appreciate hearing your feedback.

      Thanks and have a great day!

      Best regards,
      -J.D.

  • Luc

    I sent a text to 8681 to get my account number. I received it within minutes.

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