In what continues to be a trend, Virgin Mobile reduced yet another of their plans to have even less data available per month. This is not the first time they have done this! 🙁
Here is a screenshot of the most recent notification email:
Sad email from Virgin Mobile 🙁
and here is the full text of the email:
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Hi, Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that
means making difficult choices in order to provide the best possible service to the greatest number of customers.To make sure we can keep offering our Beyond Talk Plans at such great prices, we’re putting a data speed reduction in place for anyone who uses over 2.5GB of data in a month.How will it work?
Starting March 23, 2012, if you use over 2.5GB of data in a month on your Beyond Talk Plan:
- Data speeds may be reduced to 256Kbps or below for the rest of your month. During this time,
you may experience slower page loads and file downloads and lags in streaming media.
- If data speeds are reduced, they will return to normal as soon as your next plan month starts.
- If you’d rather not wait for your new month to start, you can restart your plan immediately through
My Account.
Will it affect me?
Based on your activity for your last plan month ending in December, you shouldn’t be affected.
If you continue to use the same amount of data as you did in your last plan month, you should not see
your data speeds reduced. Just to give you an idea, in order to hit 2.5GB, it’s about 400,000 Mobile
Internet page views, about 90,000(!) emails (without attachments), 91 hours of streaming music
or 20 hours of video clips*.
This will not affect your ability to text or make calls with your phone.
How will I know if my data speeds have been reduced?
If you reach 2.5GB of data in a month, you will receive a text message letting you know your data speeds
will be reduced for the rest of your plan month.
By putting this data speed reduction in place, we’re making sure we can deliver the same quality service
you’ve come to expect from Virgin Mobile. We hope you understand.
Thank you.
Virgin Mobile
| *Data usage per activity is based on an average. Bandwidth varies by website, video, email and other Internet application.This message was sent in regards to your Virgin Mobile account ending in 9999.This email was sent to you by Virgin Mobile to provide important service information about your account. You may receive service emails even if you have requested that Virgin Mobile not contact you about promotional offers. |
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Your privacy is important to us. Therefore, we treat any information you give us with respect and in compliance with federal law and our own Privacy Policy.
Please do not reply to this message. If you have questions or comments, send an email to ourteam@virginmobileusa.com.
Or contact us at: Virgin Mobile USA, L.P., 10 Independence Blvd., Warren, NJ 07059
[end email]
They do still provide decent service at a low cost
My wife and I were fortunate to get Android Optimus V phones with $25 monthly plans: 300 min talk time, unlimited texting, ‘unlimited’ data [now 2.5GB before throttling. The phones have worked well and VM’s (Sprint network) coverage is decent in our area. I cannot complain about that performance for $25 a month when compared to $50+ with some carriers for somewhat similar plans.
However, a buddy informed me that VM recently raised their prices to $35 a month and with this new lower data cap it makes the plan less desirable. Here’s hoping VM doesn’t water down their services anymore 🙁
I have been with virgin mobile for a while and I had no complants even when they rised up the prices on their plans, it was still ok to me but now that the unlimited web has been reduce 2.5 gb, it does not sound good to me, now im wondering whats next?
Hi Arturo, thank you for your comment.
I agree 100%. Virgin Mobile has generally been very good for me, especially for the price. But now it seems there is no where lower for them to go on bandwidth etc. I am afraid they will either keep raising prices (which hopefully will not affect existing customers) or will stop providing services all together 🙁 Let us hope that the inverse happens and that they actually start adding features and bandwidth BACK to their plans 🙂
Thanks again for your comment Arturo, I am happy to know that there are other people out there that appreciate a bargain cell phone plan! It just blows my mind how many people spend $100+ every month* on a cell phone plan.
Best regards,
-JD
*I do understand why these expensive plans are a necessity for some people, I am just surprised that cell phone companies can get away for charging $110-$140 for services (i.e. talk, txt, 5-7GB data, and tethering) that seem like they should be universal in this day and age.