Both my wife and me have Pay Monthly contacts with Virgin Mobile, and I had another PAYG one as backup. Taking services from Virgin Media means that we are reasonably happy with our Pay Monthly arrangements.
We have family abroad and the recent hike in SMS charges from 20p to 30p tipped the balance for me to swap my Virgin PAYG to Lebara, who only charge 10p for SMS worldwide.
To do this, I needed to get a PAC to keep my number and arrange for an unlock code for my Nokia 6300, which I got from Virgin.
On 19th July, I rang 789 and had no trouble obtaining the PAC and the agent dictated it to me over the phone there and then. She said that Virgin Mobile would confirm the number by post. I gave the code to Lebara and the swap was done on the 20th July.
Also on 20th July, I rang 789 to get the unlock code, to be told that the handset was not obtained from Virgin and thus could not be given the code. I checked through my files and found the invoice and rang 789 again to be told the same thing, but this time I persisted and got through to an agent who managed to find the transaction on their system. He informed me that the unlock charge would be £15.32, which seemed reasonable to me. I gave him my email address and asked them to send the unlock code by email if possible. He said that that was unlikely and that it would come by post in due course. I checked my credit card online and found that they took the £15.32 the same day.
I've gone through this routine twice before with Tesco and T-Mobile and had no problems getting the codes within a week by post. As nothing had appeared in the post by 31st July I decided to follow up with a webmail. In the past Virgin have normally responded to my webmails by the end of the next working day, i.e.within 48 hrs.
They took my money over three weeks ago and I've heard nothing either by email, post or phone. Just wondering if this behaviour is now par for the course with Virgin?
How long should I wait to escalate this further and to whom?
We have family abroad and the recent hike in SMS charges from 20p to 30p tipped the balance for me to swap my Virgin PAYG to Lebara, who only charge 10p for SMS worldwide.
To do this, I needed to get a PAC to keep my number and arrange for an unlock code for my Nokia 6300, which I got from Virgin.
On 19th July, I rang 789 and had no trouble obtaining the PAC and the agent dictated it to me over the phone there and then. She said that Virgin Mobile would confirm the number by post. I gave the code to Lebara and the swap was done on the 20th July.
Also on 20th July, I rang 789 to get the unlock code, to be told that the handset was not obtained from Virgin and thus could not be given the code. I checked through my files and found the invoice and rang 789 again to be told the same thing, but this time I persisted and got through to an agent who managed to find the transaction on their system. He informed me that the unlock charge would be £15.32, which seemed reasonable to me. I gave him my email address and asked them to send the unlock code by email if possible. He said that that was unlikely and that it would come by post in due course. I checked my credit card online and found that they took the £15.32 the same day.
I've gone through this routine twice before with Tesco and T-Mobile and had no problems getting the codes within a week by post. As nothing had appeared in the post by 31st July I decided to follow up with a webmail. In the past Virgin have normally responded to my webmails by the end of the next working day, i.e.within 48 hrs.
They took my money over three weeks ago and I've heard nothing either by email, post or phone. Just wondering if this behaviour is now par for the course with Virgin?
How long should I wait to escalate this further and to whom?

