Virgin Mobile vs Cingular on prepaid customer care

Rating: how hard is it to be good?

There are about 18 mobile applications that I have been meaning to test – but couldn’t because I didn’t have a US number to enable the download. So today, in Florida I purchased two prepaid cards. One Virgin Mobile and one Cingular.

My experience was amazing and it clearly demonstrated the differences mobile phone companies have towards prepaid customers.

I purchased the Virgin Mobile MARBL for USD 29.99 – which is very sexy and some Cingular branded mobile device which is very, very, very ugly and has the smallest display screen I have ever seen; for USD 20.
The sales woman, Dori a student was great when it came to selling the Virgin device. She showed me the devices and from memory she knew all the tariffs and advised me on the USD 0.18 per minute one. She unpackaged the phone, inserted the SIM put in the top-up and then wrote down my phone number and all the valuable information on one card.

With Cingular there was some confusion about the tariffs one was a USD 1 rate per day and the other I still don’t understand but I said “yes” to the tariff anyway. She again, opened what must be the worst round packaged box I have ever seen with something that resembled a dagger and started to set up the device.
The difference? With the Virgin phone she was loaded with information. With Cingular she had nothing to say. Why? Point of sales education. Virgin has spoon fed her with information in a simple way that makes selling and buying a joy. With Cingular, she wasn’t being rude but she didn’t have anything to say about the company at all.

So I purchase USD 50 of top-ups and I head to the hotel to start testing. I tried to use the phone immediately. Cingular didn’t work. I have the phone now for six hours and it has just sent me an SMS welcoming me and I can finally use it.
With Virgin, I made my first call ten minutes after leaving the shop.
I get back to the room and an email is waiting for me from Virgin (see below). WOW. This is customer care. How simple is it to send an email and make life easier for the customer? Virgin wins on price of phone, ease to set-up, sales education, network and customer care in the prepaid market.

Hi BENA,
It’s nice to have you with us.
In this email, you’ll find your Virgin Mobile phone number & network ID, instructions on how to program your phone (in case you haven’t already done that), and info on how to get in touch with us.

Okay, Okay, about your phone…
Your Virgin Mobile Phone Number: 3215252458
Your Virgin Mobile Phone’s Network ID:
Before you can start talking on your new phone, you’ll have to program it. If you haven’t done that yet, follow the simple steps below.
You can also find an interactive guide to the process among the “How To’s” on our Web site: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/help/home.do. (A lot of other great tutorials are there as well – like how to set up your voicemail and how to send text messages from your phone.)
How to program your phone…
1) Turn on your phone.
2) Using the keypad, dial ##VIRGIN (that’s #-#-8-4-7-4-4-6). Hit the left option button to select “Service”.
3) You are now in the programming menu. Scroll down to “Edit” and hit “OK”.
4) Your screen should say, “Edit MDN – enter ten digits…” If any numbers appear on this screen, delete them by pressing the BACK button. Enter your 10-digit phone number. Then hit the left option button to select “OK”.
5) This next screen says: “Edit MSID – enter 10 digits…” If any numbers appear on this screen, delete them by pressing the BACK button. Enter your 10-digit MSID (skip the first two zeros, if you have them). Then hit the left option button to select “Done”.
6) You’ll get a message saying your programming is complete and the phone will turn off and back on again by itself.
7) That’s it – you’re done! Nice work.
If you have any questions about your new phone, here’s a link to all kinds of great information:
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/help/helpDetails.do?tier=phones&categoryId=16&topicId=73
It might take a couple of hours to get you set up on our network, so we’ll send a text message to your phone to let you know when you can start talking.
It may take up to 4 hours for VirginXL, Voicemail, and Top-Up features to come online. But we bet you’ll find us worth the wait.
If this is the first time you’ve activated this phone, we’ll automatically add some starter airtime to your account as soon as your phone setup is finished!
If you have any other questions about your Virgin Mobile service, please visit www.virginmobileusa.com. Or, call us at 1-888-322-1122 or by dialing *VM from your Virgin Mobile phone.
Welcome to Virgin Mobile!

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