Virgin Mobile MiFi Early Top-Off Causes Unpaid Days for Prior Month Service Lewes, Delaware

Virgin Mobile users of the MiFi device will find themselves short changed when trying to pay their monthly service fee any time before the actual due date!

As of Feb. 2011 Virgin Mobile changed its policy on its unlimited plan, to fall in line with other providers and end up with a 5 Gig data cap on an otherwise perfect service.  In changing this, Virgin Mobile caused the accounts to expire either when they hit the 5 Gig data cap, or when a month had passed on amounts paid.  In this case, the user wanted to get the service paid early in order to avoid outages while on the road.  They had a problem with being able to make a payment, so I offered to pay for a month instead, to be reimbursed.

When I accessed the site to make this payment, all was smooth save for two factors:
1. When making a payment it says that you will reset the meter on the amount of data you are using.
2. When you make a payment early, they also reset the date of expiration to an earlier date!!

In this case, we lost three days of service - already paid for, because the choice of early payment was not appended to the account.  Rather Virgin Mobile simply ignored remaining days (and the fact we had plenty of data left) and simply restarted with a new month of data and expiration date now three days earlier.

In short, a months worth of service was paid for.  In an attempt to pay early, Virgin Mobile ignored prior payment, unused data, and simply 'reset' the data count and now shifted the expiration date back three days.  For $40, thats $3.99 lost - a $1.33 a day for every day pre-paid. 

If one was to pay 15 days into the current service, they would loose 15 days and any unused data amount.  That would be akin to loosing $19.95 and now making your due date that much earlier.

People use the MiFi devices in rural areas where no other high speed Internet can be provided, or would be otherwise cost prohibitive. Many on fixed or limited incomes.  Even a few dollars lost is a big issue.  Having the date due for payment shortened is even worse.

Virgin Mobile - thank you for undercutting your customers!!  What a Rip-Off!!