Virgin Mobile Virgin Mobile USA Number porting problems leave new customers phoneless! Warren New Jersey

Three weeks ago my friend picked up a new Kyocera Loft and signed up for Virgin Mobile's 300-talk unlimited data plan, intending to port his (formerly) Verizon number to it. It seemed like a great deal--unlimited data and enough talk time to get by for only $25/month with no contract. Well my Pops used to tell always tell me three things: if a deal looks to good to be true it probably is, you get what you pay for, and just because your friends go and jump off of a bridge doesn't mean you should too.

My Dad was and is right on all counts.

I think my friend is now around 20 days into his struggle with Virgin Mobile. As far as I know, Verizon had successfully ported his number to Virgin Mobile on day 1 of the struggle. Since then--three weeks!--Virgin Mobile has been unable to map the number to his phone. (That he needs his particular number for business is the only reason he hasn't given up--I don't think VM can release the number to a different carrier until they get his phone working first.)

Of course, despite my father's words of wisdom I jumped off of the bridge too.

Same model phone, same porting of a number from Verizon, same story. Alas, I am only 4 days into my struggle. After 60 hours with a non-functioning phone and being alarmed by receiving 13(!) identical emails over 30 minutes telling me my phone number was something it wasn't supposed to be, I contacted customer support to check on the status. I was told by Leo(?) (agent ID [redacted]) that the phone would be working later that evening--it'd be coming on line any minute.

Of course it did not.

The next day I called and was told by Gabrielle (did not get agent ID) that, again, that it would definitely be working by the end of the evening. I explained that since I had heard that same exact line the day before I was apprehensive, and asked to be escalated to a supervisor.

Guess what supervisor Steven (agent ID  [redacted]) discovered! Although Verizon had indeed successfully ported my number to Virgin Mobile within hours of me singing up, Virgin Mobile had NOT YET EVEN BEGUN the process required to get my phone up and running. Steven explained that this was due to a bug in their system that was affected/had affected new phones. After escalation, the new timeframe for my phone to start functioning is another 72 hours--time required for the Virgin Mobile techs to manually "build" my account (out of slow curing concrete, presumably.)

Steven told me that there are currently "many" accounts that need to be manually built in this manner, presumably because of the same problem. Between his statement, a few other complaints about this issue that I have spotted online, and my friend's ongoing experience, I am led to believe that Virgin Mobile is having widespread problems with porting phone numbers to newer phones on their non-contract plans.

Steven did comp me one month's service which was nice... if I don't bail first.

Things to take away:
1) If you are planning to port a number to a Virgin Mobile phone be prepared to wait a long, perhaps indefinite, time.
2) When a Virgin Mobile CSR rep tells you that your phone will be working "by the end of the evening, for sure" they may actually mean "I have no idea when your phone will work or if it will ever work, and maybe I didn't even check."
3) Listen to your Dad's advice.