Walmart.com, Virgin Mobile, LG Locked LG Cell Phone Run-Around Nightmare - LG HBM-760 Recall? North Las Vegas Nevada Internet

I was charged for an LG Flare phone with a HBM-760 Bluetooth headset on 2/6/09. It arrived at my local Walmart on 2/11 and I picked it up on 2/14 after a half hour wait for someone to appear at the Site to Store counter.

After I got the phone home I charged it and tried repeatedly to get it to activate. After several calls to VirginMobile they said the phone was locked and they could not activate it. I made three trips and several calls to two different Walmart stores to try to resolve the issue. The national customer service for walmart.com responded after a day and after a couple of more messages said that I could not return the phone to the store but would have to mail it back and wait for a refund.
I could have picked up a phone without the headset bonus in the store 3 weeks ago. Now I will have to wait even longer before I get my money back, and I will not have a Bluetooth headset.

The LG HBM-760 headset is no longer available from Walmart.com or VirginMobileUSA.com. It did not get very good user reviews on cnet.com. I'm speculating that so many people returned their headsets for poor sound quality that LG or VirginMobile maybe decided to recall them.

Did anyone else get burned with this aggravation or am I the only one? Walmart and Walmart.com behave like two totally isolated companies. I have been in the Site-to-Store counters in two Walmarts and it seems like the employees go out of their way to avoid serving the .com customers. This is totally opposite of the very good customer service experience I have had with regular store purchases.

Bill
Sun City, California
U.S.A.