Virgin Mobile: Case Study " Corporate Care" is more than a name and an apiology.

 Having the right talent on your phones and social media creates the experience your customers will experience.  I love to talk about great companies.  Sadly today's blog is my sharing of a personal experience about a situation I wish would have been responded against a company whose brand I loved!  

Where are your Corporate Headquarters I asked, after being asked to give them one more chance to say they are sorry without solving the problem.  What was the problem?  5 months of failed calls with drop rates at around 90% failed on 2 calls.  After buying a new phone, getting a new number, jumping through 48 hours of hoops, we had hopes social media might solve what their service center failed to.  No in fact they compounded and drag it out.  I guess they should be proud they retained us this long, because WHO willingly stays except for hoping a company will be the company they loved for 2 years prior. 

Twitter support would not give me the corporate headquarters information to pass on my concerns, but of course this is public information 

Virgin Mobile USA is located in Warren, New Jersey, United States.  I was told Virgin runs on Sprint's "B" towers so service I suppose is unpredictable. When bad is an epidimic how does a social media savvy company respond?  The answer defines much about what the company is, and I daresay I am disappointed, because I LOVE the brand and Sir Richard Branson, but this abysmal failure to respond, deliver or resolve is something I am proud to be done with as of today.     


VIRGIN MOBILE:  You could hear a call drop.  I love to talk about great services, and I recommended Virgin Mobile as one of the most affordable and effective no contract plans, until we moved. In January 2013 we moved to Pleasanton, CA, and the problems seriously began.  Problems that Virgin Mobile was happy to have us running around paying full price, buying new phones, and all the time, from February until June, telling us the performance was due to the towers being upgraded. Not sure when they would be done.. 

 
 
If coverage is so good?  Why is it bad?  That is the question I would ask over and over again The answer became clearer, and clearer.  In the end it comes up to this.  Virgin Mobile did not care about performance problems or the customer experience. 

Now if 90% of your calls drop, and YOU KNOW it, would YOU reimburse the bad experience?  

Virgin Mobile says no!  They can not reimburse, they told me after being dropped from business conference calls, clients, customers, my kids in an emergency, my parents telling me of the death of my Grandmother.  You see to Virgin, its just a drop, not EVERY SINGLE TIME your call fails, at a rate of 90% dropping, and not being able to reconnect or stay connected.

Just because someone has a Facebook, Twitter, Customer Service, and Email does NOT mean they care about creating a positive customer experience.  

After calling repeatedly and spending  over 48 hours on support calls where we were told to get a new phone, a new number etc between January and March, we began emailing and tweeting. 

Twitter:  48 tweets from February 3, 2013- June 20, 2013 I requested assistance. Phones have got to work, I asked them to fix or reimburse.. Instead they apologized.  I had to trial another account, I did T-Mobile have NOT had a call drop since.  I asked them to reimburse the time I went without a working phone to my husband's account so HE can wait until they fix the towers.  They failed to call on 3 promised calls, declined my request to follow up or reimburse.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%40VMUcare%2C%20%40dawnckhan%20%40VMUcare%2C%20OR%20%40dawnckhan&src=typd


Email:  45 emails from April 2013 until yesterday , when my husbands contract was up for renewal, requesting assistance, resolution, escalation and compensation for paying 100% and getting 10% service.  

CONSUMER SERVICES: Hiring a Mover

Some friends had asked me to share some tips and experiences for hiring a mover.  In 2012 the Better Business Bureau fielded over a million searches about them, and and more than 9,300 against movers. Move fraud is on the rise and the Tyler Better Business Bureau did a nice article with Advice for a Safe Move. 

PROCESS FOR FINDING MOVERS: In the internet and social media age, we can identify services really quickly. Identifying sources is part of the objective for certain, validating the service provider's track record for customer satisfaction is the other key component.  

Your first work is to get a good understanding of the move scope.  Create a template of the FROM and TO location details, you might want to consider the truck access. We had a move complicated because of the difficulty of access for the semi to the storage unit. Create a list of items moving, if you already have your belongings in storage, include the storage size of your unit and take a few photos and approximate the percentage full. 

I.  SOURCING MOVERS:  

• Ask for recommendations from your social network, someone who has had a positive or negative experience with a contact locally is always helpful. 

• Select a Moving Bid service as a source for getting private bids on moving.. Upside is a potential for savings from local small business owners, downside is a serious risk in validating the quality of the mover. 
• Craigslist.com 
• MovingGood.com
• UMovers.com

• Select a Moving Aggregator as a source for getting a nice volume of bids from moving companies.  Just fill out the webform with details and you can get within a few days, a range of bids on your move request. Upside is a potential volume of competitive bids will help you get a range of quotes, less risk then a bid or free classified add service, but you still need to validate quality. 
• Moving.com 
• GetMover.com 

II. CHECK REFERENCES:  Moving scams are a growing concern that has made national news recently. Pricing scams, hidden costs, extra charges, bait and switch deals,  theft, etc are all valid risks.   Using a licensed, bonded mover can help reduce risk, but you should always make sure your service provider has a track record for ethical business.   ALL Perfect References could be just as questionable as negative references, so whats the best way to make sure the Mover is credible, and you can rely on them to honor the scheduling, estimate, pickup, and delivery elements of the move?  

• Check Better Business Bureau report for the vendor you select.  Its free, its easy, and it saves you money.. Just because someone 'says' they are in business x years and have a commitment to customer satisfaction does not guarantee it, and here you will see how they manage their customer satisfaction.  To report a fraud or scam, call the BBB Hotline at 903-581-8373.
• Check Yelp  by putting in the company name and City/State.  If I had done this for the service I contracted I might have never had the experience I did. 

III.  STILL HAVE HIDDEN DOUBTS?  If you are not sold on the company and the offer.  If you have doubts, worries or uncertainty, trust that.  If you have a lawyer on retainer that can be very helpful.  If you don't, a subscription to Legal Shield is well worth the investment.  They can help you review contracts and deal with consumer issues, either proactively or re-actively.  While an attorney on retainer could be expensive, Legal Shield is a prepaid legal service with a low monthly charge and can review your concerns and offer legal advise that can save you time and money. 

OUR STORY: 

We moved 11 times in the past few years, and have had a variety of experiences on do it yourself,  contracting help on an extremely limited budget, to contracting help when you want it done right and don't want to lose anything.   

I had tried moving bid services before and was successful in hiring a very good local mover in Bloomington IL that I definitely recommended. Were money no object, we would hire him again, as he helped us in 2 moves and did a great job.  Results were not so good with moving bid services on our cross country move, we received few realistic bids that were believe able enough to go to the next step with. 

I asked for recommendations from my social network of people who had moved cross country, most were the result of corporate moves, which in today's economy are less and less common.  Which explains why the situation of Moving Fraud, makes alot more news these days.  

With no personal experience recommendations to work from, I turned to an aggregator.  This is an important story that could have gone much worse, but the lessons learned from MY bad experience do not need to be repeated, by me or others.  Using an aggregator gave me a good source I think we received well over 18 bids.  We interviewed a few. I threw out the cheapest and the most expensive bids.  I did not want a low price leader who could not explain the difference in costs, and did not want to work too hard to uncover them re-actively. We  wanted a fair price for a fair move.  We selected the top 3 companies on price, responsiveness, presentation.  The company who won was friendly helpful and able to get us scheduled very easily. We had a furniture inventory, we explained the unit is in storage, and we are not living there, so they will need to get the keys from the office.  They accepted this and we paid the 10% downpayment and were excited for the process to finish.. I felt good that this was underway.  As I had other friends moving I could share about how easy it was.. It was easy so far.. but then...  a twist.. 

AFTER SIGNING THE AGREEMENT: 

1. They said they could pick up on Friday, then it would change 3 more times, the last date being the VERY DAY we needed to be out of our storage unit. Thats okay, things happen right?  OK just enforce the importance.  "Yes ma'am we will call you 24-48 hours prior to give you a time window. 
2. 48 hours. Nothing.  24 hours.. crickets..  No notice, I emailed frantically and got the drivers direct number. We talked 13 hours before I needed the driver to pick up the keys.  Again I explained we must be out of the unit tomorrow, and you are picking the keys up from the office, so you must arrive before noon.  "OK I will call you to notify when I have arrived." 
3. 11:50, no call from the driver, the office closes at noon.  With my husband on one phone calling the storage unit, and me on the other phone calling the driver I confirmed he just arrived. He got into the storage unit.  
4. He called me back, after the office had closed.  There are problems.  It is going to cost us $400 for boxes.  Then NO not $_00, $_,_00. Then NO no double the price.  Frustrated and angry but needing to get our stuff out I struggled with what to do.  We needed to get our stuff out of there, I said okay look we need to be out of there today. We MUST have our stuff by 6/8, and you have already failed us on scheduling, 24 hour call and now your are doubling the price.  BUT they did something unexpected.. They cancelled the contract, on the spot, because I wasnt there to sign it-- a fact we never discussed since estimation.  I demanded they honor the contract and that I would get someone there to sign on my behalf because we couldnt be in the unit after today.. They hung up on me, refusing to return my call to confirm I had a family member in route to get the keys and sign the contract.  

AFTER THE CANCELLATION: They offered no emergency number, no after hours number and we did not know where one of the keys was, what the situation was, and they would not return our calls.  I tried the office, no number.  I emailed an urgent email Sunday to then.  No response on Monday. I called the sales person who was escalating to a supervisor who escalated to a manager, who called me and told me the driver said I cancelled the contract because the new charges were too great. "I feel like I am stuck between my driver and you", he refunded the downpayment.  Ultimately I decided it was best to not try to finish something that started so badly, for if the manager of a moving company is reticent to believe a customer who wants to give them money, even after they have failed the customer on every key point of customer service... It was a temporary insanity on my part.. I wanted the pain to stop by just finishing this bad process and getting it done.  

At this point, we postponed the move, until we can find the moving experience we want.. To pay somebody a fair service, for the safe, timely, accurate delivery of our belongings.