Virgin Mobile UK Pre-pay sim issues?
 

For the past couple of years, my wife and I have been using VM PAYG sim's. Over the last year, my wifes line has developed an issue.
When placing a call from America to my wifes phone, the caller hears a message from VM saying "hello there, it looks like you do not have enough credit to place this call" Again, this is when my wife is in England and the person is calling from America. She can recieve calls that start in the UK and has no issues making calls. We emailed Virgin a few times, they finally did admit that they have "heard" of this issue before and are working on correcting it. Problem is its been almost a year so I do not see an end in site.
Has anyone else had this issue and if so, did it ever get corrected?
I did add a brand new sim and number to her account to test, the same thing happens with the new sim.
I think I will be switching to T-Mobile but I would like to resolve the issue so we can either use up the credit we have on the sims or sell them.

Yes! My wife and my parents are all, like myself, on VM, and we have all experienced this problem in the last few days in the UK. This was the first time we had experienced this, but all of us had been out of the country for at least several months. It makes no sense at all.

I get another problem....if the phone is off (I'm in the USA right now and the VM phone is off), voicemail set up seems to only have a finite set up time. I get a message we are not able to complete your call instead of it going into voicemail yet when I turn the phone on and ring the number, it rings (of course I hang up before the call is completed)...perhaps she might try to set up voicemail again.

Yes. I get the same message "hello there, it looks like you do not have enough credit to place this call" when the phone is off. And I call it from the USA. It used to usually go to VM. If the phone is on, it rings.

I only use the sim for data when I travel outside the US anyway. Because they charge the same for data, roaming or not.

In the case with my wifes sim, it happens when the phone is on or off Mine has no issues.

Motel75, did you call VM yet? Since I am in the States right now, my communication with VM has only been email.

not only from payg phones...
 

Funny enough, I discouverd this when setting up a call from austria (on VOIP) to a UK-mobile number (I don't know if it's really a VM). Before ringing it said that I might not have enough credit (running out of credit). I did check that back in my VOIP account and there is plenty of credit left.

So this is not only an issue when calling from a payg mobile.

BK

No, I did not -- I didn't realize it was so widespread until now, and I'm not in Britain anymore. I told my parents (who are) to do so.

Another thing, every time I checked my mailbox, I got the "Right, your voicemail is now all set up -- in future just hold down the 1 key" message, as if I had just set it up for the first time. Weird.

Thank you Motel, please let us know what they say.

Update
 

An update, I tried calling both sims last night, On the new "test" sim, I was able to recieve the call this time. I am not cofedent it will continue to work. Now the VERY STRANGE part
When calling the original sim that has had the issues, I no longer get the Virgin recording "hello there, it looks like you do not have enough credit to place this call"
What I get now is "hell" (the o is cut off) then a pause, then I get about 30 seconds of what seems to be a recording in Spanish. (My best guess is Spanish) I dialed 3 times in a 2 hour period and the same thing happened. What is going on :???:

I think we're onto something here. This happened to me too, though without the Spanish -- just what sounded like my mother saying hello, then silence and/or crackly noises. I didn't think anything of it, I just assumed it was a bad connection and called right back. (I think it only happened when calling my mother, and I never asked about the previous call attempt.)

Hi Motel
I forgot all about that! I did try a call earlier that day and got the same thing as you, that bad tape loop of hello then silence and/or crackly noises. Later on when I called again I got the Hell (with the o dropped off) and then the Spanish recording. I was so blown away by that, I forgot about the 1st.

I also experience thge same spanish recordig a few times I tried late last week. I just tried now, and am ghetting the "no sufficient funds to make the call" message. Of course, thi sonly occurs whe the phone is off. If the phone is on (and ther is service) it rings.

So far, Virgin have contacted me twice, and I talked to a technician, but in the end all I received was a "this is how to set up your voice mail" e-mail that missed the point. I pointed to this forum in my e-mail to them, but they seemed to treat this as a problem affecting one person, rather than something that's been happening all over the place. Oh well.

Still getting this message "There are insufficient funds to make this call" when I call my any virgin UK number. I tried my siblings in the UK and my virgin Uk number which is based. I guess it does not matter if the pone is in the UK or not. I have had to resort to texting them or call on the land line. This makes absolutely no sense!


PS. BTW, my sim used to only roam on tmobile here. It now roams on AT&T too.

One long-running issue finally seems to have been fixed - calling the free customer-service number 789 from abroad now works for direct-deposit customers (previously, it led to a "this number is not in service" message). It only took Virgin five years to correct this.