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moneysense.ca, 11/05/06
Virgin Mobile Disappoints
I use Virgin Mobile’s prepaid service and have been very impressed with their 120-day expiry period for top-ups of $15 or more. I referred many friends to their service and now find that Virgin Mobile has significantly shortened their expiry periods. While Virgin Mobile continues to offers the best value for occasional users, I would hesitate to recommend their service to anyone as they can just as easily cut back on their still respectable expiry periods.
Here’s how the pre-paid cellphone service from the major players compare:
- Bell Canada: 30¢/minute for the first two minutes of a call and 5¢/minute thereafter; $25 for 60 days; 75¢ per month 911 fee.
- Rogers: 33¢/minute; $10 per month; 911 fee applies.
- PC Mobile: 20¢/minute; $25 for 60 days.
- Virgin Mobile: 25¢/minute for first five minutes each day, 15¢/minute thereafter; $15 for 45 days or $25 for 90 days.
- Telus Mobility: 40¢/minute; $25 for 60 days; 50¢/month 911 fee.
I posted sometime back that President’s Choice cell phone service doesn’t have any attractive features. Perhaps the latest move by Virgin Mobile is an opening for them to gain some new customers.
moneysense.ca, 11/05/06
Advantages may accrue depending on how you use the phone service. For example, telus offers the ability to maintain a $0.29 per minute service for an automated payment of $10 each 30 days. There is no need to keep trqack of your expiries, either. Other plans may have similar options, so dig into the information on their websites a bit & find out! One of the advantages of all of these plans is that you avoid paying the network access fees of about $7 per month. For occasional users, they are the best option.
David
[...] Virgin Mobile Disappoints … President’s Choice cell phone service doesn’t have any attractive features. Perhaps the latest move by Virgin Mobile is an opening for them to gain some new customers. Bookmark: del.icio.us Digg http://www.canadiancapitalist.com/2006/05/11/virgin-mobile-disappoints [...]
You may be interested to know that PC Mobile (my cell phone provider) has prepaid long distance cards that reduce the additional per minute long distance charge from 25 cents to 4 cents. So a long distance call goes from 45 cent/min to 24 cent/min. This was decisive for me, as I often drive long distances and make call from outside the local service area, though not often enough to make a plan worth my money.
Mike: Thanks for the heads up. Maybe, it’s time to check in on the major pre-paid cell services again to see what if anything has changed. It’s nice to see some competition in this space.
[...] of time you have to top up to prevent your unused credit from expiring) but about two years back, Virgin Mobile reduced the expiry across the board and a $25 top-up was cut back to 90 days. Today, Virgin Mobile announced that they are yet again [...]