I made the switch to a prepaid cellular plan about five years ago; I hated paying almost a hundred dollars a month for a service that I didn’t really need outside of texting. There are three major companies in my area that provide nationwide prepaid service; Boost Mobile, Cricket Wireless and Virgin Mobile. I am currently with Virgin Mobile but was previously a customer of both of the other companies.
Virgin Mobile offers you two ways to pay for your monthly Top Up service; you can go to the website and play with a prepaid Top Up card or use your mobile phone. If you are going to try to add the card on your phone’s browser be prepared for some issues. The numbers are hard to enter and your plan isn’t automatically renewed so you could end up with a loss of service.
Activating A Virgin Mobile Top Up Card Online
Go to the Virgin Mobile website and log in to your account. In order to do this you will need to have your “VKEY” in addition to your mobile phone number. If you do not have one you will have to call customer service and they will send your number via a text message. When you enter the site you are going to want to go to the Top Up section; you will have options to enter your credit card information or enter the Top Up card number. The cards process quickly and you will get a text message on your phone letting you know the time or dollar amount has been added to your account. If you are paying with a credit card you will also get a text message. Tax is paid on the Top Up cards when they are purchased, credit cards are charged for the total amount due. That is the monthly service plan plus tax.
Activating A Virgin Mobile Top Up Card On Your Phone
You can call the toll free number or use *PAY. The voice prompts can be hard to follow and if there is any background noise it will interfere with how the numbers are translated in the system. Alex is your voice prompt guide that talks you through the process; if at all possible add your Top Up card to your account when there is customer service help available in case you have a problem.
If you do not want to deal with a voice mail system you can go online with your browser and Top Up. To do this enter the My Account prompt on your screen. That will connect you to your account where you can see your minute balance as well as your next due date. Scroll down to the Top Up link and press that. Sometimes it can take as long as two minutes for the screen to load. Enter the number on the back of the Top Up card and press enter. You will get a confirmation that the funds were added to your account.
Regardless of how you Top Up you are going to have to make sure that you either reactivate your plan or restart it; if you wait until about 6 pm of the due date you will start to get messages about your payment not being received even if you have the money in “cash reserve. Every month I get these message after the money is deducted from the “cash balance” to the actual account. This can take three to four hours to process. If you get text messages about your balance being short you have to wait it out. The messages that irritated me the most were about additional calls costing ten cents a minute. If the system started deducting money from my cash reserve then I would have to get another Top Up card to play for the service. In this regard Virgin Mobile is so far behind the times it’s not funny.
Virgin Mobile Top Up cards can be purchased in $20.00, $25.00, $30.00 and $50.00 denominations. If you are purchasing them in a retail store you will have to pay tax and a 999 Line Fee. The cards are not activated until you pay for them and they are swiped through the system. You need to keep your receipt in case there is a problem with the money not being added to the Top Up card at the time of purchase. Both the PayLo and Top Up cards will work with Virgin Mobile cell phone plans and for wireless internet broadband service.
I would not recommend buying Top Up or PayLo cards online from third party site or from online auctions. You will not know if the card is actually activated (had money added to it) until you get it. Likewise, someone could fund the card and add it to their account and sell you something that is completely useless. Top Up cards for wireless prepaid and broadband service can be purchased almost every; Target and Wal-Mart both have them in their gift card kiosks but you can also find them at grocery stores.
