Complaint Rating:

Company information:
Virgin Mobile USA / Mobile Messenger
Santa Monica, California
United States
virginmobileusa.com

I am a long time customer of Virgin Mobile. We had five phones and accounts with them. They have lost my business now, and I'm going to a competitor.

Virgin Mobile is complicit in a scam to steal money from their customers, along with a company called "Mobile Messenger". What has been happening is, we get charges on our accounts: sometimes two within a single day for $9.99 each, with no reference phone number, no reference SMS number, just a blank entry in the account and a charge. These charges are not authorized by us the customer, they're not welcome by us the customer, and we did not in any way solicit these charges through any action on our part.

When we contacted Virgin Mobile these false charges had been applied to more than one of our phone numbers and accounts through Virgin Mobile. The operator I talked to was in India, and she said that they do not issue credits and that the charges were "third party charges" and there was nothing Virgin Mobile could do. She was quickly able to tell me however, that the company responsible was "Mobile Messenger" ( mobile messenger 18002357105 ). It's interesting that Virgin Mobile had Mobile Messenger's number handy. Come on people, Virgin Mobile is MAKING MONEY off of these scam charges, otherwise they wouldn't be collecting the fees on behalf of the fraudulent companies like Mobile Messenger.

I called the 800 number provided by the Virgin Mobile rep, who assured me I could get my money back by "talking to one of their advisors". Well, the 800 number is a recording that lets you "opt out" of future theft of your money by the company, but there is no operator, advisor, and no refund.

These "auto-charges" are nothing but theft plain and simple. Cell phone companies like Virgin Mobile working in collusion with Mobile Messenger are stealing money from customers because no one who has the power is doing anything about it to bring consequences either criminal or civil against them. We must join together as consumers to fight back against this kind of behavior by immoral corporations.

If you're a Virgin Mobile customer and you've been scammed this way, and Virgin Mobile is not refunding the money that was taken from your account(s), LEAVE THEM IMMEDIATELY. By principle it's better to have no cell phone at all, than a service that steals from you.

If you'd like to fight back, send hate mail to Mobile Messenger in Australia:

Eugeni Zhenya Tsvetnenko
19 Hawkins St Mt Pleasant 6153
Australia
0 9364 6646
melissa.valenzuela@mobilemessenger.com
david.young@mobilemessenger.com.au

or Mobile Messenger in Santa Monica, California:
Michael Pajaczkowski
2700 Colorado Ave #450, Santa Monica, CA 90404
mobilemessenger.com

Also, WRITE letters of complaint to Virgin Mobile, or whoever your cell phone provider is. Complaining via telephone calls will never help, because corporations like Virgin Mobile can deny complaints were made when there is no paper trail to verify the issue.

Report Virgin Mobile and/or Mobile Messenger to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crimes Unit at http://www.ic3.gov/

In the interim, protect yourself against this conspiracy of petty theft by blocking SMS numbers whenever and wherever you can in your mobile systems. Here is a list I have compiled of SMS numbers you should NEVER allow to contact you if you want to protect yourself from fraudulent charges of $9.99 every day without your approval:

25000, 63232, 21000, 21277, 77888, 73000, 75557, 89623, 87572, 71888, 33999, 44674, 76036, 98651, 76284, 79171, 66047,
64651, 39999, 25516, 58560, 20795

Good luck