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8:51 am
March 15, 2008
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What Virgin offers opposed to the competition is flexibility.
I would argue just the opposite. SO and PCM have a single, simple pricing plan. You pay only for what you use. (Yes there's a 911 fee but I think of it as an account maintenance fee. I don't mind paying $12 a year, compared to your $100, for the ability to use my phone when I want for as little or as much as I want.)
Virgin and the others offer myriad options that try to get you to commit to a high monthly rate. That may make sense if you're a heavy user every month. If that's your situation then perhaps Virgin is best for you. But there are many others for whom that would be throwing money down the drain.
There is no single best solution that applies to everyone.
10:00 am
bridonca said:
I own a Virgin phone, it costs me $100 a year. What Virgin offers opposed to the competition is flexibility. Virgin's 30 cents a minutes is probably better than 7-11 and Petro Canada's 25 cent rates because Virgin charges no 911 fee.
What you "probably" think and what is fact are not the same. I too have a Virgin 30 cents/min plan and my wife a SO cell. Virgin's $100 will get you 333 minutes. A $100 at 7-11 will get you 500 minutes and the 911 fee costs 5 minutes per month so you end up with 440 minutes. Petro Can your total minutes at .25 cents minus the 911 fee is 352. So perhaps you should do the math before you post what you think should be better. You are correct that Virgin does offer many more flexable packages that SO or PetroCan, but when you compare apples to apples, Virgin is the most expensive of these three choices even with the 911 fee.
1:34 pm
April 22, 2009
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Here is my math.
Virgin: 19 minutes times $0.30 equals $5.70
SO/PC: 19 minutes times $0.25 then add $0.99 SAF equals $5.74
If you use less than 19 minutes a month, Virgin gets even cheaper.
If you make calls at around the 200 minute mark, and you use virgin's $20 plan, that is $0.10 a minute.
With the Virgin $20 plan, if you make over 80 phone calls, it is cheaper than Speak Out and Petro Canada.
In closing, Speak Out wireless and Petro Canada are better deals if you use between 20 to 80 minutes a month. However, any other time period makes Virgin cheaper.
4:12 pm
Again, I was responding to your original post that stated that you purchased a $100 voucher. And I was only using comparable plans from the 3 providers. Of coarse depending on how much you use your phone, there are better more economical ways to get service. My point is that a $100 buys you more minutes than virgin. For many the biggest hook with 7-11 is that any amount of top up lasts 365 days. For anyone who wants a cheap phone for emergencies, it's great because $25 lasts a year. BTW, when you purchase $75 or $100 airtime card at 7-11 the effective cost per minute becomes .20 cents FYI!
4:25 pm
October 21, 2008
Offline
Bridonca,
You're not looking at the overall monthly cost. And you're math is incomplete.
First off, if you can get away with paying only $5.70 with Virgin per month, then you're doing something that no one else can do. Remember, if you buy a $15 airtime card, it expires in a month, so you'll have to buy another one next month, and another the month after, etc. So that averages out to $15/mth. Alternatively you can go with a $100 airtime card that has a 365 day expiry, but that still averages out to $8.33/mth. And to repeat what Rob said in the above post, you're getting a lot more minutes with a $100 Speakout card.
Also, if you're a Speakout client who averages 100 minutes per month or more, you're probably going to buy a $75 or $100 card to get the cheaper per minute rate. So $20/mth at $.20/minute gets you 100 minutes per month with Speakout.
So, you were almost right with that point. Customers that CONSISTENTLY use a MINIMUM of 100 minutes per month would find it cheaper to go with the $20/mth plan with Virgin.
Customers that average less than 100 minutes per month would find it less expensive to go with Speakout.
Obviously, anyone can find SOMEONE who can get cheaper service with ANY other cellphone company. In fact, if you use about $20/mth consistently, I'd recommend looking at http://www.dcitelecom.com instead of Virgin.
10:27 pm
bridonca said:
bridonca said:
Here is my math.
Virgin: 19 minutes times $0.30 equals $5.70
SO/PC: 19 minutes times $0.25 then add $0.99 SAF equals $5.74If you use less than 19 minutes a month, Virgin gets even cheaper.
Your comparison was not appropriate because even if you use 19 minutes/month you still have to pay minimum $15.00/month to Virgin. That is equal to 79c/minute. $15.00 can give you 50 minutes with Virgin and with SO $15.00 minus $0.99 of 911 fee you would have 56 minutes. SO still cheaper even with 911 fee.
3:53 am
April 22, 2009
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Rob: I understand we are debating slightly different points, and for the most part I agree with you, but I am about to prove once and for all that you can get much more out of your $100 with Virgin than you can with Speak Out / Petro Canada. Admittedly, this example is ludicrous, but I am using it for effect to prove a point.
In just one day, not counting the SAF, the best you can get out of Speak Out Wireless with $100, is 500 minutes. However, with Virgin, you can get unlimited calling on a weekend for $1 a day. That works out to be 1440 minutes. And that is just for $1 a 1 day. There are over 100 weekends in a year. So for $100 I can get 144000 minutes from Virgin for a year, if optimized to the maximum. That is 288 times more minutes than you could get with Speak Out Wireless! With this extreme example, I believe I have demonstrated you can get more minutes from Virgin!
Big Ang: I agree, On average, you need to spend $8.33 a month. But you do not have to do that with every month. You can be pretty chatty some months, and not so chatty other months. But as my demonstration above proves, all you need to do is spend a $1 on certain days, and it is rather easy to get much more airtime with Virgin than you can with Speak Out / Petro Canada.
I am not trying to debate that Speak Out / Petro Canada can be cheaper, because especially with Speakout, $25 can get you a year of service, albeit at close to $0.50 a minute. But I think I made it rather clear you can get many more minutes out of Virgin than anyone else, especially with just $100.
JL68: I use a $100 card, which lasts 365 days. Anything with a lower denomination on any of the plans is a bit of a rip off, although Virgin's are really bad.
11:34 am
October 21, 2008
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This thread is becoming useless.
Opps, I mean HAS BECOME useless.
Yes Virgin has numerous different types of plans - which is great. Choice is great.
Comparing all these plans to one another is essentially useless unless you FIRST talk about how YOU will actually use your phone and how often, etc etc.
Everyone that cared on this forum now knows about Virgin mobile and it's various plans. Each person can now look at their own usage patterns and my guess is that most or all of them will keep using their Speakout service.
Not because of some extreme loyalty to a store that sells slurpees, but because Speakout works out a lot better for them.
Bridonca, if Virgin is cheaper for you, then congrats! Go for it.
