Virgin Mobile offers new slew of plans

Virgin Mobile review a week and a half ago, and it was a complete overhaul. Even then, I was a little late to the party, as was pointed out by one of our commenters. But why are news outlets choosing to talk about this now if the new plans were introduced weeks, if not months ago? Well, it appears that Virgin issued a press release yesterday. So now I’m stuck asking why Virgin waited to do this. I’m a fan of the new plans, don’t get me wrong. The regular rate goes from 18 cents to 20 cents, but you can still pay $6.99 to bring it down to 10 cents. But now they’ve added minute packages. You can choose a 200, 400, or 1,000 minute monthly package — and the minutes roll over (up to 5,000) as long as you buy another package within 30 days. This is totally separate from their contract-imitating monthly plans, which still start at $24.00 for 200 anytime minutes, and go up to $99.99 for 1,000 anytime minutes. The new part here, though, is that a bucket of night and weekend minutes are included with every plan. Plus, nights start at 7 p.m.

“There is no reason for consumers to lock themselves into the restrictive terms of a postpaid contract plan to get real value,” said Dan Schulman, chief executive officer, Virgin Mobile USA, “especially at a time when many people need greater control over their spending and use of credit. We’re closing the gap between those features traditionally offered by postpaid carriers and the value available from our plans without annual contracts.”

I do agree with Schulman. The new minute packages do provide a value that monthly contract plans cannot. Yes, you’re still paying a monthly fee, but your minutes are rolling over, so you’re still only using the ones you pay for. Buy 400 minutes last month, but only use 250? Just buy the 200 package, and you’ve got 450 minutes for the month. ]]>