Martin,
Far Far Worse was to come. Some time after reading and replying to your post I went to my phone. It was showing "Emergency Calls Only" message which at first did not worry me too much as I am used to seeing that in our rural area. However, moving to the window and even switching off and on again the phone would find a network signal okay but not register on Virgin Mobile anymore. Again moved sim to yet another phone and same happened.
So after borrowing another Virgin Mobile phone from my misses I was back on to the help centre to report that the 24hr wait for a fix has turned into a 24hr wait for an update that bricked my new SIM. Plus of course the old sim that was working perfectly had been disabled by Virgin as my new one had managed to register yesterday.
I explained that I now had effectively lost all communication via my mobile number as I could not make any outgoing calls and my incoming calls were going straight to voicemail (as if the phone was switched off). We went once more through the now familiar rounds of questions and simple fixes until Angel (as she was called) agreed the sim was bricked. I complained heartily that due to this "sim upgrade" forced upon me by Virgin not being compatible with old models of mobile phone I was going to miss all the people that called me next week until yet another replacement sim arrived and hopefully worked better. Would they please at least forward my calls to another Virgin mobile number rather than my answerphone. Was told that could not be done. Nothing could be done but wait till the new one arrives in the post. Then the battery on my borrowed phone went dead.
I waited for a bit of charge to get back in and phoned back again. Explained it all again with today's recent update. Much to my surprise and further annoyance I was told by a most helpful customer support agent called Vee that now that the previous agent has put in request for a replacement sim when she went to alter the call forwarding to voicemail settings she was blocked from doing so. So now they tell me that my "lost" number could have been forwarded to my PAYG virgin phone that I keep in the car BUT ONLY if it was done before a replacement sim was requested. What a stupid system - it's probably just a database flag that now stops them altering the voicemail forwarding to something sensible so that I can still receive my calls next week. PLUS it could have apparently been done earlier if the previous agent had tried before she requested a new sim.
It got escalated up to a supervisor who also did not have permissions to alter the voicemail forwarding. I can see no reason why having passed security checking many times and they could see my other phone on my account they should not be able to forward calls on to it - especially as its all their doing that my phone account is unavailable due to a bricked sim.
It was very very lucky that on first setting up my new sims voicemail on Saturday (as the accompanying letter told me to) I just happened to set a PIN for remote access - something I don't think I have ever ever used as I keep my mobile on my belt and if there is no signal, I just move to somewhere where there is a signal.
Vee helpfully agreed to putting some credit on my PAYG so I could at least change my voicemail message (remotely you see) to tell people of the mess up Virgin has made with my account and sim and offer an alternative number to call.
So colleagues and friends will have to ring, listen, remember my new number, ring again to get me. Well it will stop cold callers I suppose !!!!
Just hope the Royal Mail deliver my sim early. I now see how important it is to read the reviews of customer service and not just the cost per month before choosing a provider. I also question why as a network operator Virgin can't simply re-enable my previous happily working sim. Can't they put it on "standby" during a sim upgrade rather then bricking under the assumption that the upgrade will go without a hitch ??
Questions questions - now awaiting answers. Oh yes they promise to ring me tomorrow (Monday) morning between 11 - 12 with some answers hopefully.