Roaming in Isle of Man not working

[PRG2]

Dear Virgin Mobile,

I've just arrived in the Isle of Man and have no phone service at all. When I found these help pages I find that this is a problem that has been going on for years with numerous posts.

I find it amazing that you've not managed to fix this problem after all of this time and that customers keep having the same issue!

[Hayley_S]

Hello @wilber_force,

Please do let us know when you are home, so we can send a new SIM and see if this works.

Many thanks,

[wilber_force]

I'm home, but still no signal until I was actually about 45 minutes into the return trip on the ferry, and it was on Manx telecom!  It only was the there for a few seconds.

Once I was home, as I was driving and didn't need the phone as there was another person in the car, I reset the roaming back to national and service restored.

But why did I not have any coverage on the island?  Very frustrating but in hindsight, a lovely peaceful time. 

I don't know if it is worth sending a new SIM. 

[Natalie_L]

Hi wilber_force,

Thank you for getting back to us. 

We apologise for any inconvenience this issue caused whilst you were aware and I am glad to hear the service is back up and running.

If all the settings are correct and set up for roaming, it can be difficult to pin point why you would not have been able to use the service whilst abroad as you will have been outside of our network. 

We would be happy to proceed with a new SIM if you wish to go ahead but if you are not currently experiencing any issues, we could leave things as they are. If you have any issues in the future, please do let us know and we will be happy to revisit this. 

Thank you, 

[philguk]

Nat

It is actually incredibly EASY to pinpoint the problem - some Virgin SIMs do not roam automatically in the Isle if Man as it “appears” to be acUK phone service 

If there was an issue with Manx Telecom, manual roaming would not work - but it does 

My wife has.a “new” Virgin SIM and has no problem 

It seems Virgin are totally unwilling to put the effort in to fix this properly, or even to take the time to understand the problem properly

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @philguk,

Thank you for coming back to us about this issue. I'm very sorry to hear that this has been your experience with our SIM cards and this is how you feel about them.

Is there anything we can do to help you today? Please let us know so we can assist.

Thank you. 🙂

[philguk]

You’ve sent me a new SIM. I now need to visit the Isle of Man again to test it

But why am I doing the testing??

If Virgin took this seriously, YOU’D be testing and fixing

I see no evidence of either

[Vikki_M]

We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

The Isle of Man is outside of our Network so we are limited to what we can do in terms of identify an issue with the service you receive whilst there.

Please do come back to us and let us know how you get on.

[philguk]

Sorry, but read the other comments here - this is a ridiculous answer

THE PROBLEM IS A VIRGIN PROBLEM -not anyone else’s 

I give up. I’m obviously not going to get any satisfaction from Virgin. Good luck to everyone else

[wilber_force]

I know it is Phil, and that is why I'm looking for a sim only contract that meets me requirement, and it WON'T be with Virgin.

I can't understand or accept that if I went to various places in the Caribbean or the Maldives I think it was, may have been the Seychelles, any calls, etc. are included in the package, which is 1,000s of miles away from the UK. Whereas somewhere that is 70 odd miles from the UK coastline in the Irish sea or about 100 miles across the English Channel is not available for users to use our mobiles on virgin network or via another provider. Is there not an agreement between the various mobile companies to allow folk to link via other networks, but it doesn't happen in the IOM or from recollection, in Jersey. 

Someone made a comment that the IOM is outside of the virgin network, but surely so are the Seychelles/Maldives/Caribbean due to the distance.

On the boat on Sunday gone, I thought someone was having a joke on my behalf when for about 30 seconds I connected to Manx Telecom. 

I may be missing something significant but I trust it won't happen with O2, EE, Three or whoever I end up with.

[Travis_M]

Hi @wilber_force

Thank you for your reply

My apologies for the inconvenience, this is entirely dependent on if we have agreements in place to use the other masts in the countries in question. I do understand your frustration and I wish we could help further but unfortunately we cannot

I hope you have a great day

Regards