I am not enjoying my new phone:

This phone has the worst user experience of any phone I have ever used over the past 18 years, and it is Virgin’s fault. (I actually quite like HTCs phone).

It is bloated with so much crapware that there is little space left to use the smartphone for its intended purpose (at 67 photos, there is no room left; I have only 87 mb of apps installed). I’ve had it about 5 days. Every time I arrange the home screen and wallpaper to my liking “apps we love” rides in (3 times so far in the last 3 days), reinstalls crapware I have previously painstakingly deleted or at least disabled, deletes my widgets and home screen arrangements and puts Virgin’s idea of what I should have on my home screen there instead. After you guys are through with it it looks like someone else’s phone. (The wallpaper looks like a cross between Christmas wrapping paper and someone’s fever dream of an 80s nightclub. Not pleasant.)

I wouldn’t tolerate this in a free app; why should I tolerate it in a phone I am spending money on?

Far from providing a good experience that makes me want to engage more with Virgin’s products (which is surely the intent of stuff like “apps we love” etc) this daily barrage of destructive interference has basically destroyed the functionality of my smartphone and has certainly made me want to steer well, well clear of Virgin’s cellphone business in future.

Perhaps the least satisfactory consumer experience of my life. It’s not the end of the world, obviously, but it is the sheer left-hand-not -knowing-what-the-right-is-doing-ness of it, reducing a decent enough phone into merely an annoyance that gets me.

I actually like the phone. But it cannot support what Virgin are intent upon making it into: a non-customisable ad platform that I am actually paying you to use. It’s laughable, really.

This is a pay as you go phone I am using for an extended stay in the United States. It’s unacceptable. I can and will move to another supplier unless steps are taken to remedy this. but really, why has it come to this? I just wanted a cheap phone to put photos on Facebook, keep in touch with pals, and read a couple of pages on the subway. Apparently that’s asking too much for $40 a month.

I’m not angry. And I certainly know that it’s not Virgin’s support teams who are at fault. (This being a strategic-size bit of screwuppery and all. If anything I am sorry they have landed you all in it again with such a poorly thought-out product.)

But I think it is shameful that what is obviously intended as a positive marketing strategy is overwhelming my whole experience of using your product. Teams of people your end have worked hard to try to make something nifty that will keep customers coming back. It’s astonishing that they should fail quite so hard. Right now what I am paying Virgin for is not a communication device, it’s a frustration device.

In short, they really need to get it together. I hope you can help.

[And get off my lawn while you’re about it you kids you. I probably ought to reserve my energies for going through the treadmill of customer frustration triage they’ll use to shed all but the most determined complaints ( that’s yer standard 21st century corporate operating procedure, of course), but it relieves my feelings a little to write it out.]