With the recent catastrophe in Haiti, there’s been a whole lot of requests for donations to help out. I was really impressed to see that the American Red Cross setup a way to donate simply by text messaging (text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10). Unfortunately, for those of us in Canada, it doesn’t work.
Virgin Mobile Canada sent me a text yesterday to indicate that I could donate $5 to the Salvation Army for Haiti by texting HAITI to 45678. This is fantastic.
There’s one more way I think Virgin Mobile could help. We recently (on January 12th ironically) let one of our pre-paid Virgin Mobile phones expire. This was because we no longer need it. Â The kicker is that the phone still had pre-paid minutes on it which end up just staying in Virgin Mobile’s pocket.
I think it would be really fantastic if Virgin Mobile would let us donate our recently expired pre-paid balance to help Haiti.
I sent a comment to them through their website but have yet to receive a response.
I’m not trying to make Virgin out to be some bad, uncaring company, I just think it would be really nice for them to allow this to happen. Â Had there been a way to send a donation to some Canadian aid organization via text message on January 12, I might have sent enough to use up the majority of the pre-paid balance.
Update: I was hoping to be able to post an update that Virgin was going to donate our expired minutes but, I can’t. Unfortunately, over a week later, I haven’t even received a response from Virgin even though they claim to respond to everything within 48 hours.
Yes that would be a really good idea for the guys at Virgin Mobile, for instance in Winnipeg, there were some Winnipeg rentals company which donated a high percentage of its clients interests over the rent fee..
Alex Mustang