Virgin Mobile SA - abandoning their customers

On September 3 I received an SMS from Virgin Mobile. It advised that their service would cease on November 30. On September 15, thinking that I should still have some time in hand, I purchased a further R 50 of airtime from this service provider. The day after this (i.e. September 16) I received a further SMS from Virgin Mobile stating that my SIM would be deactivated over the next two days and would I please e-mail their customer service department, to process my porting (of existing number to a new service provider) . This I did only to receive, on Friday 17, a reply expressing regret and advising me to action the porting of my cell phone number to the service provider of my choice immediately, and that my SIM would be deactivated at 17:00 on Friday 17. I rep**** to this, asking what would happen to the airtime I had just purchased? This enquiry was ignored. I immediately dropped what I was doing and visited a Cell C shop in order to execute the porting process. The assistant in the Cell C shop told me that they had been very busy doing this for other abandoned Virgin Mobile customers. On the morning of Saturday 18, I tried to go on to my internet banking, in order to purchase some airtime from my new service provider. On trying to sign in, Standard Bank displayed a notice stating that there was a possible breach of security and would I please contact their ***** Department. It turns out that his was caused by my changing cellular service provider - regardless of my retention of the existing number. After two long telephone discussions (I had to use my wife's phone - I had no airtime) I still could not access my internet banking. Yesterday lunchtime, I contacted my Business Banker for his assistance. I finally regained access this morning. This whole issue has been highly frustrating for me, as you can imagine. Standard Bank are slow and bureaucratic, but the root cause of the problem lies with Virgin Mobile. Up to now I have enjoyed good service, for some years, from Virgin Mobile, but this has really *****ed the image of the Virgin brand for me - I cannot imagine that Richard Branson would approve at all. I have done business with various Virgin companies since the early 1970s, when I bought records from the original mail order service in London. This incident has really damaged my trust in the brand - whether or not Virgin Mobile SA still has any connection with the Virgin Group as a whole.