Warning: Be Careful using STRAIGHT TALK
StraightTalk really screwed me over. They have proven to me to be a devious company. The website straighttalk.com is “under maintenance” for several weeks now, refusing me access to “my account”.
On the website it says: “You can set up Auto-Refill and guarantee service continuity” which is a falsehood. I had setup and provided a credit card, which was charged before my 30 day contract expired. Though I have paid $60, been under contract less than 60 days and have remaining minutes; I have no service. They took my money and turned off my phone.
If it were guaranteed continuity with access to my credit card, why is my phone off?
Today, I will contact StraightTalk, the Better Business Bureau and my Attorney!
Dastardly Bastards!
UPDATE: 3:30PM
After visiting Verizon and buying a new phone I called StraightTalk.
Here is the actual progression of my Straight Talk experience:
I bought the phone and card on July 28th, activating my service with Straight Talk, giving me 1000 minutes until August 27th.
The website offers the ability to enter a credit card for Auto-Refill. When you enter your credit card, they will immediately bill you the monthly fee. This will change your activation date, something I did not and still do not understand. [I entered my credit card in advance of my expiration date of August 27th in order to "be prepared" when my minutes expired.]
I lost the remaining 17 days because they billed me on the 10th of August, resetting my activation date, regardless of the fact I had approx. 17 days left. [I got 43 days for the price of 60 days]
This morning my phone was dead. While I was at Verizon, StraightTalk billed my credit card and reactivated my service because today is the 10th. With their website access to “my account” shut down for the past few weeks I have been unable to turn off recurring billing or change my account status.
After calling Straight Talk directly, I deactivated recurring billing, deactivated the annoying message at the beginning of each call that says: “Time remaining for this call is 6 hours and 12 minutes” and after 26 minutes on the phone, got a refund for today’s additional $32 charge for the next month.
Outsourced customer service always takes longer to deal with, doesn’t it? Thank goodness I bailed on this company, though it will cost me much more, there’s a reason it’s worth paying the difference.
Purchased as an interim provider while Verizon got some decent hardware in stock, I regret the waste of time and money, though I still recommend StraightTalk to those few people who don’t use their phone much.
1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 30MB of data – can’t be beat for $30. Just make sure to sign up online and not use the prepaid cards because the two forms of payment conflict. They ripped me off for 17 days of service.
Closing in on 36 hours and still haven’t ported my number. I heard they have to do it manually and take the full 48 hours to complete… I hope they are working at night to port my number because waiting sucks.