Horrible service, normally I read reviews with a grain of salt, but after reading many of these I have had the exact same experience. I wrote the following letter to Net 10 detailing my experience with them, but I think it can also serve as a review of what you can expect if you have them as your carrier.
To Whom It May Concern: I am writing this letter to let you know how highly disappointed I have been with the service I have received from Net 10 in the last 45 days after starting out initially with no problems. The level of difficulties I have had recently with just getting basic service has grown to ridiculous proportions. I have never experienced anything like it and am to a point I am about ready to discontinue my service and make sure everyone I know hears about the lousy service I have received. I believe after detailing my experience below any consumer would rightfully understand my level of frustration with your company right now. My wife has had her phone service with Net 10 for several months now without problem. Several months ago she convinced me to switch my service from AT&T and bought me one of your phones. The price was good and it cut my phone bill in half and so I was pleased to give it a try. I was even able to bring over the phone # which I have had for the past 5 years or more with AT&T. I activated my phone with you under the $25 a month recurring plan for 750 minutes. I had no problems keeping my old phone#, it was ported over from AT&T without incident. Every month Net 10 charged the credit card I provided and my service continued uninterrupted. Everything worked fine for the first few months, my service was great, you automatically charged my card, and my service continued with no problems. In October when Daylight Savings Time ended, for some reason my phone?s time did not update with the change. My wife has the exact same phone and service with Net 10, and her phone?s time updated. Mine did not. I turned the phone off, took out the battery and reset it several times to no avail. Still the time did not update. I waited for about a week and continued to try to reset it and nothing. This is where everything went downhill. Because I feel that the moment I contacted your customer service, instead of the issue being fixed it was made worse by the customer service reps who do not seem to understand how to fix the issues that come up. I thought that maybe all that would need to be done is they could send a signal to the phone or something to make the phone update the time. However, after spending roughly 1 hour on the phone I was finally told that I would have to be sent a new phone. Fine, I thought, it was no charge to me to send a new phone, I was even told I could still keep my phone # (remember, I had this # for the last 5 years or more and a lot of people I have given this # to know this as the only way to contact me). When my new phone arrived I followed the instructions to activate it. I went to your website to activate the new phone. When I did so, I was given a new phone # !!!!! I did not want a new phone #, I wanted to keep my old # and had been told I could keep my old #. And since I was able to bring that old # over from AT&T with no issues, I did not understand why I would not be able to just transfer the same # from one Net 10 phone to another Net 10 phone. Does it not stand to reason that if you can bring the # from one carrier to another, then transferring the # within the same carrier should be just as easy??? I called to find out why my phone # did not transfer to the new Net 10 phone and spent an hour on the phone while the representative tried all sorts of things but didn?t seem to have any answer or even didn?t really seem to have an understanding of what I was asking to do. She did some things on her computer and then told me it should be working finally, to turn off my phone and turn it back on right away and it should have my old phone # on it. I did what she said, but nothing. Still had the new # that I did not want. She advised it could take 30 minutes, to wait and check then. So I hung up and waited an hour. Still nothing. The phone still had the new #. So I made another call to your customer service and wasted another 2 hours of my life being transferred from one representative to the next when what one would try wasn?t working. This happened three times before I finally told the third representative that all she was trying to do was the exact same thing that didn?t work that the previous 2 tried to do. All I wanted to do was find out how to resolve being given a new phone# when I was told and supposedly the phone that was sent out to me was supposed to keep the same #, it was just supposed to be transferred to the new phone. Nobody seemed to have an answer and would give me some code to enter into my phone and tell me to turn the phone off and turn it back on. Nothing worked. Finally I was transferred to a ?supervisor? who told that my old phone # belonged to AT&T and that the number had ?expired? and I could no longer keep that number ???? This made no sense as I had been able to port that number initially from AT&T when I switched my service to you and it was only as a result of having to be sent a replacement phone that my problems with trying to keep that phone # began. What I really suspect is that one of the customer service representatives may have not done something correctly in the course of trying to assist me ( this is actually a recurring theme every time I have called customer service in which in trying to resolve issues I feel that they are made worse!!) I finally accepted that if I had to have a new # then fine, I would just have to update all of my accounts, acquaintances, etc with my new phone #. An inconvenience, but I could manage. However, in the course of trying to wrap up the call, another issues arose with them trying to just activate the replacement phone and I was advised that I would have to be sent a new sim card for the phone. When I received the new sim card I called to activate that and attach it and at this point I was once again given a new phone # !!!!! I have now had my phone # changed twice from what it was originally!!! I won?t go on with all the details of that call, but once again it was at least an hour while the rep fiddled around with things. However, I made it very clear in activating everything that I was on the monthly $25 plan for 750 minutes with recurring billing and I wanted to remain on that plan. That was a month ago. What has prompted me to write this letter is that at this point I feel that customer service issues are the norm with your company as it has happened once again and I am losing confidence that anyone there knows what is going on or how to resolve issues. My phone service should have continued uninterrupted as I was on the MONTHLY RECURRING $25 FOR 750 MINUTE PLAN that automatically charges my card each month ( and yes, there was more than enough money in my account to cover the charge ). Well?? I try to call home on my way home from work and am told my service is discontinued and I need to call customer service to purchase more airtime ?!?!? Once I arrived home I immediately got on the phone to customer service ( and once again spent an hour and a half ). I do not believe that the rep understood what I was trying to explain. All I wanted to do was have my service reactivated on the same $25 for 750 minutes monthly plan that I was on. Well, she fiddled around on the computer and couldn?t seem to get anywhere and kept telling me that my phone was deactivated and I would have to reactivate it first. So I said ok let?s do that. Then she said I would have to buy an airtime card in order to reactivate it. I don?t buy airtime cards, I am on the monthly plan. I did not have to buy an airtime card the very first time I got a phone with Net 10 so none of this was making sense ( actually everything I have ever been told by your customer service people does not make sense ). The rep advised that for whatever reason she could not just reactivate my phone on the monthly plan, I had to first buy an airtime card, and then once that was done she could reactivate the phone and then I would be able to enroll in the monthly plan after that if I so wished. So I finally agreed and just said I?ll do the $15 for 200 minutes airtime card and gave her the card # I have on file with you. The charge went through ( I verified it on my bank account you charged me $16.39 ), and it was approved. However, there was some problem ( gee, at this point that is no longer a surprise, of course there was a problem!!! ) and she was unable to reactivate my phone!! She had to transfer me to a supervisor ( by the way, she was a supervisor that I had been transferred to previously ). This new supervisor fiddled around on his computer before finally telling me he was going to have to send me a new sim card ( is this your answer to every issue, we?ll just send you a new sim card and cross our fingers that you won?t be calling us back at least for 30 days ?? ). I was told that I would have to once again get a new phone #.... apparently if I wanted to keep the phone # that I now had the warehouse was going to have to match the phone # to the sim card and this and that, and the fact that the simplest of tasks have been messed up constantly by Net 10 I did not want to complicate matters anymore and said fine, just give me a new phone # once AGAIN, and let?s keep this simple. In the meantime, while I wait for this new sim card to come out, I am without phone service!!! My children, my wife have no way of getting ahold of me and I have no way of calling. This is a huge inconvenience. What is more, after my experience of the last 45 days with Net 10 and the mind boggling ways in which you have been able to completely screw up my service, I have very little confidence that this latest fix is going to resolve anything. I?m sure my phone will work for 30 days but when it comes time to renew my MONTHLY $25 FOR 750 MINUTE PLAN ( not airtime cards, your monthly plan ), that I will probably go through the same problem once again. I am giving Net 10 one more chance to resolve this and make it right. At this point I am regretting having switched my service from AT&T and realize that I guess you get what you pay for and I shouldn?t have expected much. I really did not expect a whole lot, but would have been perfectly happy just having a phone that worked and a plan that worked the way that it was supposed to. I know once I receive my sim card I am going to have to call to activate my phone, and to be honest I am dreading that as it seems every time I have called, someone has found a way to mess my service up. I?m sure I am not the only one experiencing these issues and I would hope that you take serious consideration into the quality and training of your support personnel. Their demeanor has been very courteous and I have nothing against them, but in my several interactions with trying to resolve my issues I get the impression that they are probably trained and able to handle the most basic and routine tasks, but that you do not have a system in place to handle more complex issues that are out of their realm, and by them trying to tackle those issues, they make matters worse.
