This is very off-topic for this blog, but the word needs to be spread about this.
Recently we dropped our cell phone service with Verizon and have gradually switched to StraightTalk, an inexpensive, prepaid plan available at America’s Largest Retailer. I got my phone two months ago, one daughter got hers last month, and our youngest daughter got hers this month. We have all enjoyed and made good use of the mobile web access, texting, and call time – all of which are unlimited for $45/month per phone. Until last week, that is.
My older daughter woke up a week ago and discovered that she couldn’t access the internet. Every attempt to do so netted her the message, “Internet Service Is Not Enabled”. I checked the website, www.straighttalk.com, and got the number for their customer service people. I called them on Sunday morning and, after sitting on hold for 20 minutes, I explained the situation. The woman on the phone (who could barely speak English and mumbled terribly) asked me to dial *22890 on the phone. When I did this, I got a recording asking me to please wait while the phone was reprogrammed. After a minute or two the phone turned itself off and then back on. I was asked to try the browser. When I did, the first thing I saw was a text box asking for a URL, so I told the woman it seemed to be working, thanked her, and hung up.
After I hung up, I discovered that the text box was asking what I wanted the browser’s home page set to. As soon as I entered this, I was greeted with, “Internet Service Is Not Enabled”. Rather than sit on hold for another twenty minutes, I decided to try the email address I had seen on straighttalk.com. I hammered out a quick email providing my daughter’s cell phone number and the phone’s serial number along with an explanation of the fact that I had just called and I thought the problem had been fixed, but it still says, “Internet Service Is Not Enabled”. For my efforts, I was rewarded with an email saying, basically, “this is just an auto-response to let you know we got your email. We’ll get back to you in a day or two”. I really wanted this problem solved before then, so I bit the bullet and called Customer Service back and waited on ignore hold for another twenty-five minutes. Again, I found myself talking to a person who sounded like she had almost passed “English As A Fifteenth Language” and went to work with a mouth full of marbles. I explained to Miss Mushmouth that my daughter’s phone wouldn’t access the internet. I was told (again) to dial *22890 and wait while the phone is reprogrammed and rebooted. This time when I tried the browser I accepted the default home page and was still on the phone when the browser told me that “Internet Service Is Not Enabled”. When I told Mushmouth that it hadn’t worked, she asked me to hold while she updated her supervisor. A few minutes later, she came back and asked me to dial *73 on the cell phone. When I did so, it beeped in my ear about three times and restarted itself again. As instructed, I tried the browser again and, as expected, I was told that “Internet Service Is Not Enabled”. I told Miss Swollentongue this and she again needed to go update her supervisor. This time she came back a minute later and asked me to hold just a little longer. While she was talking, I could hear her frantically flipping pages in what must have been a book of procedures to follow to troubleshoot something you have no understanding about.
I sat listening to the Muzak for about five minutes and, finally, an hour after I placed the call, my bladder teamed up with my prescription diuretic and forced me to hang up. Further attempts to call back were fruitless. “All operators are busy. Please call back another time.”
Later, I got through again. I was thinking that maybe this time I could get someone who understood English. My hopes were dashed when another non-English speaking mumbler answered the phone, after 15 minutes of listening to Muzak. I once again explained the problem with my daughter’s phone. I was told to remove the battery, wait about a minute, and put it back in. No more than 30 seconds had passed when the rocket scientist on the other end of the phone was asking if the phone was back on. I snapped, “No, I haven’t got the battery back in yet”. I was kind enough not to add “you moron” to the end of the sentence. She told me, “take your time, I’ll wait”. Looking back, I wish now that I had taken that moment to fix lunch, take a nap, and visit with Mom as paybacks for all the time I spent on hold.
Once the phone was on, I was told (for the THIRD time) to dial *22890. For the third time, it didn’t work. She had me dial *73 again, and that had the same effect as before (i.e., none). This time the woman talked me through resetting the phone’s settings to factory default. When this didn’t work, I was told to wait 24-36 hours and call back if the problem persisted. My daughter was absolutely thrilled to discover that her wallpaper and ringtone settings had all been changed – especially since she still couldn’t access the internet.
After the requested 48 hours, I called back on Tuesday morning. Now we had an added problem because the phone said, “Service disabled” on the screen and it wouldn’t do ANYTHING. Instant hold played ugly Muzak at me for 20 minutes and then yet another marble-mouthed woman took my call. I told her about the “Service Disabled” message and she had me put the phone in “code entry mode” and enter a 20-digit number. This got the phone doing everything except the internet. She then lectured me about not entering numbers in “code entry mode” and I told her that this was the first time the phone had ever BEEN in code entry mode. After having me remove the battery, dial *22890, dial *73, reset everything to factory defaults (removing the battery after each step, this time), this time I was talked through the process of clearing the browsers cache, cookies, and history. I am still trying to figure out how that is going to fix the fact that the browser can’t access the internet.
Again, I was told to call back in 48 hours if the problem hadn’t cleared up by then.
Wednesday afternoon, as I was lying down trying to get the baby to take her nap, StraightTalk called me at home (and woke up the baby) and had me go through the same steps I’d done four times already. I told Lady TangleTongue that she hadn’t pulled any new tricks out of hat. She then had me put the phone in Code Entry mode and enter *#185 which, didn’t appear to do anything. She told me that now that she had confirmed that there is a problem with the phone (after FIVE TRIES?) she could escalate my case and get me a replacement phone – after I called back in 48 hours.
Because we were busy with phone calls and company all day on Friday, we didn’t get them called back until today, Saturday. By this morning, the “Service Disabled” warning had reappeared. This time it was my wife who called. After being talked through the process of entering the 20-digit number in Code Entry Mode, she was put through all the same steps that I had already gone through five times, they finally got the ticket number from her and started talking about the idea of sending another phone. They seemed to be of the opinion that they should send us an empty mailer so we could send them the non-working phone and then, after they receive the phone, they’ll send us the new one. There are problems with this idea. First off, at the moment, until it randomly stops working a third time, she can at least make and receive calls on this phone. Their proposal would have her without a phone for up to two weeks. Secondly, if the new phone is here and the old phone is in Straight Talk’s junk heap, there’s no way to transfer the contact list from the old phone to the new one; these things don’t have SIM cards that can be removed and put in another phone. Third, and most important, this screams that they don’t trust us to send the old, broken phone back after we get the new one. Not only do we not have a need for ANOTHER defunct cell phone lying around the house, but if you want to talk about trust, what about the fact that we TRUSTED them enough to spend hard-earned cash on these phones? Or the fact that we TRUSTED their customer service department to be able to fix the problems. We have been very trustworthy throughout this whole thing. Straight Talk, on the other hand has done nothing but give us the runaround from the moment there was a problem… up to and including when my wife demanded to talk to the man’s supervisor and he claimed he didn’t have one. She asked, “do you own the company?” he answered, “no, I’m a manager”, and she said, “then you have a supervisor. Let me talk to him” and he insisted he didn’t have a boss.
Since this happened, I’ve found the number for Straight Talk’s corporate office.If anyone needs to call customer service, I’d skip that mess and instead call their corporate people (who are Americans) at (800) 876-5753 or try these email addresses:
customerfeedback@tracfone.com
corporateoffice@tracfone.com
