my straight talk rant

My husband and I have been considering switching our phone to Straight talk from Walmart. At $45 a month for unlimited minutes and unlimited text for 30 days, and you can get a pretty nice phone for around $100- it seems like the perfect money saving plan. SO- earlier in the week my grandmother's contract ran out on her verizon  cell phone plan and she opted to be the first to try out a straight talk phone- BIG MISTAKE!

She bought the Samsung T401G with an unlimited plan on monthly auto refill.

We brought it home and tried to activate it online. The plan refill purchase when perfect {of course it did- they WANT your $$}, but the activation process wan't that smooth. After activating the phone the screen said "unregistered sim" so we called straight talk customer service- who's call center must be located somewhere crazy because I couldn't understand a word the tec support said and after being transfered 3 times, hung up on, and ask to call back later, I finally reached someone who kind of spoke a little broken English and I could sort of understand them when they told me that the activation would take up to 2 hours.

After 2 hours passed and the phone still didn't work- I called back. I was then told that their system showed that the weather was bad here in Georgia and that was my problem. I was quick to inform the tec that it hadn't rained in days, the sky was clear and it was 95 degrees outside. Then after several more transfers to supervisors, I was told that the activation process would take 24 hours. Now- let me note that we WERE NOT porting her old cell number to the new phone- we were just starting fresh with a new phone and a new number. I ask other friends how they managed to get their straight talk phone activated and they informed me that they basically had to threaten to return the phone and terminate the service if straight talk didn't activate their phone. So- I took that advice and told the customer service rep that if the service wasn't on in the 24 hour time frame... we WOULD be returning the phone to walmart. The rep told me to go ahead and return it, that walmart would refund me for the phone, but that straight talk would NOT refund me for the minutes and that it would take up to 90 days to cancel the auto refill plan that debits from her checking. Ain't that a B*tch?

SO- 24 hours later... the phone comes on! Finally... everything works! 

Oh- If only it were that easy. The next day... the phone starts having issues. It ends every call 2minutes into a conversation. Then... the signal strength drops down to 0-1 bar and rarely is able to even place a call. Back to customer service we go...

More foreign reps, transfers, and codes. I was told that I just needed to stand by a window, and that yes- straight talk runs off verizon towers. I explained to them that we had Verizon and it worked perfect in our area. They come back and say that if your straight talk phone has a sim card- it doesn't run off the same towers. Don't most newer phones have sim cards? 3 hours of "in this moment can you please..." enter this 30 digit code, turn off the phone, turn on the phone, take out the sim, give me the serial number, give me the code on this screen, give me the # on that screen, let me make a test call, and more pain in the rear end typical tec support questions like- "did you turn the phone on before you tried to dial a phone number?" Straight Talk reps came to the conclusion that the phone was working fine and maybe we should consider trying another model of phone. I of course thought this was a horrible idea and didn't want their service at all- but my grandmother... having already sunk the better part of $150 in to a month of straight talk service- decided to go back to walmart and buy yet another straight talk phone. Walmart says they will give her a refund on the other phone... we'll find out. The new phone is a more basic, straight forward flip phone. I've been giving the lovely assignment of attempting to transfer the plan to the 2nd phone tomorrow. I PRAY that this phone works and that we will be finished with this madness! 

 Straight talk is part of tracfone. I've had several tracfones before and they were simple to use and activate...I've heard such great things about the actual straight talk service... I can't believe that we are having such horiable luck with them. Let's keep our fingers crossed that tomorrow is as stress free of a process as possible & that I have the strength to refrain from using ugly words when venting on the poor tec rep that happens to tic me off.(=

Has anyone else had any trouble with Straight Talk?