Straight Talk Wireless review: Activation 44

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk

I also bought a S T phone at Walmart. Activated the phone and card.
I still don't have service. S/T has given me hundreds of excuses.
I file a complaint the Consumer Affairs and the FCC.

Walmart, to there credit returned my money for the phone and the card.

No one at S/T can speak english. There home office is an off shore drilling platform in Mexico, with Indian operators.

I also purchased a Straight Talk phone from Walmart. At that time I had service with T-mobile and the phone was operational. I read the online description of the activation process and it said the process would only take a few hours to port my T-mobile number to Straight Talk unless it was a land land or there were problems with the current carrier(T-mobile). I called the Straight Talk activation number and was told when the porting was successful the T-Mobile line would be deactivated and I could use my Straight Talk phone with my previous T-Mobile number. Within a few hours my T-mobile phone was deactivated by T-mobile and that phone was unusable. I expected the Straight Talk phone to be ready to use within an hour or two after the deactivation of my T-Mobile line. However, when attempting to dial after that wait, I received the message "You do not have enough money in your account to place this call." I called Straight Talk and they advised it would take 24/48 hours and up to 7 days to complete the porting. I did not agree to being without a phone for this amount of time when I purchased the Straight Talk phone. I expected to a least have my T-mobile phone except for a few hours while the porting was completed. Now it had been 17 hours and I have been without phone service for at least 15 of those hours. This is completely unsatisfactory and not the way to gain any support or favorable advertising for Straight Talk.

I APPRECIATE THESE POSTS BECAUSE I WAS CONSIDERING TRANSFERRING MY DAUGHTER'S & MY PHONES... THX

they straight screwed me on the number transfer now it's aleast a 45 dollar problem but for sure there fault and would not correct it .

heck they WONT refund the card, tehy did refund tyhe money for the phone, but NOT the card

I purchased a straight talk phone two days ago. I tried to activate it online since i have no phone and it said my serial number was incorrect. So i went to a pay phone down the street to call them, it said they were to busy so i tried again later and still busy. Finally got someone and they tranfered me to three different people and put me on hold more than five times to tell me I needed to fax them my reciept so they can try to fix it or to prove that i bought it. I am going to take this phone and the reciept right back to Walmart and hopefully get my money back so i can go back to AT&T. This was such a hassle, I do not recommend straight talk at all.

The exact same thing happened to me as to 2bdisappointed. The only difference is that I'm switching/porting from a verizon number.

The girl from India, who was very nice even though the connection was so bad, said the port still was not complete and that it could take up to seven days.

That's great, but I don't see why my other phone is disabled. The instructions left me to believe that if my phone was disabled then my should be good to go within an hour.

I bought a ST phone from WalMart on Thursday and ported my Virgin Mobile number. The VM phone stopped working within 24 hours. ST says I have to wait 7 days to get service. Not "up to 7 days" but customer service says all ports have to wait 7 days for service.

I wish I had not chosen Straight Talk. Not having a cell phone for 1 week is not what I was expecting.

i am going thru same problem my number is showing on straight talk phone but no service i was led to believe that once my number was off on my net 10 that new phone would work lol on phone with straight talk for 1 hour trying to explaine that the number is in new phone however saying i don't have enough money in phone to place calls what a crock had to buy phone and minute card at same time obviously i have enough. unfortunate i had to stay on my landline phone for over hour to try to correct problem which they did what a pain. my suggestion is to not transpher phone number seems to be where the problem is.

I purchased mine on Monday. This morning my other cell phone was shut off since I wanted to port my number. Everytime I would call *611 to try & get someone to talk to it was telling me my number has not been activated. I was looking at my ST phone and weht into the settings & clicked on the Location. I am wondering if this is the problem. It was set to 911 Only. So I set it to Location On. Then in the prepaid I clicked on my phone #. It read 000 000 xxxx. So I entered this number when I called the *611 & was finally able to talk to a representative. Unfortunatly, they are with Verizon and forwarded me to Prepay. Again it asked me to enter my phone # and I got the same recordings as before. I will wait it out. If it isn't turned on I will return the phone back to Walmart. What a disappointment. I also did not want to be without a phone for a week. But if it is turned on soon. I'm hoping it will be worth it. Good Luck.

I bought a phone at walmart and activated it online, when I call the number to finish the activation all I get is a loud humming sound and after 45 seconds to 1 minute I get a voice message saying "The number you are trying to call is not available from your calling area" I called the Straight Talk from another phone and was on hold 10 mins then on the phone with tech support for another 40 mins then finally they said it could take up to 24 hours for the phone to be able to finish activation, If I had known this I would have bought a different service, the Straight Screwed my Talk.

I purchased a straight talk phone about a month ago and have not looked back! I had a number through Verizon previously and it took a whole 15 minutes for my number to be transferred to my straight talk phone. I followed the directions exactly about porting over a number and did not have a problem at all.

STRAIGHT TALK STRAIGHT SCREW YOU. I DID ALL THE ACTIVATION WITHOUT PORTING NUMBER AND ITS SAYING "" NOT ENOUGH MONEY ON ACOUNT AFTER I PUT THE 45 DOLLAR CARD ON IT"" bOOST MOBILE IS WAY BETTER, I GOT THE ST FOR MY DAUGHTER AND I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE!

The customer service with Straight Talk absolutely sucks no one listen or records notes from your previous call. Order a phone it was undeliverable and FedEx sent it back the phone was ordered on July 13th and Straight talk received it on July 16th. FedEx provided me with the name, date and time of who signed for the phone. I cannot get a resolution or my money put back on my debit card as they say they do not have the phone. FedEx rep ask me to get a fax number so that they can send fax over verification that the phone was indeed sent back to them. The guy from ST stated that he did not know the fax number. So I asked to be connected to a supervisor and behold thirty-five minutes later someone came to the phone. I am currently holding at the time of this posting. If you have had success with them consider yourself fortunate and if you are considering purchasing do yourself a favor and keep looking there is a better fit phone company out there but Straight Talk isn't it.

AUGUST 30, 2010; I activated 2 phones with Straighttalk, and in both cases I ported over phone numbers from AT&T. One went smoothly, I did it myself online, and it took less than 5 minutes for the activation to complete. Regarding the other phone, it took 3 days (details follow). I got the second Straighttalk phone via FedEx on the same day my AT&T service was set to cancel per my request. The instructions said to charge the phone for 4 hours before use. While it was charging, AT&T canceled service at about 4pm, whereas I had assumed that since I was paying for service through the 25th, and that I would not be cut off early. Well, I tried to activate my Straighttalk with the AT&T number that had service shut off a couple of hours earlier anyway, and it would not activate and refered me to Straighttalk support (which is currently outsourced to the Philippines, the land of smiles and friendliness and one of my favorite places to vacation). Support could do nothing immediately with my AT&T number because it was out of service (any number to be ported over has to be in service, no exceptions). So I called AT&T support to reactivate the number, and this involved being referred to 4 different phone numbers, then transferred a few more times, and I had to sort through all the menus that are involved at each department, but I finally was transferred to the right people who did finally get the number activated and said that, when Straighttalk activated my AT&T number, that my AT&T service would automatically shut off (wish they had told me about this option to begin with). So now it's 2 days after the switch, and I have my AT&T bill already, and there is a charge on it of almost $40 for the reactivation, which I was never told I would incur this fee, and I don't think it is fair because the whole problem resulted from AT&T shutting off my service 1/3 of a day before it was supposed to shut off, but "Gotchas" on the phone bill are usual and typical with AT&T and the reason I finally left AT&T. So after I got the number activated again with AT&T, I phoned Straighttalk support and told them that the number I wanted to port over was active again but that I was unable to get the self service online activation to work for me; support said the only thing she could do was to put put me on a waiting list to be activated by someone in some other department where they had a backlog of 1 to 2 days. Approximately 48 hours later the phone activated but, when I tried to call out, the recording said I had no airtime and needed to purchase or activate a service card, which was a FAILURE on the part of Straighttalk because I had both entered my service card on my failed attempt to activate the phone myself, and had given it to support when they cued me for the 2 day wait for activation by tech support. So I went online to try to activate my $45 service card, but it said the card was already activated. I tried to phone out again, but got the same recording about no airtime available. So I called Customer Service and the nice Philippine lady who answered took care of the matter herself in just a couple of minutes. In summary, be sure your old number is active before you try to port it over, and this will save you some time and hassles. If the number you want to port over is still active with the carrier you are leaving, then you can port it over when you activate your new Straighttalk phone online and it is quick and easy. And, I might add, that my Straighttalk phone works everywhere I go so far, even better in the rural areas than my AT&T phone service did. I am glad I switched over, not only for the big savings with Straighttalk (and no more AT&T phone bill "Gotchas" with overage charges of 45 cents/minute ). And, I think that if a company is going to outsource customer support to another country, then the Philippines is the best country to outsource to; I have never been anywhere that the people are so friendly and smiling, and so appreciative (almost to reverence) of Americans and all things American, as the people are in the Philippines. I call it the land of smiles.

I've ST for about a year and it worked great until this past few weeks when the phone stopped working despited being in the middle of my service end date. I called ST customer service only to be told that my phone had been deactivated and I had to buy another phone from them along with a service card. I lost half a month of service but they lost a customer.

I agree with all the insanity regarding trying to get decent customer service from straight talk. It's horrible. However, if you call the Miami number [protected]) and ask for a guy named Travis, you will be thrilled. He's the only one in 6 days of calling (totalling 18 - 20 hours actually on the phone with customer service) that knew what he was doing.
I broke my straight talk phone and bought a new one, supposedly the newer model of old phone. It should have taken 15 minutes to transfer on-line, but when I tried to do so, I got a message that I did not have an account. At apoint of anger and frustratiom, I got very lucky and got Travis. He did in less than 30 minutes what the others couldn't do in 6 days. When I still had a minor issue of the call waiting not working, I called back, was able to get to his voice mail and it was restored within a half hour of leaving the message. He actually called me back to make sure it was working.
If you need help, ask for him. Miami is only open Monday through Friday during regular buxiness hours, so don't expect him at night or on week-ends. If you call the above number and it ends up overseas, save yourself the aggravation and hang up. Keep calling until you get the Miami office. At some point, Frederick J. Pollak, CEO of Tracfone/Straight Talk, has got to realize the waste of time, loss of business and pure negative publicity the overseas call centers generate, not to mention the American jobs they are taking away. They do not give a damn about customer service and are uneducated in how to make these phones work. When working, the service and price is great, but I will no longer be constantly put on hold and garbled to by people that do not speak proper English and do not know what the hell they are doing. Should I have any future problems, I will call Travis. If I can't get him, I will go to another carriier.
L in Park City, Utah

I have had straight talk for a year. Its been a nightmare. I had connections similiar to complaints. Now, out of the blue my phone number was de-activated due to a system error. Straight talk said the only way to fix it was to change my phone number. I told them no. This phone is on my business contacts. I have now been on the phone for two and half hours while Im writing this complaint and it still isnt fixed nor will they give me a straight answer as to what happened to my phone number. I will be going to verizon tomorrow!

my name is russell my daoughter is under age i did not recharge her phone becouse of im proper use and uall have not fully turned her phone off she still has texting and facebook unlimted could u please turn it off all the way phone number334-419-5494

I do not think it is wise to post your daughters phone number online... You need to contract the provider that you have her phone with- they cannot do it here... or just take her cellphone away for a while if you cannot get it turned off soon enough

well i did have problems with my first straighttalk phone it would't turn on no matter what i did, i even tried my mothers battery which is also the same straighttalk phone. But i just called the next day and in a matter of days i had my new phone and it worked perfectly. Is totally worth it to get them to work because i have never seen such cheap service and fairly god too for what you pay. :)

Most of you should think that these are CHEAP prepaid phones that piggyback off of the best network out there. So you get Verizon's service for 1/3 the price. What do you expect? I tried to activate my new Straight Talk phone last night and as of yet it still has not ported in. That's NOT S.T. fault. Verizon has to release the numbers. It says clearly it can take up to 2 days. I'm content to wait a bit longer and pay $60 a month for unlimited everything, instead of $160 a month for 1400 minutes, and a few texts. I worked for Verizon at one point. Let me tell you, it's not all smiles and flowers as you all think. I'd much rather use Straight Talk.

On Feb 16, 2011 I purchased a $45 card for 30 days unlimited service. One week later, that phone broke and I purchased another straight talk phone that automatically came with 30 days unlimited service. I have made numerous calls to straight talk to get the other 3 weeks of my un-used time to roll over from my old phone to my new phone but to no avail.

Can someone please help me?

Janet Nelson

I've had ST for a few months now, it was great! No problems what so ever, other than the fact that I sometimes don't get a signal when in Virginia. My mom suddenly wanted to port her number to my phone so I said it would be no problem, since I wanted to switch to Boost Mobile. I called ST and they told me that they would have to send me a new SIM card for the activation. I got the SIM card in 3 days like promised and called them back to begin the porting process. Let me tell you, it's been pure porting Hell since then. Half the time the person on the other line can't hear nor can I understand them! I gave them all my mom's information for her number that has been deactivated but was still available. They kept calling me saying that the account number was wrong and i needed to get the right info. I called the other carrier and they said that the number was correct. I called ST back and they tried again. Once more they said it was wrong! Pissed off, I called nTelos for the "correct number" and apparently they told me the wrong number last time... Again, I called ST and they put the correct info. and said it would take LESS than 24 hours for nTelos to let them start the porting. It's been almost a week since all this hell was started. In a couple of hours I will call ST to see how this porting thing is going. I'm ABSOLUTELY getting a new number from Boost Mobile. No more porting from ST ever again! Worst week of my life. Not to mention I won't be able to get my new phone until all this mess is fixed up. Ughhh.. and I was on the phone with them for 8 hours during the ordeal this week. So, beware if you're porting your number! Just get a new number and save yourself the headache.

Straight talk does not roll over minutes, ever, even if you lose them. That is one reason why most people go to other companies (like Verizon)

I called straight talk resulotion center at [protected] ext 3324 to complain on how my number was stolen by criminals and they refuses to give me a refund for my airtime minutes, is there anything I can do to receive my money back? I dont feel comfortable being with a company who allows their customer number to be stolen.

It happen to me as well...crooks/criminals have found a way to transfer straight talk cell numbers to their phones and used the minutes until the service plan ends.

I just recently paid my phone bill will straight talk wireless i only had it on for a couple of hours before they deactivated my service for to much internet usage and now they wont issue me a refund! My plan was $45 a month for unlimited talk, text and web. That is false advertisement! The customer service is also HORRIBLE

About 10

At this email address ST.CorpResolutionTeam@straighttalk.com. They were able to help me get the correct information, got my phone to work and able to compensate for the time lost when my phone was not used for couple of days of not able to make and receive calls. This is the right people to ask for help! Send them your name, cell number and phone serial number .

My problem with my st phone is sometimes I never get the call. Then three or four hours later a vm comes thru. My mother is furious saying I never call her back. I tried to explain I never got the call or even a vm.Anyone else have that problem. I have spoke with others with the same problem.

They provided unlimited with me! I am on the internet on my phone 24/7 and I've never ever had a problem with my data not actually being unlimited.

This email address: ST.CorpResolutionTeam@straighttalk.com. gave me the correct information to all the questions that I had when my phone was not working, about international calling to different countries and etc. The representative who assisted me was very helpful, patient and answered all my inquiries. Send them your name, cell number or your phone serial number.

Straight talk ripped me off the past two months, the card i bought was for UNLIMITED EVERYTHING and i put it on my phone 3 days ago, i have watched probably 30 short videos on YouTube and now can't even watch one because i have used too much data what the hell? Its unlimited i hate this! Fix it please!

i went through the same argument just a few days ago. straight talk says i violated term 6 and 7 of their terms and conditions. i took it to BBB to see if i could get it resolved. if they are going to only fulfil two of the three they claim then they should only charge me $30.00 dollars. this should fall under false advertisement.

I purchased two Huawei Ascend Y one from ebay tried to activate it they told me it couldnt be done because it was bought from another state I paid 85.00 for it and the lady wont take it back so I went to Wal Mart.com and bought another Huawei Ascend Y since ST told me that the only reason they couldnt activate the first one was because it was bought out of state. I checked both Wal Mart.com and ST website to make sure that the phone was compatible where I live and it was. But now when I call them they keep telling me that it will not work where I live to me that is false advertising. And I cant send the one I bought from Wal Mart.com back because I dont have any of the paperwork that came with it. I have been a customer for a very long time and I am seriously considering going with a different company now.

my friend been having problems with his phone number not showng up as a straight talk number so he had to talk to a live person. the live person had no problem finding his number and adding his minutes to his account for this month. she said he was all set till may 1st. then he was being harrassed but do to the phone number situation he called to talk to a person and they said he was all set and j ust had to put in *22089 and it wouldnt go through saying it was an inactive number. so he called back and got a different person and this person decides to tell him he has no minutes on his phone record and h is phone should be shut off when he just put minutes on 5 days before and it went through. now there saying its not in his system and the card he used has already been used ( no crap cuz she put it in the system for him already) so then the guy deactivated his phone on him even tho he had put it the minutes with a lady from there service on the 1st. there system is messed up. so now he is without a phone till he gets money to switch to another company and all his medical calls cant be made to his phones from his important calls. he had this service for over a year and had no problems till he bought a new phone from the website and transfered his current straight talk number over to he newone.

This has happen twice to me.
Goto change the phone number on your straight talk phone.
1)They deactivate you old number and your phone.

2)Then tell you it takes 24hours, when the 24s hours is up. Your phone will still not work.

3)You call them back, go through all the BS again trying to talk to a real person (from india).

4)They will tell you 24hours again !

5)Then say the phone is defective, Have you mail them the old phone, so they can send you a new one.
6)2 weeks later you'll have a refurbished phone.

7) you have to go buy time again

we bought a sim card for straight talk my husband already had a service with straight talk but we switched it to another phone updated the phone.. well its been 24 hrs and his new phone still isnt activated i tried calling and you can barely understand them. and they act like they cant understand what youre talking about. the website said your old phone will work til your new one is activated well they cut service off on his old phone within the first 30 min but 24 hrs later still has no service on his new phone. im pretty ticked off hes a trucker and i cant get a hold of him if an emergency were to arise. it doesnt make much sense hes keeping the same number he had with straight talk already so whats the hold up? oh ya but the website says his payment for the monthly bill was received and ends next month on such and such date how can they process that when they havent even activated the phone. better off going to a whole different company