Straight Talk Cell Phone Service Customer Review
By Pink Mingos
Basic information on Straight Talk phone service
Straight Talk is a registered trademark of TracFone Wireless, Inc.
This is a prepaid cell phone service with two basic service plans that can be purchased on a monthly basis, which are the "All you need" plan and the "Unlimited" plan. The Unlimited plan can also be purchased in 3 months, 6 months, or even 1 year increments.
As I will describe below, the prices you pay for these plans are very good and I haven't found another prepaid service provider that can beat them. The most common complaint about Straight Talk service though, is the Customer Service, or rather lack of. This will also be referenced below, but providing the good points along with the bad is only fair.
The good side:
Prices are very good for the two individual service plans. There is an unlimited plan for those who spend hours a day texting, talking, and surfing the internet, and then a less expensive plan for those who use them for basic communicating.
The Unlimited Plan: Gives you unlimited texting, unlimited Nationwide calling (both mobile phones and landlines), and unlimited web surfing. The cost for this service plan is $45 a month, but you also must pay taxes, FCC, & 911 fees which bring the monthly total to just under $53.
The All You Need Plan: Provides you with 1000 minutes of nationwide calling, 1000 Text Messages, and 30mb web surfing each month. The cost for this service plan is $30 a month, plus taxes and surcharges.
These plans are available by purchasing either online with a credit card at the Straight Talk website once you have an account set up, by calling their Customer Service and paying by credit card, or purchasing one of their pre paid phone cards that are available only at Wal Mart.
Cell Phone Styles & Pricing
As with most service providers, compatible phones can only be purchased through Straight Talk. The phones range anywhere from $49.99 to $159.99 depending on the various features and styling.
If you are going to try the Straight Talk service, I would advise you to go with the least expensive phone they offer, first. If you decide later that you wish to stay with them and are happy with the service you can always upgrade to a nicer phone and easily transfer your current Straight Talk service to the new one. You can not use Straight Talk phones with any other service provider.
The phones we purchased worked well for the few months they were used, but then they were made by Samsung and Straight Talk wasn't manufacturing them.
The Bad:
I don't know how else to describe it other than their Customer Service is horrible.
If you have a need to contact them (and you will), be prepared to spend at least an average of 30 minutes or longer on hold waiting for the next available agent. I once put my phone on speaker, sat it down and went about cleaning house while waiting for someone to pick up and after almost 2 hours on hold, the call was disconnected and it just happen to be the exact time that their customer service department closes. Yes, you read that right, they're only available during the day time and after about 9pm you get the voice recording that they are closed and to call back during normal business hours.
Once you actually do get a live person on the phone to help you, it's almost impossible to understand them because they all are in the same room and you hear all of the other agents discussing problems and issues with other customers.
Their website is useless as far as providing any information that a touch of a button on your cell phone won't provide. It's down often and you can't make a payment and end up having to try and call their Customer Service. You're not allowed to change your credit card information in your online account, you must call Customer Service and have them do that for you.
The service its self goes down from time to time, sometimes an hour or so, but the final straw was 3 days and so we switched back to AT&T. We gave up our home phone since we both have unlimited cell phones and cable internet, there was no need for it. When Straight Talks service was down, we had no way of communication.
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Comments
Hey big buddy! great to hear from you too!
A great deal on a service plan is only as good as the service, ya know? Wish I would have looked for reviews before spending $129.99 each on two of their phones in the beginning. The relationship lasted about 4 months with them, but then the problems had started the first month ;)
I just read over your article again and picked up the phones being "Samsung" and everyone I know who has had a Samsung has had problems with the phones and had to battle them to get replacements, then on the 3rd replacement were aloud to swap to another brand, all chose Motorola phones and said it ended their problems.
I have to drive 10 miles toward town to get signal to make a call. I have an LGprime and a ATT plan that is $1.00 a day if you use it for 1 call or 30 and .10 cent a minute, here is a review that's decent except he does the F word too much.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LIy0g4Lbxk&feature or a kid doing a review that needs to blow his nose... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emyau3pSPmw
I got it from amazon for $79.00 shipped. I might make 3 calls a month so I expect this will meet what I do. 50
Sounds like the plan we had before, 50 Calibur. Did I mention that we switched from Straight Talk *back* to ATT? :)
We also now have the LG phones, but they're touch screen and I'm having a bit of difficulty getting use to that, but it's growing on me. The Samsungs worked ok, but then we only used them for about 4 months. It was the actual phone service and the horrible Customer Service support that ended the deal for us!
OK, I just got my touch screen LG Prime phone, a touch screen I'll have to get used to using. My plan is one dollar a day if the phone is used 1 time or 30. If I'm reading right, a call to any number that is not AT&T Mobile is $.10 per minute and zero a minute mobile to mobile. Is this the plan you use? if so what are your thoughts on it? I am not familiar with the nuances of these phones or plans. As I muddle through it I would welcome an email discourse with you on this subject, and if your AT&T we could talk for hours for a 1 dollar charge. Let me know, via email if you care to coach me along as well as visit, dusty
haha, yes this is the plan I have too, simply because my hearing is so bad that the only real use I get out of it is texting! My kid, I get the $60 a month unlimited talk/text because he uses it that much.
Do you still have to drive into town to send / receive text message or only make calls? :)
Sending email soon!
I'll have to learn to text, that is the one thing I found on the LG phone that it has a virtual key board that I can actually use, haha, same as my computer only with my thumbs, I typed but have not sent yet. I hear text will go through even if you have no bars showing, so I'll have to try it, I'm checking to see about nights and weekends right now, don't know if I get them or if it's another plan, they gave me a 50 dollar credit. I really don't know much about this cellular world. I've got a sat phone but at $1.65 a minute I reserve it for emergency use only and in 2 years have less than 8 hours use on it.
Well 50, don't do like I did last month. At our local Radio Shack, the girls will not only add the money to your phone, but add the plans you want if you ask them to. They seem to be able to do it faster. I asked for the 1000 text and $1 a day Mobile to Mobile talk, and all other calls .10 a minute. I don't know how many calls I had made before I realized it was charging me .25 a minute for ALL calls, even to other ATT phones. I logged on and found that the girl had not added the talk plan and it cost me a fortune! Now I just log on and add the money and select the plans from my online account. Have you used that yet? It also will show you a log of all calls and times, etc as well as numbers you've sent or received text from and times. It's a great way to keep up with everything!
I found this link which should help out with customer service. Don't call the actual straight talk customer service number. I argued with a bunch of dumb columbians and got no where. I am having issues (electrical/malfunctions) that are beyond my control with the phone and I'm going to tracfone directly. Hopefully this will help others.
See why I love straight talk is because of the verizon network it is on. Unfortunetly I have had to cut down the budget in my business... ( computer software around 40 employees) and I was nervous about laying people off. So I switched all their blackberries with unneccessary billing and contracts and got them all straight talk phones. NO JOKE.. saved half the price.. 45 bucks per person. I used that money for so many more productive things.
The absolute most horrible customer service on the face of the planet. Won't email me my phone log! What? Wanted me to fax a request. Get real Hey Carlos do you stand by and wait for your fax machine to send you something?
Socerchic22 thank you for the link. They told us that Straight Talk being a "division" of tracfone that we had to deal directly with Straight Talk. I hope your link helps, maybe if enough people complain to tracfone about their "division" they will do something to improve it!
Janet2, we had their unlimited so even to a land line didn't cost outside of the monthly fee. We didn't receive compensation for down time and even though we had auto billing, our credit card would sometimes get charged but the phone service stop the next day and we had to call and get them to fix it. So much for auto pay. I'm glad you are happy with the service and that you're saving so much money. Thank you for stopping by.
donald brunet & Gabriella Palumbo I apologize for not approving your comments, but they contain your personal phone numbers and it appears you are under the impression that this page is part of Straight Talk's company. It is not. I wouldn't want you to freely provide personal information like that while under the impression it is secure.
Having said that, I understand your frustration, it's why we left them also. Good luck with your phone service issues.
Badeyebill .. under FCC (Federal Communication Comission) they MUST provide you with call logs. Now, I don't remember reading the fine print in regards to obtaining it. Their website (at that time) was a joke and had no history of anything, even payment, etc. It may be that they need you to fax a request to verify that it is you they are sending them to or else they could be sued for providing your private info to just anyone. I will see if I can find the info, but after verifying this with them, I am pretty sure that they must mail you a monthly log if you request them to ongoing and provide them with a verifiable address. I'm not positive, but let me see what I can find out for you. Thanks for stopping by.
Ok I am on the phone with customer service now and I am highly pissed. THEY ARE HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Call me to clear a bunch
Terrible customer service, switched to pageplus. Everything working great, works everywhere. Customer service very good also
Shaun, sorry.. I don't work for them, I'm just a previous customer. Good luck getting someone on the phone and being able to understand them. My biggest problem with customer service was that they seemed to all be in one room and I couldn't understand the person I was speaking to over the noise of all of the other agent's conversations :(
@Pink Mingos I can understand why people might think that reading such good comments all the time = working for a company but sadly NO Pezzy. I am a student and wish someone would pay me for what I am about to say. We all know how the student life goes :) there are good months and there are the bad ones too. With Straight Talk you can simply just not? pay your next $45 until you have the cash and you're not sucked into this bottomless pit of debt as you are with a contract. It's perfect for me.
OohGoldieLocks, you're absolutely right about the "pay as you go" plan being a great idea.
How ever, there are now MANY providers offering it and I wrote about personal experiences with this particular one.
Maybe Straight Talk (TracFone) has improved their service by now, let's hope so. My opinion is that they rolled this out before having all of the kinks worked out and weren't prepared for the issues that caused.
SixOHsix, no one is "hating" on their CS.
Did I encounter rude CS reps? Yes.
Do I believe their CS has to deal with a lot? Yes.
Do I believe it's ST's fault their own CS has to deal with irate customer's? YES!
Is that my problem? Not any more.
However, I denied your comment since you were rude and called people who are commenting in this article foul names.
Straight Talk customer service is terrible. I have had a Straight Talk phone for 6 months now and every single time I have called customer service, I have gotten a foreign person on the other line, and half the time they don't even process my request correctly. I would strongly recommend against purchasing a Straight Talk phone. This is most definitely my last month using Straight Talk service.
ur 411 is completely useless all it is is avvertising if lived where i got bwtter signal id drop ur ass like a hot potato
Wal mart and straight talk are a sham. They take your money and give you no reception, no texting, drop your your calls and will send your texts to random contacts while speaking one on one with an individual. They have no customer service which refuses to assit you and the reps barely speak english. I have no hesitation in sharing with family, friends, and co-workers. I will never spend another dime at Wal Mart which basically stole my money and refuses to make things right. Customer service classes should be re-evaluated. Shame on them.... Sam Walton is turning over in his grave I am sure.
50 Caliber 21 months ago
Pink Mingos, Where ya been? Good timely hub, I was just looking at a straight talk to use when I go to town. I had reservations about it and now I'm just going to pass... thanks, 50