Straight Talk Wireless
reviews and complaints

I bought a service card for my cell phone for $45. I added it to my cell phone via my serial number on their website. My phone got deactivated because they added it to someone else's account and they refuse to do anything about it. They continuously blamed me, no it was their website, and they refused to give me the number to someone higher up. They also hung up on me once and refused to provide their names. I am contacting a lawyer first thing in the morning.

My cell number is my business number. My problems began with BYOP program. I was given an Samsung Gs3 on the Verizon network. I purchased the activation kit from Walmart. That included 30 days of voice, text, data and sim card. $ 60.00. Found out from Straight talk that the activation kit did not have a Verizon sim card. So they had to send me a sim card. Got the sim card in the mail and it didn't work. So they sent me another sim card. (Time wise about 3 weeks total) Tried to activate the nest sim card with customer service. The Rep. set the phone up with a new number. NOTE: A number I didn't want or needed. Before the Rep. got off the phone. I tried to get him to change the number back to my original number. He told me, that it would take an hour or so to change over. Ended call. Couple hours later, no change to my original number. Called back and got told it was changed over again. No Luck ! A couple of days past and I attempted to get the number changed. Finally, they got me to a advanced technical support rep. He got the number changed to my original number. All is ok. But, in the middle of all of this. I was asked to add more minutes. So I did so. The problem of adding the minutes was it went to the wrong number. Not to my original number. A number I was not using, but it is still on my account. Last week, I called ( Approximately Jan. 15, 2015) knowing my original phone end date was 1/21/2015. I wanted to have the minutes transfer to my original number. The Rep. said she changed the minutes to my original number. So, I assumed all was ok. Well, yesterday ( 1/21/2015) my phone went dead. Same day, called from another phone and tried to get my phone reactivated. Not only could I not get my phone reactivated. Customer service said they couldn't locate my number and the number belong to Verizon wireless and it couldn't be retrieved. Traveled to a Verizon store and asked about the number. I was told that the number belonged to Straight talk and no one company has proprietary over numbers anymore. So someone is lying. Bottom line, is why cancel my number. I thought cell phone companies had to hold the number for a certain amount of days or even months. They still owe me cash for my unused minutes. Today, I transferred to Verizon and set up an account. But, still don't have my original number. I have a Work van with large cell phone numbers all over it. Brochures, letter head, work shirts, jackets and business cards with my original number. It will cost me a lot of money and not only loss of business. This has to be the sorriest company in america. Next to ATT. Another sorry company to deal with.

straight talk accidently received a double payment from me by credit card Nov 7, 2014 I accidently paid for the wrong cellular account. Then I paid again by credit card for my acct. I made straight talk aware of the double payment. A straight talk representative told me they would apply the refund to my phone account for the following month. straight talk never refunded my account. I purchased a straight talk phone card December 2014. I purchased another straight talk $45 unlimited service card, by credit card Jan 3, 2015 on January 14, 2015 straight talk disconnected my phone with 21 days of service left unused. When I called Straight talk they said they had refunded my credit card account for Nov 7, 2014 and I needed to buy a new service card. That was not true. Straight Talk lied. I checked my account. No money was refunded by straight talk at all. Straight talk policy does not allow them to refund money to anything. Straight talk received money for full 30 days of unlimited cell phone service Jan 3, 2015 and disconnected my service with 21 days of service left I paid for. Straight talk is scamming it's customers and they are liars and very rude. Mamie Carter

Purchased straight talk phone from wal-mart in september 2014. Got a number change at the end of september, always buy airtime cards $45 from wal-mart. Added airtime card on oct.31, 2014, they disconnected my phone on november 17, 2014! That is not 30 days! Can't be reimbursed, customer service is very rude and disrespectful!

I purchased a straight talk phone (zte) the phone became defective so I called costumer service after a 6 (six) hr phone battle (mainly because the person on the other end couldn't speak english) they agreed to send me a replacement. that phone became defective so again I called and after another phone battle it was agreed that the phone would be replaced. that was on thursday september 18, 2014 to date I have received nothing, no mail return info, no email no nothing! I called again today september 24, 2014 and was told there is no information about the ticket that your computer clearly stated did exist! after another phone battle i'm fed up!
This is worst service I have ever had in my 57 years of life. all I want is to be treated fair and have a phone that works zte 5.0 model 2796c or better. that's not a zte this bran is terrible. I can't make calls or receive calls after the phone has been on for 20 minute's, it cuts off during calls, continues to have data era 'no connection, slow screen just a terrible phone and I paid to much money to just give up and let it go!
Here are my other concerns:
1. poor phone skill's
2. long wait time's
3. poor product's
4. poor policies (most only have one phone so to have to find an alternate number to call you from is a real hardship)
5. your data plan is terrible unlimited should be unlimited
6. I shouldn't have to pay to send you back a defective product
7. I shouldn't have to be without a phone till you send the replacement
I feel like as a customer I should be able to get timely result's from a company as large as straight talk!
Grandville r. anderson iii
401 east 6th
Prattville al 36067
[protected]@yahoo.com

When I was attempting to reload my phone service, the representative that came on to the phone was incompetent and did not know her job. Ex. She didn't know the difference between the s/n and the med number, was rude too, and every question she asked me when I gave her the answer I had to repeat myself 2 to 3 times.

There are no words to describe how disappointing my whole experience with Straight Talk has been. I bought a 'bring your own phone' activation kit that would not work on my phone even though they checked it for compatibility and troubleshot the phone repeatedly. I called back after checking several different solutions. I wasn't angry, I just wanted my money back since the product obviously didn't work. I tried explaining the situation but the representative insisted that it was MY FAULT! The final straw was when the customer service representative HUNG UP ON ME when she realized she didn't know what to do and didn't want to give me my $70 back for a SIM card that plain and simple DIDN'T WORK.

Their website doesnt tell you which phones will be working off which network. I wouldnt have spent $250 on a phone if i would have known it was going to be running off the T-Mobile Network. I would have spent less money for a better network or more money on a phone for a better network. Once i get the phone and service activated, i dont have signal at my house or my job. The two places i use it the most...i cant. I bought a new at&t sim card thinking i could switch out the sim card and be able to use a better network...NOPE! They advised me that your phone wont work with a different sim card even though its from Straight Talk. I have tried logging into my account to deactivate my auto renew policy...well now i cant log in my account. I have been on the phone with 3 different representatives...which all 3 didnt help. 1...first guy i talked to couldnt speak fluent English. Hello, this is America...learn the language or dont work here. 2...the next woman told me about you couldnt switch out the sims...and she told me to reinstall T-Mobile sim and make a call...so i did...well yeah it makes a call but halfway i lose connection...so then she says you are able to make a call...you must have service...and then hangs up on me. REALLY?!?!?!?! I call back and talk to the 3rd representative wanting to sign into my account to take off the auto renew policy, I have had about enough of straight talk and ive only had them for a month. She took off the auto renew, but i called to log in to my account so i can verify it was off...did she help me into the account...no. did she take off the auto renew, yes...but how can i check to make sure? wait a month to see if i get charged? Straight talk has good phones and good deals and i like the $45 unlimited everything a month, but whenever you cant get signal 90% of the time where you are at...why stay with them? They need to be able to switch out sim cards from T-Mobile to AT&T so i can use a different network...i might be pleased with them a little better than T-Mobile. Now im out $250 on a phone i cant use.

This is my third FCC complaint this week.
Please tell me and thousands of Straight Talk customers on how to shut
this company down. I received my replacement phone on Thursday. The
phone worked fine until 6/20/2014, then all of a sudden the 3G aspect
was not working. I emailed Teresita and told her I had no data
connection. We talked briefly about the problem and I could not get the
phone to work under Wi-Fi except at my home and even then there was no
good connection. I called and left her 2 messages no response. I called
back later Friday nite and was told to call Saturday nite to see if
there was a solution. I was also told not to make any payment until the
problem was solved. I was not going out late at night to purchase a
card. I was told to wait a couple of days, not to mention that Straight
Talk put off the discussion of any credits and extension of services
until a later date. I will no longer use this unethical company. I was
not allowed to ask questions and the staff was abrupt and hung up on me.

Straight Talk disconnected my phone service and they still want my money.

There is nothing that the staff can do to correct the errors and the way
they conducted themselves. The security officer in my apartment complex
knocked on the door because there was a death in the family and no one
could get through. My phone was disconnected in spite of the promises
made to me. I called Straight Talk 3 times this morning and was unable
to talk to anyone. Each call resulted in a pick up and hang up.

I will be contacting lead counsel Michael Sobol with Lieff Cabraser
Heimann & Bernstein who sued this company.

I contacted customer service regarding an issue with my phone. I eventually changed my number to prevent call(s) from third parties. I was getting phone calls from companies that buy contact list from straight talk. I changed my phone number at the advise from a rep located offshores, and still received phone calls afterwards. After I contacted the offshore rep again, after the problem continued, I was advised to change my number again or to quit looking for jobs or the phone calls may have been random. Then I was told I could find another provider. I asked if anyone else was calling about receiving calls from third parties that wanted my credit card number for roaming charges, debt consolidation, wal mart pharmacy, or anything required to enter your credit card number to continue. I was told yes. I asked what i could do to prevent calls going forward. The rep(s) stated change your number every 30 days or find a different provider. The straight talk reps have no concern for loyalty, resolving an issue, or any other words of advise-exept what is scripted. And good luck with the names of these so called "experts or managers". A true disappointment for straight talk. I guess you get what you pay for. SCAMS.

Have tried to activate my iPhone with straight talk...after purchasing my activation kit for 64.00 they still could not activate my phone...they said they would send me another sim, and I could not get my money back from Walmart . I will activate my service through a company that can give me service DO NOT BELIEVE THEM...THIS COMPANY IS NOT REPRRITABLE...DO YOUR SERVICE THROUGH OTHER SERVICES...THESE GUYS JUST RIP YOU OFF,

my wife purchased me a phone for my birthday last august and it comes with a one year manufactures warranty.the front camera stopped working recently and i have tried using LG customer service ( its an LG optimus showtime phone) and thied everything
and finally i was told i would have to contact walmart for a replacement phone.I went to walmart with my phone my reciept and a copy of the one year warranty, walmart says they only have a 14 day warranty on phones for straight talk...great eh?how many phones break or quit working in the first 14 days?Customer service at this walmart is the worst i have ever seen as the customer service reps could barely speak proper english and i had to decipher ebonics once again but recieved no resolution to my problem.so i went to the electronics dept where i was met with the same rudeness and indifference needless to say i will be switching carriers and will never set foot in a walmart store for ANYTHING.Straight talk had been good up until you ask them to honor a warranty.User beware!

I have been with Straight Talk for over 5 yrs. now and bought several phones. All usually thru WalMart. Wasn't until this last cell phone I bought, a Samsung Galaxy S2 brand new (obviously). They (Straight Talk) have been replacing this phone about 5 times now! All with refurbished pcs. of junk! And I have to deal with this customer service that either hangs up on me, cant hear me, I cant hear them, I cant understand them and it takes several calls to get the phone even replaced in the first place then... I dont even get the replaced pcs. of c*** phone for like a month! This all after several attempts of calling and them telling me it has been processed and is being shipped! HA! REALLY! AS IF! And now they are sending me a model phone that is seriously downgraded from my specs on my model and from the price I paid for mine! So yes if you are all asking y I am still with this company, It is just till I find the carrier I am going to switch too! STRAIGHT TALK ---- has the absolute worst customer service and I regret ever coming to this cellphone company!

Do not buy straight talk! You will regret it. They are too cheap to pay real people to be customer service. Everyone is in india and they get mad when you can't understand what they're saying. They also have no idea how to solve any problems. I bought airtime and tried to add it to my phone and for some reason it did not work so I had to call for help. I spent 2 hours the other night on the phone and they were unable to fix anything. I spent another 2 hours again in hopes of something getting fixed this time, and nope nothing was fixed. They know nothing about the services, they just read a script. My problem is still not fixed and they don't even offer anything to make up for their mistakes.
You might think now that you won't ever need customer service (That's what I thought), but as soon as anything goes wrong, you won't be able to get it fixed and you'll wish you didn't have straight talk.
Their customer service is so bad they might as well not even offer a customer service phone number and email.

Every month I have some kind of problem with my phone, it drops calls at least 4 a day my weather app will not update. I can't use my internet more than half of the time. And when I call to have it fixed the people early speak english its vary hard to understand them. And most of the time they can not even help me. And when I ask to speak to a other person they tell me they are sorry but they can't let me talk to another person... Its really getting old and vary frustrating. I payed 300$ for my phone and it is not working more than half of the time.. Vary disappointed.

These people are incompetent. I'm here with a non-working phone because of more stupidity and unprofessionalism on the part of the Straight Talk people.

Last month, despite my clear directive that the phone rep add my service plan card to "reserve, " the genius with whom I was speaking applied it immediately, thereby wiping out the 7 days that I had remaining. It took me three days of emails to the ST corporate resolution people to have that 7 days added back on (so that my correct service end date is October 10th), and to reinstate the minutes/texts/data balances to be effective on October 10th.

Well, you guessed it - on October 3rd, my phone was shut down. I called the "customer service" people (of course, in the Philipines), who had absolutely no idea at all about what the ST Corp Res people were supposed to have done. They told me (mostly in broken English) that I just ran out of minutes/texts/data. That, of course, was a bunch of c***, as I had at least 700 minutes/900 texts/15mb data left at the time that my phone de-activated. He admitted that he didn't know whether I had all of that remaining, but nevertheless insisted that I must have run out.

I told the representatives with whom I spoke that I had an agreement (and emails to back it up) of the resolution of last month's problems. The supervisor told me that she didn't need to be bothered with those details because she had years of experience on the job.

I asked to be connected to the ST Corporate Resolution office. The 2 stooges with whom I spoke told me that they didn't have any information about that office, and that all this was my fault anyway.

I've been sending emails to the person with whom I entered into the agreement to fix last month's errors on the part of Straight Talk, but no one is bothering to contact me.

I just want what I paid for. Silly me for having such a high expectation

When my Straight Talk cell phone went bad (within a year) I contacted them to receive a new phone, but their policy is to require that the faulty phone be sent first prior to receiving a new one! This will leave me without a cell phone for who knows how long! I spoke to tech support, then had no luck with a "manager". Other companies send you a new one first, then you send back the broken phone. I am cancelling my service as soon as I find a new carrier. That policy alone is enough to drive me away, and it did! I will never use their services again!

Original request:

Let me start by saying that I have never in my life encountered so many problems with any service provider EVER! Over the last year I have been lied to, hung up on repeatedly, and been promised things that never came true. Your employees are by far the most unprofessional, unreliable service reps I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. I have read countless horror stories from customers like myself and today you will hear another one. Last year (May 2012) I decided to purchase one of your Samsung Straighttalk Flip Phones. Not long after purchasing, the phone itself stopped making and receiving calls. I was then forced to spend entire days on the telephone with your customer service reps only to be promised the issue had been resolved and find myself calling again countless days later! I was made to program hundreds of numbers into my phone for hours at a time! I was then promised 1 full year of service by a manager who lied to me in order to get me to complete the exhausting task of reprogramming the phone! Needless to say i received no more than 2 weeks of compensation on a phone that had cost me weeks of time and hard earned money! I should have sued then but i didn't. Now less than a year later I've encountered even more problems from a company I had been so loyal to... Last month (April 2013) I purchased a straighttalk sim card for my Iphone as well as an unlimited data plan. I called and had the cell phone and service card activated with no problems the entire month. Last week (May 2013) I tried calling to add more airtime to my Iphone and was informed, only after purchasing a non-refundable card, that the $30 airtime cards were not compatible with the Iphones and, that even though there is no mention of this on the card itself, I would need to purchase another card for an additional $45! This is an outrage to think your company sells items in Walmart that fail to mention something as important as this! Here i am again less than a year later being lied to and feeling taking advantage off by your company! But wait it gets even better! After argueing with management, about the false advertising your company engages in, I was promised my $30 would be upgraded to unlimited usage for the month due to this error on their behalf. After spending another hour on the phone I was told my account (which was just activated in the system 1 month prior) could not be found so therefore i would have to wait 24-48 hours for them to track it down and activate it! This is the second time i have been told to go without service in the last year and to me and so many others this is plain and simply unacceptable for a service I had already paid for! I was then hung up on by a member of management and forced to revert back to using my old Samsung Flip Phone for the next 5 days. 5 DAYS LATER: Today May 14th, 2013 I called back to straighttalk due to more problems I had been having with their service and also to check the status of my account in hopes that they had in fact located it so i could finally go back to using my Iphone with the straighttalk sim card and service plan i had purchased. Not only did the manager I spoke with days earlier never create a ticket before hanging up on me, they had no record of me ever calling or being promised cell phone service for my Iphone! Alast we are getting close to the end of my nightmare! I spoke with a manager who agreed to uphold the original managers promise to refill my Iphone service for the month! She disconnected my old Samsung Flip Phone and claimed to reactivate my Iphone. Alast had come too soon when dealing with straighttalk customer service reps! Hours after calling and being promised a working Iphone neither one of my phones were working! Can this nightmare get any worse? Im missing business calls and couldnt even call for help in the event of an emergency! After giving them hours to correct the problem I contacted customer support through email online. I was written back back by someone who would not leave there name stating in order to correct the problem I would need to call straighttalk customer service back on the phone. Did i really just email customer service and the only help they could offer me is to advise me to call customer service? What the hell is wrong with you people!? I will end this email with my phone number, sim card, and one simple question...Why would I ever want to do business with a company like yours again after receiving nothing but lies and empty promises despite my faithfullness to you? Scott

THE FOLLOWED UP BY TELLING ME THEY WERE PROCESSING MY REQUEST. WHEN I RESPONDED THEY EMAILED BACK STATING MY TICKET WAS CLOSED! DO NOT BUY! THEY WILL STEAL YOUR MONEY AND LEAVE YOU WITHOUT A WORKING PHONE OR SERVICE!