Need a good, reliable cell service that lets you pay up a year in advance? Well, Straight Talk is not for you.
On July 27, 2015, I bought a year-long service plan from the prepaid cellular network Straight Talk. This plan was not cheap. It cost over $400 dollars (however, by doing the math, you get a whole month free using this method). With it came unlimited talk and text and 4G data until you hit 5MB's worth of data. This was fine, until about April 17 - my data went completely out, and so did my friend's (she was using Straight Talk as well). Hers came on after some time without having to talk to the company, mine did not.
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Flash forward to about July 7 when I finally got around to talking to them (yes, I went about two months without the service I paid for). I got a lot of crap answers from the help page on their actual website, so I posted a review on their Facebook page stating "Paid about $400 for my service for year long. Didn't receive a majority of it and not getting reimbursed. DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT," that they have since removed. They did state on the post to go to their messaging system on Facebook and I would be helped.
I gave them my info and they stated that they had no record of there being issues and that my phone had actually been accumulating data. Great. So where was that data and why hadn't I been receiving it? I even went through my data's storage in my phone to prove that they are wrong.
Here's the data usage from April 28-May 27. I'm sorry my phone does not take screenshots. But as you can see there was no data usage.
Here's May 28th to June 27. Again as you can see there is no data usage.
And finally, here is June 28 to July 27. There is some small data usage there but only because I got them to turn it back on on July 7.
They then told me that is not what they use to track data usage anymore. They told me that I had to text this little number to get my data usage. So I did, and you know that did? It gave me the data usage I had used for my whole entire year with them. It didn't break it down, it didn't tell me the month-to-month data usage or anything like that.
I told them that this was a major issue with using that system. They ignored me for a good few hours and I was ticked off. So I mentioned that I was a reporter for Odyssey and that their crappy service and treatment of me would be reported for my article review of their service. Only then did they decide that I was worth reimbursement and was given a one-day extension on my year long service. You read right. A one-day extension after not receiving two months of the service I paid for.
I thought that was all handy dandy and I was somewhat happy again. Little did I know that when they kept going in and out of my phone to check the data, reset my expiration date and to give me service again, they totally glitched out my phone.
That would've been fine if there hadn't been a gun spotted around my campus later that night after someone robbed a nearby store and we were on lockdown. I didn't receive the call or the text message because my phone reset to April 17. I had to beg my mom to message me on Facebook on my computer so that I could be updated on what was going on. I figured out how to get my phone off that glitch, but now those text messages and phone calls appear to have been sent on April 17. My phone could not send items, could not call and couldn't do a single thing.
My security and my safety was greatly compromised by Straight Talk and while they have addressed everyone else's issues on Facebook, mine have still not been addressed. And, as you can see from their Facebook page, I am not the only one who has experienced this. Take what you will from my experience but do note that you have been warned.
