Complaint Review: TracPhone Straight Talk

Here is the letter I wrote Straight Talk's president:

I spent a combined total of 4 hours on the phone with Straight Talk between Friday and Saturday, May 21-22, trying to get my phone activated and mostly trying to get back my original phone number. I feel deeply angry that you changed my phone number.

Your company policy of changing someone's phone number just because they ran out of money to refill it is shooting your company in the foot! You just lost your most devoted customer.

I personally brought two people into your plan, and I have, in the past, recommended it to tens of my friends and family. I will never recommend it again, and instead, I am spreading the word as rapidly as I can what inferior service you offer.

You obviously have no comprehension of how important company loyalty is, to their customer, not to mention customer loyalty to their company. You INTENTIONALLY CREATE a MAJOR HASSLE for your customers by changing the phone number if they run out of minutes. I felt treated like a criminal just because I was having a financial crisis and could not refill it. Your policy is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! You are going to lose major business over this, and I am going to notify every newspaper, newstation, and blog that I can think of to tell them how inferior Straight Talk is.

In the past, I was a faithful customer of AT&T Go Phone for about 5 years. I went thru a lot of difficulties, such as joblessness, homelessness, etc, due to a medical condition. Throughout that time, the ONE bill that I paid above ALL others was my cell phone. The only time it stayed off was when I was in dire financial straights and absolutely couldn't buy more minutes, and then only for a few days. That phone was my lifeline...to jobs, to assistance agencies, to friends and family...not even my car insurance came above my phone.

But now that this has happened, I am looking as rapidly as I can to switch to another carrier. I think you disrespect and devalue your customers by making them stay on hold for ridiculous amounts of time, and by changing their phone number. Now I had to contact all my friends, family, and business associates with my new phone number, and waste 4 hrs of my precious weekend calling Straight Talk.

If you REALLY value your customers and if their calls are REALLY important to you, as your representatives and your recording say, then you will change your unethical policy of changing someone's phone number when they run out of minutes. You don't motivate me to run out of minutes. You motivate me to run the other direction and find a respectable cell phone company.

In addition, one of your representatives said they were going to send me to another department, when all they really did was to put me back on hold, just because they didn't know how to handle the call. Another representative said please hold for a few minutes and then hung up on me. There was just dead air space until I figured out I wasn't on hold, but that the call was disconnected. Two different supervisors gave me permission to get my original number back, yet each time I called, there was some snafu and I was told to call back. Finally after about 5 phone calls to Straight Talk, when I was denied my phone number yet again, I gave up.

Straight Talk, you won the battle...you punished a devoted, loyal customer by changing her phone number. But you lost the war: I am not going to be a future customer, and I am going to do everything in my power to damage your business.

You know what angers me the most? My husband is in prison, and we live phone call to phone call. It was already hard enough not being able to talk to each other for the 5 days my phone was shut off. But now that you forced me to change my number, I have to wait about another two weeks until he gets the new number on his approved phone list in the prison.

Every time I give out my new number, it will be a reminder of how badly Straight Talk treated me. Is that what you want? Angry customers? A healthy business tactic is to create a win-win situation for all parties involved. You need to change your policy of changing people's phone numbers. Your current policy is so unethical and disrespectful of customers.