Net10 wireless home phone

[dnix71]

It's a CDMA Verizon tower base station that accepts common corded and cordless phones. $20 a month gets me local and long distance over 3G. No data or internet.

I bought one from Radio Shack and it was activated at the store. Received a phone call to someone who used to own that temporary number. Went home and spent 45 minutes on hold and talking to someone to get my old ATT number ported. That person didn't have an accent but didn't speak English (was reading from a script). After getting it home I couldn't make local or long distance calls without the device transferring me to an external operator and wanting to charge my credit card. I bought a service plan with this, that's not supposed to happen.

Second call to customer service and I get someone with an Indian accent but actual English speaker who tells me he knows what the problem is but does not have the authority to make the account change and transfers me to a woman who is a native English speaker and probably also American. She says there was something entered in the account info incorrectly and has me dial a number on the unit to reprogram it and it now works. She also answered a question about why the Net10 website would not let me enter a support ticket.

This is in bold because I've seen the same issue unresolved on an Amazon review. When Net10's website asks for the serial number of the unit, they are not asking for the serial number on the base of the unit, they are actually asking for the MEID number directly above the actual serial number.



The wall adapter supplied is 100-240vac 50/60Hz switching, 12vdc out. It's exactly 12vdc out, well regulated. The unit runs from the wall adapter when it is plugged and an internal 3.6v NiMH pack otherwise. The NiMH pack is charged to the raw edge of failure (4.3vdc+) I almost took it back for that reason. 4.05vdc is the proper long term limit for that kind of pack/chemistry. Yeah you get 10% less capacity that way but you don't cook the pack.

The unit will not run from my Wagan sine inverter. When I tried it the phone would only dial some numbers, like 9. 5 worked sometimes, 4 not at all. There was a dial tone. The wall adapter probably switched faster then the Wagan could keep up with.

I have 3 Harbor Freight pdus. A direct wire to the 6v and 9v outlets worked. I didn't want to try it on 12v for fear that would rise above 12v during the day. The 6v tap I use for a 12v fan so it runs slower and uses less power and doesn't drain my batteries at night. It charges and works correctly on 9v so that's where I'm leaving it.

I dropped my ATT dsl and use a Virgin Mobile 3G/4G Hotspot. I switched from ATT because they raised my phone+internet from $56 to $72 a month in the last 3 years and have given me nothing for it. The quality of ATT's network continues to decline as well. I used to get the 1.5 Mb/s rated throughput, now it's that fast for a few seconds and then it chokes and dies. The network in south Florida is dying from the traffic. The VM Hotspot sends my connection to Havana, Florida usually. It had me in Salinas, Kansas on day and Hotmail locked my web account because I appeared to be too far from home. Facebook locked me out one night after ATT routed my phone and internet to Atlanta and then Charlotte to route around a failed local circuit. If there is no local good connection because of traffic, I may as well not be paying premium prices.

[dnix71]

I'm dropping the service and returning the device.It has quit 3 times in as many weeks. I don't have time for garbage. This is a phone, mature technology. It simply has to work or it isn't worth owning.

I think I know what the trouble is, but I don't run Verizion and therefore can't fix it. On one service call, the American English speaking rep said all she needed was the last 4 digits of the MEID. That means they didn't sell many of these things. It also means that the data set is tiny. If someone in customer service types in an MEID wrong it will crash someone elses' account. Verizon is being lazy and stupid and not requiring more than a 4 digit number to alter the service on a device.

[mettleramiel]

Why do you feel it's important to say exactly what accent everyone you talk to has? Whenever you tell someone about someone else do you always tell them what kind of accent they had?

[Mary B]

Distinguish between India and US service reps on the phone?

[dnix71]

The people I spoke to had little or no accent, but if you talk with someone and ask them a question it becomes clear if they actually know what they are saying. I spoke with one rep with a slight Indian accent but he clearly understood English and the technical process and told me up front that he knew what the problem was but did not have the authority to make that type of account change and passed me off to someone who did.

Every time I called for service I spoke with at least 3 people who had no authority before being passed to someone who did. I also know that customer service is shared with another carrier. Several reps ended the calls with "Thank you for choosing "xyz Wireless" where xyz was not the word Verizon. They answered calls for at least 2 different carriers. I heard children in the background on one call.

I spoke with plenty of reps who were clearly reading from a script.

I also don't want to talk to someone half a planet away. The propagation delay makes conversation difficult. There is also no excuse for not hiring someone locally to answer calls. There are plenty of people here with tech skills in need of work. HP learned that the hard way. There was a call center (TAG - "The Answer Group") for HP service within 10 miles of here that was closed so they could hire cheaper people overseas and it ruined HP's reputation and cost them so much business they were forced to close the overseas call center and reopen one here.

Cells phones are a mess in the US. There are GSM and CDMA phones that are not compatible with each other. GSM (T-Mobile) don't work indoors if the roof is metal and the calls get dropped if you move around too much or if the weather is really bad. The CDMA phones are expensive to provide coverage for esp. for the higher frequencies. Verizon paid $1 billion US for the 700 MHz band a few years ago because the lower frequencies pentrate better much better than the microwave (2.4GHz) and up. The microwave frequencies also interact with water, so you are cooking your brain slowly by placing a GHz phone near your head to talk.

There was talk that this year the FCC would take back the 600 MHz band from TV and sell it off for cell phones. That would force a lot of events that use wireless mics to share frequencies, as there is not enough bandwidth in the VHF range to suuport all the devices that would be left to use it.

In the end, a phone is a phone. I paid for the service and device, cash upfront. It absolutely has to work, period. If it doesn't I was defrauded.

[Bruce S]

I can't condone their product.
BUT I can say having worked as a former Director of Communication for years that included 1000s yes 1000s of M2M SIM based devices right along with 100s of mobile phones, Wifi devices. In my current position, I assist the IS group with issues of GPS equipment for the STLFD on the Apparatuses, that they really do only need the last 4-digits of the device to be very effective in helping you out.
Most of the devices come off the assembly line (from who knows where :-( ) and the serial numbers are consecutive and by merely having the last 4 , they can get right to your device.
I work with a company that has this really cool device that gets installed into the Apparatuses, that uses a M2M SIM, whenever we need to replace the device due to whatever reason, I call, give them the last 4 and they can get right into the device to update their GPS listing quickly. We own no less than 42 of these cool devices.
I will say that if you're in Missouri, Verizon has some really bad holes in their coverage, no matter what the retail maps show, right here in St Louis, there are out in the open no coverage areas. To Verizons defense, they are working on those as fast as any publicly traded company can.
I agree with you though, if they cannot make this work reliably, get your money back!
Cheers
Bruce S