Net10 User Reviews

Cons: I need a 1800 number for my business phone through Net10

Summary: I don't have to deal with customer service.
I buy minutes when I need them.
My rate has been the same since I began using Net10.
If I choose to upgrade I don't have to contract for another long period of time, I don't have to contract at all.
It is so easy to add minutes my 7 year old has done it for me.

Cons: Dropped calls; poor coverage area; horrible customer service; disabled phone features.

Summary: The price is hard to beat, especially if a full-blown monthly plan is more than you need. But I have to question if the savings is worth the trouble of dropped calls, poor coverage area and deplorable customer service. But most of all I am completely disgusted that Net10 disables the "connect to PC" feature on the Motorola W375 before they send it to you, disabling the ability to download photos to your PC or upload your own ringtones. What good is a camera phone without the ability to download the photos? I carefully read everything before purchasing this phone with Net10 and nowhere did it state this. It is obviously a ploy to force you to use your minutes to purchase their ringtones. Just as disappointing is the customer service. Every time I called (3-4 times) I ended up with a rep that I could barely understand because their English was so poor. Not to mention, they knew less about the phone and my problem than I did. In no case did my calls to customer service yield a solution, rather I muddled through them on my own and found solutions via Google. Would NOT recommend -- in this case, you get what you pay for!

Cons: Buttons get pressed easily in your pocket if you don't lock the keypad. Customer service is hard to deal with. Website needs work.

Summary: The Nokia 1600 is a competent basic phone for the two weeks I used it. It was obtained at Wal-Mart for $30 with 300 minutes of air-time through the Net-10 cell phone system, which at 10 cents a minute, made the phone free. I had no other phone to easily access during my trip to the U.S.

The quality of the sound was surprisingly good. The sound was a little on the base end of the spectrum but much better than expected for a free phone.

The 1 - 4, 2 - 5, 3 - 6 .... buttons are on rockers so you must be carefully to press them nearer to the edges rather than in the middle or you may dial incorrectly.

The buttons are not recessed, or covered in any way, and I did not lock the phone, so the buttons continuously got pressed in my pants pocket any time I bent over, or leaned against anything.

I nearly ran the 300 minutes out in a week and purchased a recharge card at Wal-Mart. I loaded the card, and it immediately came up with the added minutes, and added 6 months to my current expiration date, which was still 7 weeks in the future. I like how it adds to the existing service end date instead of making a new one based on when the minutes were added.

Adding contact names and phone numbers was easy, and I found the menus fairly straight forward without having to open the instruction book. I did open the instruction book to find the overseas dialing number, that I also added as a contact name.

I traveled from Rockville Maryland to Charlottesville Virginia, and had a good signal and the same sound quality over the entire area.

I selected the Net-10 network because they claimed it was 10 cents a minute with “NO EVIL” and because there were a lot of countries you could call for 15 cents a minute. To activate the capability to call overseas, I had to locate a computer and go on the internet. The website said to wait for a text message (up to 3 days) that informed me that the service had been turned on for my phone. I waited and never received the message. I called their help number and with difficulty understanding the operators English with a heavy accent, was told that the service had been turned on for my phone, and that I should call from a land line in the future incase they need to diagnose my phone. Great if you have a land line, but the purpose of this phone was to give me a phone to start with so I could call overseas!

After this, I tried dialing overseas. You have to dial their special overseas number, then select English or Spanish, then the message tells you to dial 011 country code, and phone number. Probably 80% of the attempts to call overseas succeeded, and the sound quality was just as good as local calls.

Another problem I experienced was I tried to order a different phone from Net-10 from overseas, and have it delivered to an address in the states. The website would not accept credit cards that do not have a billing address in the states, even if you use a U.S. Credit card

Cons: When it didn't their customer service was useless.

Summary: The phone I purchased was flaky from the start. Took several calls to customer service for me to get it authorized. It worked acceptably for a little over a month and then quit entirely. In the meantime, I had purchased an additional 600min/60 day card and added it to my service. As my actual usage was low I still had over 500 minutes available along with almost two months. Then the phone quit completely. After a couple calls to customer service they sent me a new phone. They told me to call when I got the new phone and they would activate it along with moving my minutes to it. When it came in I called them to get the phone working. They told me that they would activate it but would not give me the minutes until they received the old phone back and checked how many minutes I had. They said they could not confirm what I had on their computer. It would take a couple weeks for them to tell from the returned phone. I sent it back as instructed. Now I had a phone that was activated but useless unless I bought more minutes. I did not as I was not sure what they would come up with next. When the time had passed, I called customer service. They told me that they could not transfer my minutes unless I could give them the serial number of the old phone, the one that they now had. They had not said anything about keeping any information off the old phone prior to my sending it to them. I threw the new phone out and called it a day with Net10.

I wish you luck if you decide to try Net10 but based upon my experience, don't expect it.

Lastly, their customer service appears to be an off shore operation, sometimes hard to understand and hear. That did not make it any easier dealing with them.

Cons: If you have questions dont expect customer service to help you.

Summary: Just got this phone. I emailed Net10 to ask how to send a picture I took from the camera to my computer. The answer they gave me was for something else entirely. So I emailed them again but this time they gave me instructions to go into the MMS screen but didnt tell me what to do from there and there are a lot of options to choose from. I sent them a 3rd email asking for the steps and they replied but they left the last step out. When I tried to click on "Send" the button wouldn't go there. I sent another email after that but havent got an answer back. Im starting to wonder if I made a mistake giving up my Verizon Cell phone.

Cons: Absolutely WORST Customer Service ever!!! Heavy accent, very difficult to understand, put you on hold every 2 minutes (oh yeah, but ask your permission first, lol), don't know what they're doing. Phones don't last - poor quality. Service is unreliable. Gets expensive when they keep forcing you to buy more minutes that you don't really need.

Summary: Purchased a Motorola C155, used it for a few months, but then started having problems with "emergency use only" coming up all the time. Called Customer Service, and after TWO hours of painful attempts at communicating with several reps and 2 supervisors, they promised to send me another phone and said that I could keep THE SAME PHONE NUMBER. Of course, they changed the number, and that caused a lot of problems for me. Then that phone lasted about 3 weeks, before it started having major problems with the keypad (wouldn't dial certain numbers, would not unlock easily, etc.). Spent another 2 hours on the phone with Customer Service, and after going back and forth with a total idiot and his supervisor for what seemed like forever, they sent me another one. However, now I can't get it activated, because their phone line keeps disconnecting me, and their website says it's down because of busy traffic due to the "holiday season"???? What??? Must be a holiday in India!!

These people are the WORST, and they just want you to keep buying minutes even if you have plenty, or they'll deactivate your phone...keep the minutes you already paid for...and keep your phone number, too. Oh, and don't expect them to feel bad about it. They don't care at all about their customers. What a rip-off. STAY AWAY!!! You have been warned! I sincerely regret my purchase, and I'll be switching as soon as I use up the minutes I've got left.

Cons: Poor Customer Service

Summary: I like the service, and the low costs. I get a 300 minute card every two months for thirty bucks. No fees or contracts, very simple. My housemate had a lot of trouble getting the phone she wanted from the web site, and customer service kept fouling up the replacements. However I still like the cost and service. My first phone was the Nokia 1600 candy bar which essentially was free as it came with 300 minutes. I found it to be easy to bump keys and make calls I didn't know I was making. Keyguard was very hard to use, so I switched to an LG 1500 flip phone. My one fear making the change was transferring my number and minutes to the new phone, considering the problems with customer service. Guess what, I brought the new phone at Wal-Mart where they said they would handle that while I waited. Took 20 minutes, everything was fine.

Cons: So-So Customer Service

Summary: Switched from AT&T Family talk to Net10 as I was sick and tired of all the taxes and surcharges on my monthly bill and wanted to control costs and minutes used by my two teenagers. Net10 has worked well for us although we had a little confusion with the porting of our phone numbers as I found the instructions at the web site a little confusing - but a call to customer service corrected the problem - and the next two ports I did successfully on the Internet and were complete within 1 business day. I don't know where Net10's call center is but I did have a little problem with understanding a couple of their people - their English was fine but they had very heavy accents but we were patient with each other and it worked out. I haven't had a problem with coverage area, reception, dropped calls but I am not a heavy cell phone user only 200-300 minutes per month. If you want all the bells & whistles Net10 is NOT for you. With AT&T I had a Motorola Razr with Bluetooth - you WILL NOT find a comperable phone with NET10 and I do not believe that any of their current phones support Bluetooth technology. In summary: if you want cell phone service at a true 10 cents per minute with no hidden fees this is the way to go.

Cons: Poor customer service communications skills. If you ever need to use their customer service, you will be disappointed.

Summary: I had a business friend visiting from Europe. I thought it would be wise to get her a cheap Net10 phone so that she could call me if she needed anything while visiting and to call her family in Europe (since overseas calls are only 15 cents a minute - great price).

Well, I purchased the phone and then activated it on the internet. They gave me a 10 digit number that I assumed was the new phone number. North Carolina area code? Oh well, no matter, it's 10 cents a minute regardless of roaming. The next day I got a message on the phone with the REAL phone number. They gave me a VA phone number, but I wanted a 703 area code and somehow I got a 540 area code. Again, not a biggy, since my friend would be using it.

Gave the phone to my friend and we attempted to make a call to her home in Europe. Service Not Available is what it said. I went home and read on the Net10 website that you have to ACTIVATE the international calling feather FIRST. Why didn't they state this somewhere in the user literature? No problem. I activated the international service online. Then it said it would take up to 72 hours to activate the international feature. Hmmm. So, I waited 3 days. Phone still would not call overseas. Waited till the 4th day - still not working. I activated it again online. Waited another 4 days. Still not working. By this time my friend was already leaving to return to Europe. I ended-up paying much more for her phone calls because she called her family from the hotel I had put her up in. My grand plans of saving money did not work.

I called customer service to explain that I wanted to do two things; change the area code to 703 AND add the international calling feature. The man on the phone said no problem. He got the international calling feature to work in an hour (not days!). But, when I called back to ask about the area code change, I was given the run around. They had to mail me a new SIMM card, and deactivate my phone for a week until it arrived in the mail.

One last feature on my phone that does NOT work is the adding airtime on the phone. When I go to the Add Airtime screen on my Nokia phone, it simply reads Not Available. I added minutes on the internet, but then had to call customer service again when the minutes never showed on my phone after 2 days. They finally solved the problem.

Summary: Cheap phone service. Great for kids or friends from out of town. Just hope you don't have to call their customer service center.

Cons: You name it, CS, phone, plans

Summary: We have been using net 10 for 2 months with nothing but trouble. We have had to have the phone reset multiple times. The automatic minute plan did not work so they shut the phone down. Had to get a new SIM card. Spent 3 more calls to get it to work. Then they changed our number, even after being told it would not change. the only way we knew the number changed was by looking at the caller ID on the home phone. Many times we have c alled and had to hang up to try and get a person we could understand. Nothing but trouble and NOT worth it.