Goodbye Straighttalk

A few weeks ago I wrote Straighttalk an email.  In it was a list of things I wanted to see come to the service if they wanted to continue keeping me as a customer.  Visual Voicemail was biggest request.  #firstworldproblem, I know.  But still...Cricket offered it along with a slew of other prepaid carriers, for relatively the same price point.  Can't argue with that.

I few days later I received a reply.  I was expecting something like,

Dear Mr. D, Thank you for your comments regarding your service plan and future features you would like to be a part of the Straighttalk offering.  As of right now, plans are/are not in the works for such and such.  We are or may be rolling them out in the next blah blah blah.

Instead I got something like this,

Dear Mr. D, Thank you for your email.  Please visit our website to view the options and features currently available to our subscribers.

Well, Straighttalk, I did that already.  And I've been extremely knowledgable about your offerings as I've been a subscriber since 2011.  Four years is a long time.  That's the span of two two-year contracts.

To be honest, I know the quality, or lack thereof, of Straighttalk's customer service.  It's not known for its quality.  You had basically hope you never have to call them or have a technical issue.  The technical issue began for me, unknown actually for a while, right around the time I sent that email off.

About a month ago I started noticing I had missed calls from people what would normally leave voicemails but that they left no voicemail.  No big deal, I thought, they just aren't leaving me a voicemail.  Except they were, which I found out earlier this week when I tapped on my voicemail button and was sent to the Visual Voicemail screen instead of auto-dialing my voicemail box.  Huge problem.  I didn't lose any work, but the nature of the problem was, well, unacceptable, especially once I start traveling with my phone in airplane mode for hours on end.  I started searching the internet to see if anyone else was having the issue and what I found was also unacceptable.  Other people (not a lot but enough to know what I was dealing with) had the exact same thing.  It was clearly a Straighttalk issue and one that would not get resolved unless you fought customer service enough, and even then you had to get or request someone who spoke English well enough to understand.  And then even when it did get resolved it wouldn't necessarily stay resolved.  Well, if there's anything I love doing more than anything it is working on the same problem time and time again.  Oh wait, no I don't.

Still in the back of my mind was the process of helping dad put his new phone on Cricket when YB, the kids and I visited earlier this summer.  I marched on down to Cricket and got my number transferred over.  Hey look!  I have Visual Voicemail now!  For the same price!  On the same network!  With a real storefront to go to if I have a problem!  And it isn't Walmart!

Don't say I didn't warn you, Straighttalk.  The thing I love doing most with my days off is researching other cellular carriers and then porting my phone number to them.  Oh wait, no I don't.  Your service was just fine with me.  I never really had an issue with it.  But you created a #real1stworldproblem.  I don't have time for that.  Hopefully the battle testing on Cricket this fall will reveal a good choice being made with the service I've switched to.