Consumer Cellular

As a 4 year customer of Consumer Cellular, I am ending my relationship with them immediately. What a horror show. I am an advocate for a friend with cerebral palsy who moved from Florida to Boston. «Airplane mode» really screwed up his phone and the BS begins. After talking to 6 different customer service reps over as many days, problem still unresolved, they admit their own errors, flip flop on decision to send a new phone and then create a «billing» problem which after a few moments of discussion they admit was their fault because «the system was in error». I have every intention of reporting this abuse to every consumer protection agency, AG’s office, etc. I can summon up. Their prices may be less than other carriers, but they have got bigger and greedier like most of the major carriers… and their customer service really sucks. The Nielson rating of labeling them the highest rated of all cell carriers is a fraud and sham.

I had sign up my 77 year old mom that got a flip phone from them
nephew on the same plan and he has a iPhone that is a apple. Well my nephew couldn’t get pictures from other people that don’t have iPhone or group text. from anyone that is not apple. well I called the company waitresses on the phone for 45 minutes. a lady name Valery 10÷13÷15. she in struck me what to do we went throun the steps didn’t work, called Natasha 10÷14÷15 took 45 minutes did a 3 way to get the phone fixed. well we got disconnected I called back again waitress a mother 45 minutes, talked to a Mike he was giving me instruction to get the problem fixed. it would of been a ling process, I told him u guys are a bunch of rip off for seniors and other people who want to add there families on the plan it is not as peachy as they say. there G.B. only goes up to 4. if u just use their flip phone it’s good if u ONLY WAN TO TEXT and call nothing else

I can’t believe they are endorsed by the AARP. I found them to be dishonest, misleading, and downright crooked. They billed me for the higher-​priced plan even though I had the lower-​priced plan but say you can change plans anytime during the billing cycle. Then they charged me full price for the next cycle, discontinued my service immediately, but say they «pro-​rate» your service. I cannot even see how I owed them anything for the final billing cycle. I attempted to block them from billing my credit card but they must have paid off Congress because they are somehow exempt from being blocked. All I can do is dispute any additional charges. When I attempted to remove my credit card information after ending my service with them I no longer had access to my account. Aside from all of that I was never able to get my data service to work nor could I send a photo along with a text message. I called technical support several times and each time they gave me different settings for my phone. For $ 10/​month (plus fees and taxes) all you get is access. This does not include any usage whatsoever. For less than that there are other cell phone companies that include usage, as limited as it may be. I had Cingular for a while and thought nobody could be worse but Consumer Cellular beat them hands down!

Thought since I was an AARP member, would give this a try. Man what a nightmare.
Went out and bought the phones from Target, then got hooked up. Well they couldn’t take our old cell numbers, so they gave new ones. So still had our old phones. Glad we kept them .
Only had the new phones a week. First thing very hard to transfer contacts on both phones.
In 7 days of service I had talked to 5 reps, plus emailed a couple times.
The reps I will say were very nice, they tried their best to help with the problem but could not.
Both phones would only text to each other, they would not text outside phones. That’s why I said glad kept our other phones. Cuz what I did I would text a friend and it would not go out, then off our other phones and nothing.
One rep said well alls he could think of is try another SIM card, so we did. Still would not work. They kept saying the phones were working right, I said if they were working right I should be able to pick it up and text away, no go.
So the last rep when I said we want to cancel, she was oh no let me walk you through iit and I can get it going. I said really 5 others could not, your not that special. She was butt hurt. Oh well.
The phones would not text outside of Consumer Cellular said and done.

Saving $ 130 a month! I’m glad! I wish I know this earlier! (^^) (^^)
I’m happy! (^^) (^^) (^^) (^^) (^^)

Phone service is ok but lord help you if you need to call customer service. In my experience, they can’t help with anything. I just called about a question and they said at that beginning of the call the hold time was 5 – 10 min. It has now been 46 min and O am still on hold. Now I just want to know how long it will take them to pick up the call. Mind you I can apparently take care of this on their website. Of course, the page they direct you to doesn’t exist so there’s that.

I had read some good reviews about Consumer Cellular, and I am a member or AARP, so I thought trying their phone service would be a good idea. I switched my service from Net 10, which was a bad service provider by any measure.
Well, they switched my number and I purchased a new smart phone for $ 100 because my model was not compatible. Well, I soon found that in order to have a reasonable monthly phone bill, I would need to use 750 minutes or less per month. I was very careful and disciplined with my calling. I used texting primarily to avoid going over my limited minutes.
This was difficult at times, as I am looking for work, and had to speak with several agencies and potential employers. Consumer Cellular has a usage tracker available, which I checked daily or more frequently. For the month of May, when the end of my cycle was approaching, I saw that I was getting pretty close to the 750 minutes allowed. I called Consumer Cellular’s customer service to check my usage, just to be sure I would not go over.
They assured me repeatedly that I had not and would not exceed my limited minutes available. I also checked on their website, and found that I had enough left to be comfortable. Then after the bill was processed, I found that they had charged me extra for usage, claiming I had gone over my allotted minutes. I called to complain, and sent an email.
They emailed me back saying nothing could be done and that I had gone over. Completely impossible, especially after they assured me I had not gone over. I did not make one single call when getting close to maximum minutes allowed. They are scammers and liars.
I sent another email to the effect that I wanted to cancel service. Instead of responding and trying to smooth out the issues, or at least leaving the phone on long enough to transfer service and transfer phone number, they TURNED OFF MY PHONE IMMEDIATELY, SO THE NEXT DAY I HAD NO PHONE SERVICE. I HAD TO BABYSIT THAT AFTERNOON SO I NEEDED A PHONE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE PARENTS AND IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. I HAD TO RUN TO THE NEAREST PHONE STORE, WHICH WAS CRICKET, AND FOUND THAT SINCE THEY HAD TURNED OFF THE PHONE I COULD NOT KEEP MY PHONE NUMBER, WHICH I HAD FOR 5 YEARS.
NOW I HAD TO PAY FOR A NEW PHONE TOO, AS I COULD NOT USE THIS PHONE.
EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL, PETTY AND DISHONEST SERVICE PROVIDER IN EVERY WAY. At least now I have unlimited phone calling for less than I paid with Consumer Cellular. AVOID THIS SERVICE!!!

The price is right for service, but I would not buy a phone from them. This was my first foray into smart phone/​android territory and I knew little. I bought a Motorola Moto which I found extremely user unfriendly. I was told by the customer service rep to give it a try for a week and if I didn’t like it to send it back and I would get a credit toward my new phone. Much to my surprise I received the phone back with no explanation. A call to them said the phone was heavily scratched. It was not but nonetheless I had to suck up $ 100. I’m sure any reputable retailer would credit me for the phone. Thanks consumer cellular! Don’t buy phones from them!

I wanted to finally join the smartphone revolution; a little late I admit, but hey I’m not as young as I used to be and honestly, I like my phone to make calls, mostly, and occasionally text. Its great having the internet in your pocket, but I just don’t see the point. Its like when laptops first arrived at the office (many years ago) and everyone wanted to take one home and the boss loved it because he got you to work when you were supposed to be enjoying your time off. You thought it was so cool that you had the office laptop. Did you get paid for those extra hours? Or when people were at the President’s inauguration and watching him through their phones and I’m thinking, you guys, you’re THERE. Watch the President. Live. Not through your tiny screen so you can record it for someone else who isn’t THERE.
Back to Consumer Cellular. I had seen them marketed to seniors previously so naturally I immediately wrote them off. Plus when I first started looking they did not have the IPHONE. Fortunately, I tend to procrastinate and when I just couldn’t take Verizon any more I began looking more closely at other plans and noticed that Consumer Cellular was ranked very high. In fact one consumer ratings magazine had rated them #1. So I grudgingly went to their website and discovered that they had just started service with Apple. Yippee! I could get an iPhone with Consumer Cellular and pay less than what I was paying Verizon for just plain phone service and that lower payment included a $ 25.00 per month payment for 24 months to pay for the phone. I will own that damn phone! My cellular payment including Smartphone service was less than $ 40.00 including taxes and fees!!! Buying the iPhone added 25.00 so I was paying less than 65.00/month, $ 20 less than for phone only service! Once the phone is paid for (in 17 months) my monthly bill will be around $ 40.00. TOTAL. Really.
Their Customer Service and phone service is great. Yes I capitalized Customer and Service on purpose. They actually really want to help you no matter how nasty you might be. And I can be quite a dick on the phone with customer service. You can pay for as much or little cellular data as you need and if you only access data through Wifi you don’t need much if any at all. So, if you think this service is only for your grandparents, or parents,…or much older siblings. Its not. Check it out.
AND if all you want is telephone service, its super super super cheap and if you want to add your parents (with their own number) for their phone only plan, its something ridiculously cheap, like 10 extra bucks.
So, its great for seniors and everybody. No dropped calls so far. Anybody with AT&T, Verizion… you are just P’ing your $ away. And AT&T and Verizon give a lot of money to political causes I don’t like so it was really nice telling Verizon…“bye bye.”

It is a fine service if:
you make very few calls;
you never have a problem with your phone;
you can get customer service to understand you.

3 ½ stars from me… Well so far I don’t have any complaints… yes, they aren’t exactly Verizon wireless caliber but I also am not paying Verizon prices… so you get what you pay for. Every customer service person I talked to in the last week there has been very helpful.
So far moving to Consumer Cellular was a good decision for me. Still learning the ins and outs of my new phone, the key is to know all the tips so you get the most out of your plan. I am still trying to figure out how not to use so much data time.

I had such terrible reception with my phone that I had to get a landline. Then i switched to Consumer Cellular, which uses AT&T towers, and it is crystal clear everywhere. The customer support and the convenience of no plan is really wonderful. I could not be happier.

They sent me a replacement phone for when my telephone is being repaired.
I could not make any calls with it, despite being told that «cellular towers
are down, the problem will be resolved soon.» They use the AT&T cell phone network
towers, so I called AT&T.
They did not know of any such outage, so apparently I was being LIED TO.
I guess they didn’t want to admit that they screwed up, it was more convenient
to make up stories and blame someone else.
They were supposed to test these phones before sending them out, but apparently they
would rather waste several hours with a customer, than take 5 minutes to make sure
my phone was set up propertly and works before sending it.
I am seriously thinking about dropping their service, I am tired of working with
their poorly trained personnel. Or is it just stupidity?