Straight Talk The Android Rip-Off Miami, Florida

The following is a series of emails generated between me and the Straight Talk Customers Service Dept. (s): TO S.T: Your Android Coverage area is the worst service I have had since I became a StraightTalk customer approx. 2 years ago. In the beginning I actually helped you guy promote your phones because I was very satisfied with the service, price, and your coverage area. After purchasing an Android phone for my wife my whole attitude for the straight talk company changed, it seems that once your company got established you joined the league of the many phone companies that make a profit out of screwing people around.

There was absolutely no thought put into how the Android was going to maintain a satisfied customer base. Instead it seems that upon realizing how screwed-up the product was you began to promote and sell it more aggressively (I noticed how the Walmart shelves lack the S.T. E5 and E71) and I can only surmise that this is an attempt to PUSH those useless Androids. I have now become one of the people that will steer people away from your products. Do us and yourself a favor and return to the kind of company you were when you were trying to establish yourselves and needed us.

Your customer service lacks tremendously try bringing some of our money back home where it could really do some good in these hard economic times or spend some of it training those on the receiving end how to speak English properly. My suggestion to you as a "once-satisfied-customer" would be to drop Sprint as the Android carrier and find a carrier that's going to provide the service I once enjoyed from your company before your own efforts to advance yourselves as a company becomes the very thing that takes your company down.

S.T. Response: Thank you for your interest in Straight Talk Wireless. We are responding to your recent inquiry. We would like to take this opportunity to apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with this issue. Please accept our deepest apology for this experience. We do not want our customer to gain this issue but there are circumstances that we really cannot defend. We appreciate your patience and value you as a customer. We greatly appreciate your suggestion and comments that might help us improve our products and services.

We assure you that we will research this issue to provide you the best service possible. As per our interest to serve you better, we are continuously working on improving and expanding our products and services. If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact one of our customer care representatives at 1-888-251-8164. For your convenience, our representatives are available Monday-Sunday from 8:00 AM to 11:45 PM EST. Thank you for being a Straight Talk Wireless customer. We appreciate your business. Sincerely, Straight Talk Wireless

My Reply: Thank you for the response, now what happens with the, sometimes, useless phone I dropped $150.00 less taxes which I can't return to Walmart because of their return policy? I would gladly mail it back, packaging included, for a replacement phone preferably an S.T. Nokia E5

I, my wife, and my daughter all use the ST phones that comes out to about $135.00 a month, taxes not included, for all three lines that's about the same as deals currently being offered by contract companies (I qualify for employee discounts) however I stood by the S.T. phones so if, as you put it, I am a "Valued Customer" take this useless phone back and replace it so that I can utilize the type of service that drew us to S.T. In closing I sincerely hope that this correspondence is being viewed (Unedited) by the S.T. supervisory staff dept. heads, V.P.s, Senior V.P.s C.E.O.s, C.C.O.s, C.F.O.s and shareholders NOT just the customer services staff who give customers double-talk with no results. Your acknowledgement of my concerns does not solve my problem action speaks louder...

At this point customer service begins to call me directly in an attempt to trouble-shoot the problem completely ignoring the fact that the primary problem is that the Android phone is using the Sprint network which has an extremely limited coverage area meaning that the 150.00 Android is useless. I would've thought, at this point, that in an effort to rectify this IDENTIFIED problem Straight Talk Corporate Staff would take an interest in maintaining optimal customer satisfaction and nip the problem in the bud... WRONG AGAIN. what they did instead was to continue to offer to trouble shoot from different parts of the world, Guatemala, Colombia, the Philippines.. I bought the phone in the USA Walmart to be exact, I could not gain access to anyone in the US from their main office to respond to my simple request for a replacement in an effort to salvage my 150.00.

So I try in another email: OK let me try this again. I WANT A REPLACEMENT FOR THE CRAPPY PHONE I BOUGHT! NOT A NEW PHONE NUMBER, NOT A DIFFERENT AREA CODE NONE OF THOSE THINGS. I WANT THIS EMAIL TO BE GENERATED TO THE OWNER OF THIS COMPANY SO THAT THEY ARE AWARE THAT THERE ARE DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS THAT ARE NOT GETTING RESULTS TO THEIR CONCERNS. I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS EMAIL GET'S PAST JUST CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES WHO FANCY THEMSELVES AS PROBLEM SOLVERS BUT CONTINUE TO EXACERBATE THE PROBLEMS. I CAN BE CALLED DIRECTLY AT MY NUMBER ----------- YOU ALREADY HAVE THAT ON FILE. REPLACE THE PHONE! IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DO AS I ASK THEN FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL.

Needless to say they refused to replace my phone, ("I'm not authorized to do that") was the language used, compensate me for the money I wasted, and I still have not been able to speak with anyone from their Corporate Office, in addition to this they continue to PUSH those useless phones on the public rather than pull them off the shelves. My wife had to switch back to a non-Android phone. BUT WAIT I'm not done they did, by way of compensation, give my wife 1 month service no charge, by my calculations I'm still out 100.00 and I'm stuck with a useless Android "paper weight".