Stuck in Straight Talk activation he11

[yelloguy]

Starting a new thread since my old thread was about number porting and this rant doesn't apply. Sorry if this is old news to everyone here but I thought about sharing my experience to help others.

I ordered a Nokia 6790 refurb on ST website on Monday to activate and then SIM trade on an iPhone. Phone+ SIM arrived yesterday (Thursday) and that is when my nightmare began. The card had both IMEI# and SIM# correctly printed. I matched them like posted on these forums. The SIM was already installed in the phone but the battery was out in a separate sealed plastic bag.

I went to the website to activate+port number but I got a message that the phone is already activated. So I called their Miami tech support number posted on these forums and the tech support people are nice and they mean well but they are COMPLETELY CLUELESS. It takes them ages to find out that the previous owner activated the phone and they never reset it before sending it to me. Even after I tell them that upfront!

After several hours on the phone with four different reps, I was getting nowhere fast. This morning I posted a comment on their facebook wall (then support page). I don't do facebook (hate it) so I had to register just to be able to do this. I got a couple of emails from them about 2-3 hours apart asking me for details and I was thinking these guys are not going to understand anything. But it turns out, while the phone reps were wasting my time and energy, the FB reps were quitely doing the right things. It took them a while to go back and forth, but eventually, they replied to me that I will be sent a new SIM in 3-5 to 7 days (sic) and then I will have to call them again to finish the process.

I also got an email on my registered email id with a new password. I just tried logging into my new account (they created) and I see the new phone is added as an inactive phone with the option to activate it. Now I am not activating it since I don't want to lose time until the SIM arrives, and I am worried about the number port. Because if they have ported my wife's number to the new SIM they are mailing to me, my wife will not be able to use her phone and I will not have a very happy life until the new SIM arrives.

Any comments, experiences, advice or war stories are welcome. Thanks for reading.

[spekkio]

The Facebook page is the best way to get issues resolved with ST. Of course, even better is to avoid situations where you need CS if at all possible. Once you get ported, activated and SIM swapped then likely you will never have to deal with them again.