Net10 Review

So I purchased an LG prepaid phone at WalMart because I was tired of the hassles with AT&T and my contract recently expired. For 30 bucks I received a phone and 300 minutes, a steal considering the minutes alone would've been 30 dollars. My phone worked great, however after recommending it to my mother she purchased the exact same deal from the same Walmart. You could not hear out of the phone unless it was on speakerphone, and I triple checked all settings, volume was set to 5 (highest setting) for ringtones, textmessaging, keypad, volume control etc. I figured, well, must be faulty, it's not that big of a deal because my mom loves speaker phone anyway - any excuse to be on the phone and doing something else at the same time lol. Well she had the phone working great for 3 days. After a weekend away with my boyfriend I returned home only to have her tell me that not only could she not dial out anymore (she kept receiving error messages and sometimes she said the phone would freeze up on her altogether, resulting in her having to take out the battery to turn it off) but her phone had to be shut off otherwise it did a "countdown" for her remaining minutes. I didn't understand her until I turned the phone on - it literally was going "267 minutes, 266 minutes, 265 minutes" on the display screen. Holy crap! I tried calling my phone and it said "Error, try again" over and over. I called customer service from our landline (good idea, you'll see why...) and was told my wait time was 4 minutes, not bad! After explaining the situation to the girl she said she'd reset the phone and to keep it off for 24 hours. 24 hours later, turned it back on, same situation. Im a bit peeved at this point. I called back, wait time was 8 minutes, and got ahold of another girl. Sidenote: their customer service is in Bangladesh or some such place because it was SO hard to understand these women! I told her what happened, that I called before, etc and she said that she could not fix the phone and that my minutes could not be restored. What the...? So I asked for a supervisor, and she said my wait time was 7 minutes. (How did she know...?) She then asked if I was calling from the phone, which annoyed me because I told her the phone could not dial out. She then asked if I was calling from ANY Net10 phone to which I told her no. She then said my wait time was 3 minutes. We did not talk for four minutes. I do believe they purposely keep you on hold to waste your minutes since they assume you're calling from one of their phones. After 38 minutes total (yes, I kept track this time after the wheels in my head starting to piece everything together), she told me to turn the phone off and on and everything will be fixed. I interrupted her, telling her we tried resetting it - it's not going to work, and that I'm going to remain on the line while I do this. After turning it back on, the phone all of a sudden had 0 minutes!!!! and 6,705 SERVICE DAYS!!!! How on Earth did that happen?!? Each 300 minutes you get gives you 30 days of service, what the heck? I told her what happened, she connected me to a supervisor (finally, sigh) and she told me that they'd send me a phone with a return package to send back the faulty phone and the charger. I asked her if my minutes would be on this new phone, she said no. What's the point of me going and spending 30 more dollars on minutes when I can go back to Walmart and get the bonus package of the phone and minutes for the same price and avoid this hassle with their lousy customer service? I told her that she can either A) switch the minutes to my phone number or B) restore them on the new phone or else I can contact the BBB and file a consumer complaint. She said (with no hesitation, mind you) that the phone will have the 270 minutes on there. All in all I was on the phone for almost an hour and 15 minutes. Gee, too bad for them that I was not on a prepaid phone! We received the same model LG phone 3 days later (speedy, I have to applaud them for that) with the 270 minutes (I thought maybe they'd have a heart and just include the 300 for my troubles but nah, I guess I didn't gripe enough) and even though this phone works GREAT in terms of not eating the minutes lol, the same issue exists with not being able to hear out of it unless it's on speakerphone. I hope mine doesn't start causing me trouble like that, but mine has been great. I would have had no complaints with Net10 if I didn't recommend them, which is a terrible thing to say but it's the truth. And lesson learned: You get what you pay for, I'm pretty sure all their phones are refurbished.