Just another day in Visible paradise - can't even ACTIVATE the phone on the new plan

[DavePinMinn]

Still working like a well-oiled machine……….    The astericks(*) are where the grammar police complained about a "bad" word...

There’s a lot of blather below about how incredibly Visible has screwed up what SHOULD BE the simplest possible process – activating a phone…

And since we’re getting close to 3 HOURS on yet another pointless chat, which I suspect will end with NOT fix...

DOES ANYBODY IN HERE HAVE AN ID*IOT-PROOF WAY OF GETTING A PHONE ACTIVATED?  YES, I followed the instructions (read the stuff below).  And YES, it “failed” with some gibberish message before the session died.

Since then, it’s been 2 chats, one “ticket”, supposedly “resolved”, and STILL NO ACTIVATED PHONE. 

At the 3:10 mark today we descended into:

“As we have followed all the troubleshooting steps from my end and your issue is still not resolved hence, I am escalating this case to our specialist team who have more resolving options and authority than mine, I will make sure to prioritize your issue and you will be receiving the best service as soon as possible. Once the case is escalated you will hear back from us with any update on your case within 4 hours from now. Rest assured we will make things work as soon as possible.”

Right… ANOTHER ticket going to the “escalated” specialist, who will be sure to get back to me within 4 hours…

SO, AGAIN – ANYBODY HAVE ANY RATIONAL IDEAS HOW TO GET THIS PHONE ACTIVATED?

Will switching to the second “new plan” SIM work?  Or did they just manage to turn a fully functional phone into a brick?

---------------------------------

Have Blade A7 Prime.  It’s the ONLY phone that’s still on Visible – they screwed up the “get new phones, go on new plan” so monumentally that we cancelled all the other phones.

All that’s left is this POS data phone – never gets phone calls, never gets messages.  All it does is sit, connected and doing data.

Since it’s “compatible”, I figure THIS SHOULD BE SIMPLE – get a new sim, activate on the new plan, easy peasy.  I forgot the “Visible” factor.

Ordered the SIM before Christmas.  The “overnight” shipping took ELEVEN day to get her.  When it did, on Tuesday (3 days ago), I found the instructions and attempted to activate.

I re-downloaded the Visible app in case it had been improved.

Went through whatever, it churned and eventually popped up “FAILURE” on the screen and the session went dead. 

Went on chat, and after wasting 2 hours, person says “I’m not getting a response from our system. I’ll have to create a “ticket” and send this to the technicians…  YOU’LL BE GETTING AN EMAIL WITHIN AN HOUR.” 

And dumps the chat.

Needless to say, I DIDN’T get an email in an hour.  Or 12.  Or 24.  But eventually I got one from “Mara”, telling me how HARD THEY’RE WORKING ON SOLVING THE PROBLEM.  And that I’ll get an email with a resolution in 4 to 24 hours.

And……  NOTHING. 

So, today, Friday, get on yet ANOTHER chat, and we’re currently at the 2:20 mark.  We’ve wasted much time doing the same things that were done last time.  But THIS time, he had me reset the network settings, then wait 10 minutes, and try a phone call.  And a whole bunch of other things that did NOTHING.

Finally, he has me do a factory reset ‘cause “THAT’S GUARANTEED TO FIX IT”. 

Phone is reset, and up, and it’s still a brick.  Has the NEW PLAN sim in it, won’t make a phone call.  NOW, according to the chat – “it will not work as there is some error showing in the activation and we are working on it”…  Took over 2 hours to get here – and ALL I WANTED WAS TO SHOVE THIS PHONE ON THE “NEW PLAN”.  Their phone, with THEIR SIM, and it won’t activate on THEIR network.

If this was a TV show it would have been cancelled because it’s too stu*pid and ludicrous for anyone to believe how badly Visible has screwed up these phones over the last month.

I HAVE a SECOND “new plan” SIM – it’s from the dead Pixel 6a (died at 5 days of age) I bought BEFORE Visible turned that whole process into a disaster (the chat monster told me to keep the SIM when the dead phone was returned).  I presume that won’t help.

Do I give up and cancel this last account, then in the spring when I need the data phone for traveling, try coming in as a new customer.  I don’t CARE what the phone number is, so I don’t need to port anything.  ALL I WANT is a working data phone…  Of course, considering it’s Visible I have ABSOLUTELY NO CONFIDENCE they won’t screw it up just as badly when I DO NEED THE PHONE.

SO, since Visible isn’t going to be any use, does ANYBODY in here have any idea HOW TO GET A SIMPLE PHONE ACTIVATED ON THEIR *&^%$#@ NETWORK?

[DavePinMinn]

Unfortunately, you've now learned about Visible customer service and "support".

I also have a compatible phone that USED to be on Visible.  With the NEW plan, after multiple tries, wasted HOURS of chatting, no response from the "engineers", and all the other stupidity, I terminated the account for the data phone.  Got the refund, had them remove the account.

Once done, I created a new email address, went in, created an account, had them send me ANOTHER SIM, and successfully activated the data phone. 

No port out, no muss, let them assign a new number (it's a data phone - it's NEVER going to get answered), and came in as a completely new "customer".  As long as it works and I NEVER have to talk to "support" again, it'll be fine.

I"d suggest you do the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Welcome back! it sounds like you successfully got a working SIM. 

Visible finally offered us old customers $5 off a month on the $30 plan yesterday otherwise it didn't sound like they were shutting down the old system anytime soon and I was just going to hang with it until they made us in the future. So I am going to try switching over Monday or Tuesday and I hope it goes smoothly. 

[DavePinMinn]

I become more baffled how Visible stays in business by the day!  "You HAVE to go to the new plan."  "You HAVE to buy a new phone."  "Just kidding, stay on the OLD plan."

And WHAT do when one day the OLD plan evaporates and your functional phone turns into a paperweight?  And you, along with about 8 gazillion other frantic people with paperweights try to get SIMs and get activated and STILL have to go through all the bovine excrement we went through for the last 3 months?

BLECH!

Having done it, I've decided that ANY time there's a problem you cancel the account, have one of the Visible droids delete it, create a new email address, get a new SIM - which APPARENTLY if you're a brand new customer WILL COME overnight, unlike the EIGHT TO ELEVEN DAYS it took to get either of the replacements for failed activations - then just recreate and activate.

Even WAITING for the SIM AND creating a new email address, it's still GOTTA BE FASTER than trying to get Visible support to do anything.

[Anonymous]

It is sad the support here is BS but I have to say the price is right and I can put up with it. I am not exactly a green tree hugging person but I do hate to see the waste of a perfectly good device that Visible says won't be compatible with their plan. I guess it is all about making money and one way is them selling you a device you don't need. How ridiculous is it that Verizon owns Visible, uses their network of course yet my old phones IMEI number says not compatible at Visible but I can take it to Verizon, or any other carrier for that matter, and it says it is compatible. 

I ordered it last night so I would have it Monday I hope, not holding my breath but at least I have service until I try and activate the new SIM. Even though I did buy a cheap  G Power 2022  off of eBay a while back, a year newer than what I have, sold by Visible so IMEI number is good and and saved $120 in the process.

Now the bad thing is I have this thought about risking the SIM and actually see if I can activate in my old noncompatible phone just to see if it can be done. Just thinking though, if I have a problem the last thing I want to do is waste my time chatting with those "south end of a north bound mule" to fix it. 

But anyway, glad to see you got the data plan working.

[DavePinMinn]

That was one of my early thoughts too - that it was an effort to make a whole bunch of customer's who'd previously BOUGHT Visible phones, buy NEW Visible phones at inflated prices.  Then I thought about what my wife frequently tells me - "Don't confuse actual malice with ordinary stupidity." 

I decided NO ONE with customer service this bad was Machiavellian enough to come up with something this devious.  But it's STILL absolute GENIUS!  Like Adobe and their extortion model - make astronomical amounts of money from software whether you improve it or not.

[sward]

Hi..I am a new customer and like you cannot activate the phone I purchased from them. You seem to know a lot about phone services ( I don't). I've never transferred a number. Had radiophone which was bought by Alltel which was bought by Verizon. So service was just handled by them. Anyway, if I cancel Visible since the phone doesn't work, how do I get the sim unlocked to go elsewhere? It says it unlocks after 60 days, but since it's never been activated is it really locked?

[Anonymous]

Yes, the phone is locked. It has to be activated and in service for 60 days to get unlocked. The reason it is locked is to protect the buyer incase the phone and SIM are lost or stolen while in transit. 

If you are having activation issues you need to contact customer service. I recommend Facebook messenger because for me it seems like that is always the fastest way to get a reply and I don't have to wait in line on chat. You also use chat and Twitter, the latter I never get a response. Link to their FB page can be found in the bottom righthand corner of this page.

[JuneBug27]

.

[JuneBug27]

I just want to say that your post is hilariously written and I feel you. I'm still waiting on a fix for mine as well. I hope you've reached a solution by now, but if you have been so unfortunate as to still be waiting for a solution, I will suggest something that another person posted (link below). That old SIM might still come in handy after all! One of the commenters on the thread even stated that they did it with an old inactive Visible SIM!

I have not tried this yet since the first SIM that was sent to me (to "upgrade" to the new plan) didn't work and customer service screwed it up more with their eSIM switch. I'm waiting on another new physical SIM to come (hopefully) in the next two days.

Here's the link: https://community.visible.com/t5/Need-help/Everytime-I-ve-had-a-service-issue-this-is-what-fixed-it/...