Need MFA disabled or an alternative

[Mark2]

I manage multiple accounts for my family.  Specifically, I pay the bills for them.  Today, Visible forced me to enable MFA when I logged into the accounts to pay the bills.  (Auto-pay is NOT an option that I'm willing to do).  Now, when I log into my mom's account, her phone gets texted with the MFA code.  Unfortunately, she lives in another state, and I'm not willing to call her every time I need to manage her account and ask for the MFA code (especially not if I'm doing things at 2AM!)

I need to opt-out permanently from the MFA process or set it up to use email or an alternate phone number.  Neither option appears to be available.  I spent almost and hour chatting with a Visible agent, explaining the situation.  She said that it MFA could be disabled permanently, but it would require a new SIM (or eSIM).  I'm skeptical that this exercise wouldn't just result in me being forced to re-enable MFA after I get the new SIMs.   I said fine, we'll try it.  Please send me new SIMs for the phones.  She couldn't do that -- and I needed to login to each account and start the chat again with a new agent to get a new SIM for that account.  (I was already logged into my account, BTW!)  Bottom line: after wasting an hour of my time, my problem is not resolved, and I don't have much confidence that it will be.

Visible: please allow accounts to opt-out of MFA, or have an alternative solution such as I outlined above.  You will lose all my business if this is not an option quickly made available -- especially after forcing MFA on me without ever notifying me in advance that it was coming.

I don't think my use-case is rare.  Am I the only person who manages another person's Visible account (such as a spouses, child's and/or parent's account)?  What about paying for a child's account who's away at college? 

Visible, the ball is in your court.

[Twittel]

IMO:  you'll have to figure out how to validate MFA since Visible treats this as a security issue, and I agree with Visible. Call Mom get the code, get your phone unlocked and set up MFA.  

[Mark2]

@Twittel Your response doesn't make sense.  Please read the original post again to understand the issue.

[hasues]

@Mark2 So to your point, I can't fault Visible for trying to implement MFA, and while I think this is a move in the right direction, the real issue is that Visible has done a poor job of implementing it.  If it were implemented correctly, this shouldn't be an issue for you.

First, using SMS as an MFA device is a poor decision as SIM Swap Scams exploit this and count on it should one's SIM is compromised.  This move by Visible is an effort to become compliant as it is creating some rules surrounding it.  However, in the foundations of MFA, a secondary MFA should be allowed should one not be available.  I suggested using OTP clients such as Google Authenticator, Twilio Authy, Duo, etc be proposed as an alternate method.  If this seems too complicated for Visible, then that is a larger conversation with the direction of their security resources in the company.  However, E-mail is another alternative for MFA: E-mailing codes allowing the registered user use this code to login to their account.  My wish in this is that I don't want to use SMS, period.  I especially, don't want this to be used as a single mehod.  I have a friend that is currently locked out of their account because they can't receive their SMS code as their phone is currently dead.  This essentially knocks out the effort of self service which is important knowing how meager Visible's support staff is.

So what can you do?  Well, unfortunately, in your situation, I would probably advise you to seek another carrier with better service.  That is really unfortunate, but seeing as you are supporting family members, and Visible does not recognize any sort of "family" or "group" plans, this really leaves it up to the individual to maintain their account making those in your situation have difficulty supporting your family.

I feel your frustration.  I've already begun moving family and the like off to another carrier for this reason and Visible's inability to keep up on other standards such as E-mail.  It's frustrating, and I understand it's difficult to implement change at times, but when change is pushed upon you and it isn't effectively planned, that's a step in the wrong direction.  Good luck.

[VisibleFixMFA]

I'm just trying to get into my son's account for his new phone and he is away at school and I can't even make it work to pay bills or to interact with their stuff. 

Visible you have implemented this like a joker and are creating a denial of service for people to simply pay bill and enact with things.  I can't even contact customer service without the  SMS implementation blocking things.   If they don't fix this I'm gone.