Consumer Cellular

Porting had minor glitch which was quickly and efficiently resolved by great courteous well trained staff!

It took way too long to activate my phone. For example, the first rep. That I was talking to disconnect my phone . So then I called a second time and got a very pleasant and conpetent rep, Denise. But I was on the phone for over an hour,, just to activate a phone I'm not happy with the company.

Perhaps the ease of setting up the transfer of carriers and the savings that will be seen are truly incredible.

Easy online ordering. Fast delivery. Great phone, plan, and prices. A+ customer service as always!!!

The tool to take out the sim card snapped in half, and while we got two SIM cards, we only got one tool so we had to drive to a Target.

I had some trouble signing up; it was a busy day, but everything appears to be working well. I'm waiting for my first bill

Friendly U.S. based professional people. Timely, concise, consumer centric. Overall a very positive experience.

Buyer beware. Stay away from consumer cellular. They are very nice when you first get the service. Shortly after you will realize the service is not great. When you call and question the service they basically brush you off. They don’t care. Then you disconnect service and they give you an attitude. Finally, they don’t prorate the final month. So if your billing cycle begins on the fifth and you cancel service on the eighth, they will charge you for the full month. That is legal as they are a postpaid service not a prepaid service. They are horrible.

Consumer cellular adds false. Uncaring customer service. Bad network service. I'm handicapped in disability. Was a great customer 4 yrs. Had trouble w phone calling out Spent 3 days w their tech. Or should I say non tech dept. Finally said sending sim. Then deactivated phone I'm paying for. Had no phone 7 days. Got phone called in for 4 days before getting sim all good offered credits . Free shipping new phone. Put sim in no phone problem. Now called in tol I'm not longer allowed to be customer Violated policy the won't say what is. Again 4 yrs paid good customer Then bam no more now phone works. Had to find a new co. Shut off phone gave me three days . No notice after 7 days no service.

The worst cell service company I have ever encountered. They advertise a low cost and then immediately escalate their price to incredible levels. When you attempt to terminate their service, they immediately begin outrageous and unjustified costs as a punishment for leaving their very dishonest and deceitful company. They will attempt to assign all sorts of termination fees when you attempt to move your service to another company. They even locked my phone and only unlocked the device after I contacted my congressman and the FCC. They then lied and stated that they did not lock my phone when the phone clearly indicated that they locked the device. This is the most dishonest and deceptive cell company and I cannot state how crooked they are. Avoid these thieves at all costs.

Staff was helpful in opening our account. The phone back came off and next minute it wasn't working, we had the phone a week. We had to go through the insurance, they are never helpful, it's been a week and no phone replacement. We were told the phone is on backorder. Cheap flip phone, my husband carries a flip for quick use, and no compensation for the fact we have no phone no service.

I give them 2 stars ONLY because my 93 year old father needs a phone!!!! A few years ago I set him up with an account on Consumer Cellular.com We were paying his bill online without issue. All of a sudden, this year I cant log in with the password, it's asking me for a PIN which we never had.................. I contacted customer service, now understand, my father had a stroke last year, so he's not as cognitive as he used to be. So, I talked to the representative whon informed me they need to talk to my father...fine.... then they start asking him all these questions and all they did was confuse him. He told me to hang up and we will just pay by check. so yeah, not good!!!!

I've had CC ever since 2017. Loved them. Low cost, great customer service and dependable calls anywhere! But lately my calls have been dropping and people keep telling me my phone's breaking up when I talk to them. I don't live in a dead zone so I should be getting crystal clear phone service. I'm not sure what happened but the service is getting worse. I called customer service, they did a few adjustments but still nothing helped. Now wondering if I should switch carriers.

I've had this service for more than ten years. They are a bit backward. Latest example The sim card became obsolete. They replace it for free after it shuts down your phone. I had to pay $10 to expedite shipping which is by USPS and is being delivered after two days. No other options allowed. I will be looking into other providers.

So I recently switched to consumer cellular from being a long time t mobile customer.. The phones great, they're always helpful, but the one thing that I wish they would do is allow me to switch my caller ID. Currently just shows up a number and I'm self employed wanting my business name to show up. T-mobile and AT&T did that but are more costly than Consumer Cellular. In writing this review I hope someone sees it who could change that for me. It could cause me to go back to another carrier unfortunately

My experiences getting started with Consumer Cellular involved a number of problems. I ordered a phone and paid for express (1-2 day) shipping. When the phone had not arrived by the end of a week, and after a couple of inquiries, a second phone was sent. The next problem occurred after I had my new iPhone 13 activated. I noticed that it had been reset a month before I received it (with over six hours of call time). I believed that I may have received a previously used phone rather than the brand new one that I had paid for. I used the Consumer Cellular online chat function to ask about this. I was asked for the model number and waited while the rep checked up on the phone. I was told only that CC would never supply a used phone in place of a new one, that it would be bad for them and bad for the customer. Still curious, I went online and discovered that the model numbers of NEW iPhones start with the letter M. My phone’s model number started with the letter F, telling me that it was “refurbished by the carrier.” I called CC. This rep acknowledged that the phone I was had received was not new and agreed to send me another one. Once the replacement phone arrived, I called to activate it. The phone failed to activate. The rep asked me to read off the numbers on the sim cards of both the refurbished phone and the replacement phone. There was no match to the sim card on record. He took down one of the numbers and said they would use that; it didn’t matter which phone it went with. However, I would have to wait three days to have the replacement phone activated. After three days with no phone service, I called CC once again and was told that the sim card in the new phone (the card I had been told would be used to activate the phone after three days) did not match the records and that it could not be used to activate the phone. CC offered to mail me a new sim card, or “I could go to Target and pick one up.” After never receiving the first phone, after being given a used phone instead of a new one, after being reassured that the phone was not refurbished, after having to go three days with no phone—now I will be making a trip to Target. However, as I am about to go out the door, I get a call from someone at CC who seems to know what they’re talking about; she tells me that the man who said the phone could be activated after three days with the installed sim card (the number of which he had taken) was right. The phone was activated. End of story. Much time wasted over many days; extremely frustrating.

I like Consumer Cellular's customer service. Unfortunately for me, the company uses AT&T cellular towers where I am here in New Jersey. Two very bad things: AT&T coverage is extremely poor outside of urban areas, for example, in relatively rural Northern New Jersey. Second thing: Consumer won't tell you this, but AT&T throttles any third-party tower users, like you if you're a Consumer Cellular user, the moment an AT&T tower gets busy. I watched my already spotty and slower service in Boonton, NJ, drop from maybe 4 Mb/second at 6 am, down to LESS THAN 1 Mb/sec as soon as the town got busy at 10am. Unusable. Had to cancel my account. By the way: the AT&T derived coverage maps lie. And I know this for a fact; I'm a communications engineer and a trained-by-Cisco networking engineer.

Well,I've been with consumer cellular15yrs with no complaints but surprisingly that has changed my 600 dollar phone Samsung galaxy 9 + they tell me now it won't work correctly on 5G so I had to get a new phone and comes with no charger or. Cord,, an A13 5G every phone I ever purchased in the past came with a charger and cord none of us asked for this 5G mess,, it's just causting the consumers money and consumer cellular doesn't want to bare any of the burden so I'll send the phone back and find a company that will provide a cord and charger with a new phone funny how a company can suddenly cast off common courtesy and do what it takes to keep a good customer.

Signing up with Consumer Cellular has been an arduous task to say the least. When I checked to make sure our current unlocked phones were compatible with their service, I was told yes. Fifteen phone calls, 20 days later, and being told I needed to drive 50 miles round trip to see a representative that was not even working, a non Consumer Cellular employee told me my Samsung S7 was not. About every 10-12 calls to Customer Service, you will get someone that actually knows what they are talking about (such as Tess and LaVern. The rest of the time, you get totally new employees that don't know what they are talking about. I do appreciate they are saving me money on my cellular service, but the hassle is unforgiveable!

I have had a Consumer Celluar subscription for a couple of years. I have always been satisfied with it until the last two months. In that time my data plan usage has started to show usage every dat and even to the point of having to move up to a higher level due to data usage. I DO NOT USE DATA ON THIS PLAN. I never go on the internet with this plan but for some reason my data usage keeps creeping to the limit every month. I called customer service and was met with a very sarcastic and nasty rep (said she was a tech) but all she keep telling me was I am using data. Could not explain why I suddenly after two years has started using all this data. WATCH OUT. Seems to be a systemic way of increasing receivables for the company. I dropped both my text and data coverage and just left talk due to this obvious company attempt to increase profits. So far they are the cheapest available for one phone with talk just to use in emergencies (as far as I know) so I will shop around for sure.

I am with Consumer Cellular for last one month. Coverage is good. Customer service is miserable takes more than an hour, timings of the customer support is like office hours (9-5) not exactly 9-5 but not like 18 hours customer support forget about 24 hours support. This is the worst experience I had so far. My billing cycle is activated the day I purchased SIM online and it took 5 days to reach me then I immediately activated. But none of the Customer support could fix it since the day one. All they say is wait until first bill is generated then call us again (spend another hour to reach us).

Aside from the connection issues that occurred prior to the pandemic, the service really sucks during this difficult time. My phone won't ring when others call me and the voicemail was delayed more than half a day. Lately, the data functions really plummeted! Webpages won't load when you are away from home. All of this keeps happening even after I call its tech support, which is practically useless, several times recently with absolutely no improvement after I reset my phone and they supposedly did their part on its server end. Today I was using my gas app outside and it won't load and I had to hold the line and reboot the phone, losing all my notifications, some of them I needed urgently. I'm thinking of switching to another carrier. Sick and tired of talking to them.

Consumer Cellular, Inc.: You Will Pay for Their Mistakes Read the reviews. Check with the Better Business Bureau. My experience with them has been unfortunate. I ported my two mobile phone numbers to another carrier because of poor coverage, thereby cancelling my service with them. But Consumer Cellular continued to bill me for one of the two lines that was cancelled, because of a computer error. I called their customer disservice line (you cannot write to them; there is no published customer service email or address) and waited a very long time to be told that they would not correct that billing. They would continue to charge me for service that they knew was not provided. This is how I learned Consumer Cellular is not trustworthy and that their customer service personnel are poorly trained and unhelpful. I will not call them again. Fool me twice… Note, this was not an end-of-service proration issue. This was my being charged incorrectly for the last month (and again for the next month) of service on a line that was disconnected. And they were aware of that fact and intentionally refused to correct it at that time. Well, I did not pay that bill. And you wouldn’t either. So, Consumer Cellular charged me a late fee. A month later, the incorrect changes were mysteriously corrected and within 30-days of that correction, I paid them what I owed them which was the correct prorated charges for the last month of service. But I did not pay the late charge (you wouldn’t either). Now every month I get an invoice with a late charge for not paying the previous month’s late charge, which was bogus to begin with. Is that even legal? These compounding late charges are beginning to add up. I expect there is no way to stop this extorsion other than to pay it. They cheat me; they will cheat you.

The agents were very helpful. I had some hiccups with my service at the beginning, but after a couple of calls they were able to mostly straighten it out. However they did not know that AT&T would not support WIFI calling on my phone. So after a couple of weeks with AT&T, I decided to try T-Mobile. They did support wifi calling on my phone. However the overall coverage was not good enough for me so I canceled my Consumer Cellular plan. Thats where the problem began. My entire plan was going to be $19 a month. But since I canceled, I was charged $29.73 for "data overage". This on top of the $10 it cost me to get a T-Mobile sim card from Target. So for a "NO OBLIGATION" trial of a plan that was supposed to cost me $19 a month, I've got $39.73 invested on top of what I paid Verizon for the month, since I wasn't sure if this would work out. Not what I was expecting from their "Award Winning Customer Service". What I got was a supervisor who could only say that's company policy and apparently wasn't authorized to do anything.

Consumer Cellular seems to be the way to go for seniors on a fixed budget. But anyone with Consumer Cellular must NEVER lose their mobile phone!! After my phone went missing, it took literally HOURS for me to finally get a rep on a live chat, since my attempts to get support by phone failed several times, leaving me no way to deactivate the phone, which left all my data and files accessible to whoever was in possession of it!! In the desktop app or website, there's NO way to select "lost phone." I was forced to go to Target and buy a new affordable smartphone, which only ONE was left in stock; then wait until after hours to FINALLY get a rep in a live chat, so my new phone would have calling capability!

My experience with consumer cellular went fairly well until I left. They never sent me a final invoice either by USPS mail or Email. They waited a few months and then sent me a threatening email that my account was going to collections if not paid immediately. There was no way I could see an invoice or respond. They only answer calls until 5PM. Somehow my bill was inflated to almost 100.00 after a monthly bill of approximately 60 dollars. Instead of any invoice, this is what I received: "Consumer Cellular bills airtime & monthly fees in arrears ~ after they have been used. This invoice is for services used during your final billing period up until the day service was canceled. Please reference the Monthly Summary section on page 2 to verify the days you are being billed for on this invoice. The Billing End Date is the last day of service. We only bill you for the days you were on service. Therefore, both the monthly service charges & minutes included in your rate plan are prorated. If, for example, you were using the service for half the billing period, we would only bill you for half the monthly fee and you would receive only half the included minutes for your rate plan before being billed for additional usage." My advice: If you decide to leave Consumer Cellular watch out for the inflated bill as a source of punishment for leaving. I am not very happy with Consumer Cellular.

The rates seemed very good at first, but they eventually went up to be comparable to any other carrier. I switched from ATT and immediately noticed coverage is much poorer on Consumer Cellular, both near where I live and while travelling in the US. I am always that person in a group with no coverage (and I am not talking about rural areas). The main reason I am dropping CC though is the unbelievably expensive coverage in Europe. They have nothing comparable to the "day pass" other carriers offer. For decades I have travelled at least once/year in France, the UK, and elsewhere. I paid over $600.00 for 9 days of usage in October (and was careful to turn cellular data off whenever possible). This is over twice as much as I've paid for a full month or more on other plans, and on those plans I did not have to worry about cutting back data usage. I was assured when I switched to CC that overseas service plans were competitive with other carriers. This is not even remotely true. Customer service was no help whatsoever.

I have no complaints at alkl with their cell phone service other than occasional texts not going thru. Howeever, their ZTE phone base is an absolute piece of junk. We bought one 13 months ago and it has never worked properly. I call or online chat with them monthly. They pass me around from person to person and each one says they know what' wrong with it...and they provide a "FIX" that never lasts beyone one phone call. This thing cuts off EVERY SINGLE CALL we make or recieve. The last time I calleed CC they said it was my personal phoe that was the pborlem....so we tried five more different phones and it still doesn't work. Today I called asking for some sort of refund for the $240 I've spent in bills for a service that doens't work and they told me they can't give me anything because their records show usage. OF COURSE THERE WAS USAGE. We can dial out and people can call in....BUT IT ALWAYS DISCONNECTS. I asked for name and address of the CEO so that I could write a letter and they told me there is no longer anyone to write to, no one that can receive a letter...that the company is owned by some firm but there is no longer any CEO. Really? A company that is run by nobody? They basically told me to pound sand..,.that they could "pass on" my complaints but there was no one for me to write to. Do not waste any money on the ZTE Base. Its a piece of junk.

In early summer of 2021 my text function on my 6 month old consumer Cellular phone became frozen. I called the CC service assistance line and was left on hold for long periods of time. My customer service experience was terrible. I visited a phone rep in the Target store where I purchased the phone and he subsequently replaced my text application with another. A few months later I was only receiving about 75% of texts sent to me. Again calls to the CC customer service assistance line. The representative was unable to cure this problem but suggested a factory reset. In order to save my data such as contacts and pictures I needed to purchase a san-disk. I returned to Target and asked for assistance with their inhouse phone representative. After spending about 10 hours, after 6 separate visits, my problem was never fixed and in-fact lost 166 pictures with many of them irreplaceable. My suggestion to anyone looking for a new phone. Don't purchase Consumer Cellular phones and don't visit a Target store in hopes of correcting phone issues. Both companies offer extremely poor customer service. Every time I see a Consumer Cellular advertisement on TV touting they have received excellent customer service ratings from the J D Power Co. for ten year in a row I would how they can get away with this massive lie.

Cellular service via AT&T is fair to good. Our problem is with account security. Seems that anyone (family member or other) who is on the account can go in and change the account password, gain access to the account and change any and all account information. You try to get into your account and you get locked out and customer service says they can't do anything about it for 24 hours. Seems like an obvious security glitch to me.

Signed up w/ CC Spring 2019. Rarely had to call Cust. Service. When I did in 2019 & 2020, the hold times were short & the U.S. based reps were courteous, articulate, responsive & helpful. But in Spring 2021, hold times increased, & the reps generally seem to have some loose bulbs upstairs. Spring 2021 promotion: add another line, get a modest $25 credit, which I did. Calls related to that change (which involved # porting, pro-ration charging periods) were agonizing due to 45 minute wait times & dim-witted reps. Fast-forward to October 2021: CC offers a $100 credit for adding a new line! 4 TIMES the credit they offered 5 months ago for the same thing! I called to complain that existing customers like myself who took the Spring 2021 offer felt being taken advantage of now, WITH 4 TIMES THE CREDIT BEING OFFERED FOR THE SAME THING! I can understand maybe twice the credit, but 4 times? My complaint fell on deaf ears. They refused to offer any kind of goodwill credit. No flexibility. They responded like mindless automatons.

I had to purchase a new phone as they said they could not use my 'old' V phone (<1 yr old). I purchased a new S phone and they had the same issue setting it up. I was finally able to make the 2nd new phone work by changing the settings to the A network. Service was great, cost even greater; then began the scams; making me wonder about my '2nd' phone. Now they want me to buy another 'new' phone (3yr old chinese) as the network is upgrading to 4-5g. My current phone supports 4g, they say it does not, manufacture says it does, all modes. Leaving CC behind as I can no longer trust them, not certain I ever should have.

I have had Consumer Cellular as my cellphone carrier for about 5 years. I never had any problems with them until this month. I ordered an iPhone from them on June 6. After it arrived and I had a chance to set it up, I realized I disliked the phone. I sent the phone back using UPS. Consumer Cellular received the phone in perfect condition on June 24th. They emailed me within 24 hours of receiving the phone saying that they had credited back to my debit card/bank account the full refund. They never did. There was NO refund from them in my account. Three days in a row I contacted Consumer Cellular, inquiring where was my refund. Each time they said that it takes 7-10 days for a bank to release the refund into a customers bank account. This is NOT true. This excuse is just what the customer service agents are trained to say!! I called my bank today and they said they never received any funds from Consumer Cellular for my account. Zero. Zip. Nada! So now, my bank has set up a dispute with Consumer Cellular to get them to make good on my refund. It should take several days or longer to get any results. Apparently Consumer Cellular has done this before with other customers: promising a refund but then not giving the refund!! This is a very dishonest, shoddy way to run a business!!

I noticed that new customers and present customers are not shown same respect when it comes to wait time I realize there is a shortage but when I have to borrow a phone to get someone to answer it’s not good I talked with several agents and some halfway helped and I highly recommend Thomas, Aberham, Jackie and Latisha they showed excellent customer service and went above and beyond helping I am excited to be a part of this company but I hope to resolve waiting and customer service from the ones that rushed through Thank you David and Rebecca Santos