Andrew is worried about his mobile carrier, Net10. He was very happy with the company’s “bring your own device” service on AT&T’s network until he learned that he wasn’t able to send picture messages. Well, no problem: tech support should be able to resolve that easily. Right?

I started service with Net10 not long ago by taking advantage of their “Bring Your Own Phone” program on AT&T’s network. Everything was working fantastically until I discovered that I couldn’t send picture messages.

Having some experience fixing tech stuff, I decided to Google the problem. I found some settings to change on the phone. Nothing worked. I called tech support. I spent about an hour and a half on the phone only to be told to do the same things I already did, and afterwards that the issue was with my phone and I need to contact the manufacturer. Not helpful since I’ve seen people with other phones have this problem too.

The next step was trying a new SIM card. That didn’t work. I tried another new SIM card, except that this card gets service from Net10’s T-Mobile branch and not AT&T. It didn’t fix the problem. In fact, now my phone didn’t get service AT ALL. I called tech support again, wasted another hour on the phone only to have someone tell me that T-Mobile doesn’t service my area. So I switched back to another new AT&T SIM, which my number had to be “transferred” back to. I waited for a day and it hadn’t gone through. I called tech support again and they told me to just wait. I waited another day. Still nothing.

Then I tried to check the support ticket on the website… and it gave me a 404 error. Frustrated and worried, I called support again and this time I couldn’t even get through. I tried e-mailing them a few times and each time was told to call tech support. FINALLY I get through to tech suppot and they say my number transfer failed because I provided incorrect information (???). Spent an hour getting that mess untangled, and after another day passed I FINALLY had my service back. But 4 e-mails, 6 hours on the phone, and 4 SIM cards later, I still can’t receive any picture messages.

Fed up, I decided to contact corporate about the problems with the picture messaging and my experience with contacting Net10 to get it fixed. I sent them a nice e-mail about it and when I hit the “send” button, I got an error from Tracfone’s e-mail server that the corporate email account doesn’t exist! (corporateoffice@net10.com) It felt like a real slap-in-the-face because I was hoping to finally get some resolution for all my effort, but it looks like that won’t happen. I really don’t want to have to switch to another carrier, because the service is fine otherwise. But if this is their idea of resolving issues I may not have a choice.

This makes us sad, because that corporate e-mail is one that we had shared in the past. If it doesn’t work anymore and neither does calling the number for the various sibling mobile virtual network operators owned by Mexico’s América Móvil, then maybe signing up with some discount carriers isn’t worth the discount.

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