ZERO STARS! In December of 2021, I switched our family wireless phone service from Verizon to Pure Talk. Unknown to us, Pure Talk never fully ported over my wife's number she has had in her possession for 20 years.
This failure to fully port over the number resulted in split service, meaning that she was only able to receive calls from iPhone users and unable to receive calls and texts from Android users and calls from landline users.
Failure to complete this full port resulted in her being unable to communicate with family and friends.
This failure also resulted in missing calls from businesses, doctors, and pharmacies trying to contact her to assist her in her daily life and also in providing her with her insulin and other life-dependent insulin pump supplies, since these pharmacies were calling her on her own number that did not work, unknown to my wife.
Numerous lengthy calls to Pure Talk’s customer service and IT department have taken place in our attempt to solve the issue.
Every time we called Pure Talk for help, we always received the run-around, having to start at the beginning with every person who works at Pure Talk, with no one ever really wanting to fix the issue.
Resetting all kinds of functions, even completely resetting my wife’s phone did not work. Despite nothing working, Pure Talk never offered or tried to come up with a solution.
Just phone calls that would end with either a dropped call or an unsatisfactory end, with my wife’s phone still not fully working.
Frustrated and fed up, we decided to switch carriers in June of 2022, then come to find out that my wife’s number could not be switched to a new carrier because the number was never fully Pure Talk’s number the entire time.
We were informed that the company that has possession of my wife’s number is Verizon, but upon calling Verizon they stated that they do not have possession of the number. Somehow, during our time with Pure Talk, my wife’s number was given over to the carrier named Jitterbug.
We then talked to Pure Talk to have them talk to Jitterbug to bring back my wife’s number. At first, Pure Talk’s porting department denied that my wife’s number was in split service, then acknowledged that they did not fully port the number, then finally agreed that Jitterbug has the number.
Three attempts with Pure Talk to have them contact Jitterbug took place, with the third time resulting in a customer service supervisor from Jitterbug talking to a porting supervisor from Pure Talk.
This last conversation resulted in Pure Talk being perfectly content with Jitterbug having my wife’s number, and Jitterbug being unwilling to cooperate in giving back my wife’s number. The service I have received at every level of Pure Talk has been worse than terrible, and beyond frustrating.
I honestly am not sure how Pure Talk employees who work to solve problems are given their jobs since they never succeeded in working through to fix my wife’s phone. Pure Talk’s inability to function as a phone company has compromised my wife’s very own phone number.
I’m unsure of how this will end, but I will continue to fight Pure Talk to restore my wife’s phone number, on an account we have had with Pure Talk for going on seven months now.
Companies like Pure Talk and Jitterbug should be fined, shut down, account payments refunded to customers, and made an example of how not to run a business, and in particular, a phone business.
