Customers of Visible, a prepaid carrier from Verizon, have reported some erroneous account cancellations after taking advantage of the carrier’s recent promotion.
Visible Account Cancellations
At the beginning of February, Visible announced a deal that provided two months of unlimited data at US$11.00 for each month. Customers were able to join the deal with a special code. BestMVNO shared reports of customers who had their accounts terminated. A spokesperson from Visible told The Mac Observer:
Visible identified a set of accounts that were established illegitimately and in violation of our promotional terms and conditions. We terminated those accounts, but have heard from some customers who have asked us to review the decision. Our goal is to ensure that we are providing promotions and service to our legitimate members, so we are taking steps to review these escalations, and will restore service if warranted.
BestMVNO says:
One such example, shown below, is of a couple that had their numbers for 12 years. They claim Visible customer support told them to contact the FCC if they want to regain their numbers.
Another Redditor claims their newly opened account was shut off abruptly without providing any other details.
And this Redditor claims their primary account number got terminated yesterday, and they cannot port out as a result.
Meanwhile, a Redditor who canceled their account on their own accord has posted that Visible told them they have 50 days to port out before losing their number.
Here’s my interpretation (Disclaimer: I am a Visible customer). It sounds like there were some scam accounts and legitimate accounts that got mixed together. The promotion was only for new customers. Per the report, as one Redditor said:
I did port 16 lines and 8 got cancel . I still have 8 left with 200 promo.
It’s all good . Just cost me $0 per months . I have a system to get for $0 . We will c . Nothing to worry.
Nop , u pay them and get back using there own system call referrals. I activated 30-40 lines a months . Doing this for long time . And those 16 lines were just from Feb 2-3 …
In the case of this particular user, my guess is there is a line somewhere in Visible’s system that says something like, “Accounts that have greater than X activated numbers on a single IP address will be examined.”
So reckless. No notices what so ever. I ported out immediately after I heard about this. Stuff like this makes me concern about joining these no brands. Was paying $40 for a single line on Visible then a friend told me about Circledin. Now i’m paying $35 for AT&T Elite! Wish i knew this earlier!
It’s the erroneous terminations that really bother me, since Visible’s support team doesn’t appear to be doing anything to restore their service or allow them to port their numbers without paying a $40 fee. It’s awful ironic, in my opinion, that this is happening just days after Visible shipped out its “Kindness Bundle” to a number of customers and non-customers alike.