Which of the following Red Flags will go away first?
[ol]
[li]Closed to new signups[/li]
[li]No second Top Up Success Reports[/li]
[li]App can't show one's current "Infinity" allotment (i.e. it makes no sense to show Silver Used and Silver Needed, whereas everybody needs to know how many minutes they have left)[/li]
[li]CellNUVO silence about specific things like the above[/li]
[add more Red Flags that I forgot][/ol]
Also use this thread for any other predictions.
I predict that if none of those Red Flags go away in the next two weeks, then CellNUVO dies when your current allotment dies, irrespective of how many Silver or Gold you have.
Makes sense not to open to new business right now. They need to overhaul their website and fix issues before taking on new customers. I predict it won't be ready in 2 weeks but it does not signify a red flag in my opinion. If current business is profitable as they say then there is no urgency to sign up new customers. Especially if the numbers leaving are also minimal.
The top up situation is the main issue right now in my opinion. I have one line I switched to gsm and moved to the 500/500/500 essential 10 gold per month plan. It has been 18 days without service and all it needs is a top up. Could be due to moving to the essential plan and that switching to gsm is brand new are both causing extra issues but it seems everyone is having issues with top ups. If this isn't fixed in 2 weeks I can see the number of people porting out increasing but the level of tolerance to issues is high with cellnuvo customers. Probably due to a) it being free b) people having gold balances they don't want to lose so will stick it out to the end. So with both those in mind even if this isn't fixed I predict cellnuvo does not die. But will lose goodwill for sure.
I doubt this is priority over other issues. It is needed but people aren't going to leave if it isn't implemented in 2 weeks.
Most likely they will make some kind of communication when they think the top up situation is fixed. If people have put up with it this long a couple of extra weeks won't make that much difference. I predict we will find out first from a poster on here saying support told them the top up situation was fixed!
You are saying your sprint infinity plan working and renew as expected? After it (the 5 gold CN plan) expires, does it renew automatically if you have balance left?
As I saw on the forum, most people have to top up (which is not supposed) and it still didn't work.
One more prediction: more and more people will stop swiping. CN didn't give people confidence where it is heading to.
My belief is that the people who own CellNUVO simply put their time spent outside the business and CellNUVO profitability above the inconvenience to their customers.
None of the above issues are difficult to fix. They simply require a little more time and money.
So there is little excuse for any of it and you can only conclude they're simply not bothered. I'm sure the fact that it's a free service adds to the lack of respect they have for their customers who they look down on for being low income (whether or not that is true).
The only other explanation is that they truly are incompetent and clueless in understanding what an acceptable level of service is for a cell service.
So my prediction is that this continues for an indeterminate amount of time.
The only ones I'm currently concerned about
2), but modified to: regularTop Up success, whether it's initial or secondary.
4) Communications in general. including responses from tickets. . (And really, this almost becomes irrelevant if top-ups and carrier switching work properly-- at that point, we'd mostly be happily using service, instead of fretting about it.)
One aspect of this issue that some folks consistently overlook is that the critical event wasn't a simple switch of carrier-provider from whomever, to Red Pocket. (My opinion, after looking at the related factors.)
The issue was almost certainly the loss of an entire MVNO-in-a-box arrangement, which likely included wholesale carrier access, plus the functional website, interface with the wholesale carrier partner, number management, porting, etc. (I'm comfortable with this analysis, since the CN website went down, and number management failed, at the same time.)
Whether the anticipated change in wholesale access from the previous provider to Red Pocket was planned or not, it seems likely that the loss of the interface and backoffice needs was not anticipated, and that occurrence was outside of the work previously done to enable the carrier switch. If that's correct, even after the "transition" to Red Pocket, CN must still rebuild, or have someone rebuild for them, the entire backoffice structure necessary to manage the interface with Red Pocket, and with customers.
So, I expect we'll see
New customer signups only after the back office and interactions with the carrier partner are successfully built out and implemented.
It should be a lower priority than supporting existing customers.
A slow fix, or no fix to the app displaying remaining allotments or reflecting current monthly use. (It never really displayed the former, and the latter isn't relevant to the new RP setup.) A better display of remaining allotments in the app would require tying back in to a Red Pocket API to display in a CN app, since the actual usage records are maintained by Red Pocket, not CN. It's not obvious to me that Red Pocket is set up to do this.
We may be stuck for the near and intermediate future using the CN phone app pretty much as is, and the Red Pocket site for monitoring usage of refill amounts. If reporting on the Red Pocket site becomes reliable & consistent (and it seems like we're seeing some improvement), it's a workable situation, even if not ideal-- and it parallels what reporting is available on a lot of MVNOs..
Yes mine is working. It had an expiry date per redpocket but it passed and my line carried on working. Redpocket showed a new expiry date. So yes it renewed automatically for me with a balance left.
I think the issues reported are when allotments run out and a top up is needed. This then does not work and so lines become out of service. Some might have had issues with service just stopping when they had a balance left but mine carried on working as expected.
I think customers would always rather have concrete dates and deadlines rather than see "soon", but it doesn't mean that they can always reasonably be provided. "Soon" is often used to indicate something is in the planning stages, that it's being worked on, that it's on the radar for a desired feature.
We'll have GSM "soon" didn't worry me.
We'll have an iPhone app "soon" continues to not worry me.
Top ups will work reliably "soon" does concern me, although I don't care about an exact date, and think it's not realistic to expect one. Some disagree. I think we can all agree that it's not "soon" anymore for that one. I don't see any reason in going over the pro-con arguments about "soon" again.
Rather than having an extended debate about "soon", perhaps we could all just look at prior discussion about "soon".
Sorry to say, but I predict that none of the four listed red flags will go away, and I predict that CellNUVO will have not departed this mortal coil until all current allotments have died. A slow death as it were. I'm often wrong, though.
I think the refill issues would go away first, followed by better accounting by minutes, and then in close proximity more communication from CN and opening to new customers.
That's assuming they can fix all their back office problems (@KentE made some good comments about their likely loss of an "MVNO in a box" arrangement since multiple things failed at the same time). They have to fix the remaining things fairly quickly or they risk losing customers (like myself who left after the first service week outage) and CellNUVO advertising backers.
The idea of advertising backed communications is not a new one. An incomplete list:
Broadpoint ~1999 had their Freeway long distance card that gave 2 minutes of talk time for every 15 second ad listened to.
PhoneHog ~2005 had a long distance card that awarded long distance calls for web activities.
Numerous merchants in the 1990's had promo long distance phone cards for mailing in UPC codes (one of my favorites was a hologram Polaroid long distance calling card).
With cellphones, there's the late RingPlus with ads during the ring period, the investor backed FreedomPop with freemium based service including click through ads for free megabytes and "technical difficulties, please stand by" CellNUVO.
Don't forget that these are CellNUVO's own words on August 19th:
"we were in the last segment of our testing"
The partner shutdown meant they had to "expedite the switch to our new platform"
On August 25th, they advised the transition was complete.
So they had a "new platform" already developed, they'd been working on it for 3 months, they were less than 2 weeks from switching to it anyway and all that was left to do before the switch was testing. The only thing that was outside of their plan was that they ended up having to switch before finishing testing. These are their words.
The word "expedite" means to bring forward something that was already planned. CellNUVO have said nothing else about the partner shutdown beyond it forcing them to expedite the switch.
At a high level, you can see that there are 2 systems to CellNUVO. One is the advertising, the other is the MVNE. The connection between the two is simply the redeeming of Gold / Silver for CellNUVO plans configured on the MVNE. The advertising side was unaffected throughout these problems. The switch was about the set up of CellNUVO plans at the new MVNE, the migration of accounts to the new MVNE, and the integration between the CellNUVO redemption system and the new MVNE.
The migration of accounts is what was interrupted by their partner shut down. The migration was expedited and completed by August 25 without original numbers. It was probably done manually seeing that CellNUVO have far far less than 5000 customers.
Pretty much nothing else was working correctly at transition. Making everything else work correctly was reliant on work performed by CellNUVO and Red Pocket in co-ordination with each other and that work was undertaken in the 3 months prior.
None of the work involved was or is complicated. Just configuring and connecting existing systems. The only explanation for the problems are a lack of quality resources being applied.
Personally I think cellnuvo was already dead two weeks ago. Now redpocket is just waiting for the accounts to expire, meanwhile cellnuvo is expecting suckers like me to keep swiping. I really hope tom will take my advice to switch to tello. Tom are you listening?
Omg that is just $13 equivalent. Why spend so much time mad at Cellnuvo for $13? Makes little sense. That is like spending hours a day posting bad things about a resturant because your $13 dinner was bad. This is seriously not worth your time
What's with some of you? I'm simply smart enough not to swipe needlessly. Dunno how that translates into "hate it so much".
Questioning why someone posts, rather than discussing the content of the post (or the obvious -- just skipping over posts that make you too emotionally spent) seems weird. When I go to a library I pick out a book I might like. I don't need to burn the other books there. Some of you people are real nutty.