"Visible"comes into Focus

Ahh, interesting theory. Are you suggesting that Visible's CS may intentionally be sub-par, in order to weed out the folks most likely to necessitate hiring additional staff? Pretty good way to increase the bottom line, as long as the company is willing to take the PR hit.

I think I may have used several MVNOs in the past that have figured out, and implemented, this cost-savings strategy.

Well, of course I have no way of knowing their business strategy/ies, but anything is possible in the MVNO world. (My comment was meant primarily to be self-deprecating, not accusatory toward Visible, and I sure don't want to be the one to start today's CN Daily Drama!) :slight_smile:

As to your second point, me too!!!

I agree they may in fact have this no phone's approach to save money I will say that once set up, there is little need to contact them. In fact, I found myself contacting them just to know the email address the promo gift card would come from to ensure it did not end up in SPAM. The only other reason was to explore the Moto G7 activation, but that did not yield the desired results.

Anyway, we will see how it continues to go, as I hate the idea of having to use an iPhone or purchase another phone from them just to get the Android experience.

I did consider their own phone that's on sale, but I can't place an order because there is another phone already on the line. With the wait times, it will be dificult to address and accomplish unless I open another account (not the desired route).

Just a heads up for Visibile party people. Saw this potential problem posted on Reddit.

"Earlier this month, Visible launched its first ever ad campaign on national TV."

I haven't seen the ad yet, but Visible must be doing well enough to spend money on ads.

Yes, they are probably doing well. Plus, they might want to bump up their subscriber numbers before this quarter (maybe their fiscal year, too?) ends on June 30th -- no doubt Verizon would like the strongest showing possible to boost their stock performance.

Just saw that the ZTE Blade A3 prime will reportedly be free via swap on Visible. Just checked and saw that the ZTE A7 is still listed as the swap phone offered on the Visible site. The A3 phone has a removable battery, which is a big plus in the eyes of many, but only 2 GB of RAM, sorry to say. Yet it's pretty much free.

Hurry up, it is official now, you can swap the phone. Visible | It's Phone Service. In An App.

Might make a nice hotspot phone if it works with the battery out

Otherwise it is pretty basic. A7 was better.

I think that Visible has found the sweet spot with the new ZTE Blade A3 Prime and the port-in requirement.

How do I know this?

Because Slickdealers and Redditers are predicting the demise of Visible Mobile because of it.

"If we can't get free phones for very little effort then that horrible company will surely go under!"

The A3 has just barely good enough specs to be a fine phone for 90% of the population.

And the port-in requirement, which is only a slight hurdle for most Slickdealers in search of free stuff, is just enough of a speed bump to make most of the locusts fly on by.

The A3 has been available for a full 30 hours, so far, and counting. Actual real customers, including 7 that I know personally, have actually been able to sign up and get phones and Verizon network service headed their way.

The deal has 4 thumbs down, the last time I checked Slickdeals, and that's right where it needs to stay.

I think that Visible has found a place where they can stay at steady-state for awhile and pick up some customers who will be around for more than a few days.

I got a Visible survey, today, and agreed to answer the long version.

It appears that they're strongly giving consideration to letting people with eSIM have a free trial of Visible service without even having to sign up. They would be issued a temporary number and, if they stayed, they'd be able to port in and continue using eSIM.

It's an interesting idea. If you have a phone with eSIM, trying out Visible Mobile could go from idea to implementation in a matter of minutes.

It looked like they're considering other social-justice we-are-the-world kind of stuff, like, where you would agree to give your Party Pay discount to people who can't afford to pay their cellphone bill. I checked, "Nice idea, but I probably wouldn't participate."

"you would agree to give your Party Pay discount to people who can't afford to pay their cellphone bill."
Visible should float that idea on SlickDeals. :slight_smile:

The port-in requirement is a severe stumbling block for normal people who don't understand how phone service works.

The chance of people porting-in their primary number and ending without service for atleast a week is very real and during these times, could be catastrophic.

It cost me exactly $0 to generate, port out a number and swap in a Sprint phone from our RingPlus days (I won't ever do business with Sprint again so good riddance) thanks to my active Freedompop account but no normal person has an active Freedompop account.

While I can generate unlimited phone numbers for $0, most people have issues placing orders on eBay for those $5 ATT portout ready numbers which is the next best deal.

I bet most people are porting in their actual primary numbers. An absolute nightmare waiting to happen.

What Visible should have done instead is given X month's credit equal to the price of phone.

What's the harm in that?

The "free swap" program is dumb and they are getting exactly the behavior they designed for. A significant amount of the first wave of Visible customers were from SD and now Visible open badmouths SD for essentially their own poor planning!

I've helped 9 people sign up, so far, and 8 of them ported in their primary number. None of them were without cellphone service for more than 10 minutes.

4 ported in from Metro, 2 from Sprint, 2 from Verizon, and 1 from AT&T.

I've read a few negative accounts, but I haven't seen any firsthand.

It's possible that most of these accounts were in an area that has VZ towers that Visible contracted with plus your guidance in ensuring they proper port information was entered helped a lot.

In my area, Visible is still unsure, but thinks has VZ towers that Visible has not contracted with. I will be sharing the tower numbers with them in a follow up call but Visible map shows 100% coverage (maps, I have learned years ago to take with a grain of salt but this was an absolute surprise)

This means that because, Visible is pure LTE - NOTHING except text messaging (IMS) works and can work.

This means that these people, as they figure out the next steps have service they cant use. I have a hot mess on my hands. Thanks to the backup phones I carry, I am able to rotate them among people but the damage to my reputation is done. Yes, the fault is all mine because I did not exhaustively trial the service before recommending it and relied on input on forums I trust and deemed the service to be good (it's Verizon after all, how can it be bad!). I am paying the price and will see this through.

About the swap program:

What Visible should have done instead is given X month's credit equal to the price of phone instead of the current environmentally expensive sham they are running.

People's time, cardboard, plastic, packaging, gas is all being wasted. I am reading a lot are just purchasing phones off eBAY and the like just to turn them in for the A3.

Add another porting success story to my list!

My mother loves T-Mobile but happens to live in a dead spot. She can go a half block in any direction and get great signal but her house gets terrible signal and phone calls can be a challenge.

She wanted to try out Visible without jumping in with both feet-- so we ordered her a ZTE Blade A3 Prime with the free swap and ported in one of my FreedomPop numbers. If everything works out during the first month she'll port in her "real" number and leave T-Mobile.

FreedomPop is notoriously slow with porting out numbers. My own experience with porting to Sprint, Boost, AT&T and other places where I've landed has usually required a 5 day wait for the process to complete.

In my mom's case, my FreedomPop number ported into her Visible phone within 18 hours of activation. Not too bad.

We've spoken quite a few times, today, and so far it's looking like Visible will be a winner for her.

Saw this on reddit recently. Some mixed feelings about the idea.

Certainly interesting if the group consists of people known. Reminds me of the FreedomPop's data sharing with a twist on funds.

Terrible idea.

Can you please pay for my yearly redpocket plan

PS. I like the 5 gig of data plan:evil: :evil: