The $100 gift card deal commits you to 2 months of service at $25/month, assuming you pay only $25 with a party for the 2nd month. 100-50=$50 profit. For 2 swaps, you pay $40 for 2 months of service ($20 with Vis20) and if you can sell the phones for a net of $50 each, which is on the low side, you've netted $60. Plus, the phones I have for swap are essentially worthless, so it's good to have an opportunity just get rid of those for something worthwhile.
Hey I'd like to compile a list of phones that supposedly don't work on Visible but in fact do work in whole or in part. Here's what I have found in my own experience swapping a Visible SIM into a phone that is claimed to not be compatible:
The following can get data but not voice/text:
Galaxy S5-S7 (Verizon version only)
Moto G5 Plus
The following work for both data and voice/text:
Umidigi A3
iPhone SE 1st gen A1723 unlocked from Sprint - this one works but has slower data due to not having LTE band 13 (note: I once had an A1723 unlocked from a European carrier that did not work on Visible).
I'm particularly interested in finding out whether any of the LG flagship phones or earlier generation Google Pixels will work on Visible.
The older pixels are a bit of trouble with visible. A while back they sent out free pixel 3a phones to some users because updates broke compatibility with visible. It was a nice gesture for those who received one. They took the older pixels off the compatibility list and things worked intermittently for those who tried to use the pixel 1 and 2 anyway. Mine (pixel 1) worked for a while but it would just stop working out of the blue and need a sim swap or reset to get back going. I haven't used mine in a while after that but just a week ago there were lots of people on reddit saying they were using their pixel 2 fine on visible. So things much have settled. At least for the pixel 2. Even on android 11.
My international samsung S10 works on visible but I think the US version doesn't. The US samsung note 10 and note 20 family work with apn settings added.
How did you get data to work on Moto G5 Plus. I haven't been able to do so
Something very strange happened with a new activation I did early this morning. I finally activated the first of the 3 lines I acquired during the last E6 swap frenzy. I paid $25 during signup (didn't know about Vis20) at the time. When I go into my dashboard, it looks like they only took $10 of my credit amount after assigning me a $30 new member offer.
Charges
Visible $40.00
Service 9.72
New member offer -$30.00
Taxes and fees $0.28
DC State Sales Tax 0.24
DC State 911 Fee 0.04
Also, based on the full $40 price for subsequent months, I only need to pay $25 if I want to renew for month 2. I assume this goes down to $10 if I join a party.
I haven't seen anything about what the "new member offer" is. This must be some new promotion that's being coded but not yet advertised and there's probably some coding glitch in my favor from activating a new account that was ordered last month . Or maybe this is supposed to be normal going forward due to the fact that Visible no longer let's you pay only $25 to start a new line - it's now a full price of $40. However, if they are only taking $10 out of what you initially pay and leave you $30 to use later, that would be an encouragement to stay around for at least another month.
If anyone else sees anything similar please confirm.
PS to harsed1985 - I think it may have just been a matter of editing the APN to VSBLINTERNET from whatever default pops up there. I would need to do a factory reset on the phone to confirm.
It's been a few months since I did my last swap with Visible. I'll be ordering another free A3 soon. I did a dry run and noticed some changes:
- The IMEI checker is improved and now accommodates checking iPhones. All of the specific models shown in their drop-down show models that are compatible with Visible as long as the phone is unlocked (unlocked iPhone 6 or later). "Other" captures everything prior to that (iPhone 5s or earlier). I checked a bunch of IMEIs and found that ones beginning with '01' (anything that is GSM only) and '99' (iPhone 4s and 5 for Verizon and Sprint) get a response that the phone is swappable. However, an IMEI beginning with '35' (iPhone 5s and 5c for Verizon or Sprint) does not work. I wonder why Visible is excluding these phones, even though they are not compatible.
- The $20 discount code that is currently in effect, SAVE21, cannot be stacked with the swap deal, so it looks like you have to shell out $40 at the outset. Perhaps Visible only deducts $10 upon actual activation when no discount code is used for the purchase (see my last post). Does anyone know?
- The cashback deals from TCB and Raku10 are now $20 for Visible, but it's unclear whether that only applies when you purchase a non-swap phone or bring your own phone. It's not clear that Visible swap qualifies for $20 cash back.
Has anyone ever sent in a swap phone that failed to be recognized by Visible? I activated around Memorial Day and I sent in a swap phone whose UPS tracking says it was received at their Fort Worth location in early June. Visible tried to charge me $79.99 + tax about 2 weeks later, claiming that the deadline had past for them to receive the swap phone. Fortunately, the payment method associated with that account is no longer valid. The payment dashboard on this account shows that the "Transaction Failed."
The line is still working and has a few more days to go. I suppose Visible might not let me renew without the extra payment and/or refuse to allow a port out. However, this was just a burner line that I needed this month for some travel plans that I was planning to let go of anyway, so I'm not going to bother contacting Visible to resolve the issue.
By law, phone companies cannot prevent porting out even if you owe them money.
The worst possibility would be having Visible blackball you for future activations. I know there are probably ways around most of this, but it might be worth following up to see if you can resolve it amicably.
Personally I would at least attempt to talk with them and resolve the situation with the avenues available regardless of whether I had the situation covered.
I noted this in the FreedomPop thread but I thought I'd post this tidbit here too:
Apparently, even though TextNow does not show up as a carrier from which you are able to port in to qualify for a Visible deal, TextNow showed up on the drop-down when I entered one of my legacy FreedomPop VOIP numbers. This theoretically means a TextNow port-in number is perfectly good to use for Visible deals.
Last I checked, starting a new line on TextNow is free if you have a 4G LTE Sprint phone and associated SIM card.
Question is: anyone know how to get port-out info from TextNow?
To port of of TextNow for free customers, you have to call TextNow.
Visible to lock phones for 60 days
Probably why their iphone 12 series phones have been out of stock. I imagine they will be back after they implement this.
Visible gift card offers now generally require 3 months of service to qualify. They implemented this change without much fanfare.
Looks like the visible lock has started as there is a link on each phone page to the 60 day lock period. No reports yet of this being true in practice. I hope they don't lock the swap phones too but I guess they will.
Locking swap phones will only matter if the Moto E somehow becomes eligible for swap at some point down the line. I very much doubt that the current swap phone - the ZTE A7 - will be locked. That is old inventory and I doubt it's worth Visible's effort to relock the phones they still have on hand. Furthermore, it's not like you can simply pop in a GSM SIM into an A7 and have it work right away - you have to use a force 3G app. Locking the A3, which had been available for swap until they switched it to the A7 - is also sort of meaningless because the force 3G app doesn't work on it, so you are stuck with Visible and Verizon anyway. Although I suppose Visible could lift those software restrictions and instead rely on straight locking/unlocking.
If I port number from Tello, shall I select "Tmobile prepaid" in order to get the promotion?
Anyone ever tried that? Thanks
I haven't tried it-- but I don't think you can 'game' the provider info. Visible will, and must, know the source of the ported number during the port process, even if you don't tell them. The submission may fail right away because the account number format that Tello uses does not match the format of T-Mobile Prepaid. (Usually on port request forms, selecting a specific carrier expects to see the format used by that carrier. PIN number format could--conceivably-- match between those 2 providers.)
I recently ported from Tello on their swap program. I selected "other." The order went through fine and I got my swap phone. However, I doubt that you'll qualify for any of the gift card offers.
I ported in from FreeUp and said it was from AT&T and got the promo.