I've been a Net10 customer since February 2009. I bought the phone for my teenage son who doesn't text much and only makes/receives a few calls a week.

A few months after purchasing the phone and adding minutes/time, the phone stopped working (with plenty of mintes and days left on it). My wife called customer service who determined that the phone had a bad SIM. They agreed to send us a new SIM, but would not refund the days of service lost while waiting for the replacement SIM. When the SIM arrived in the mail (about 3 days later) we called customer service to get the phone activated.

A few months later we experienced the SAME problem and went through the same procedure with customer service (TWICE: once to report the problem and have it diagnosed and again when the SIM arrived to activate the phone).

Today, Oct 24, 2009 (less than 30 days since the last fiasco) the phone would not allow anything but emergency calls despite the fact that there are 38 days left on the phone and over 200 minutes remaining. Once again customer service determined that we needed a new SIM. After about 50 minutes on the phone with Net10 (including 10-15 minutes on hold before an agent even picked up), my wife put me on the phone. I waited while the customer service rep put me on hold repeatedly and only took me off to thank me for holding and to ask me to hold a few minutes longer. When I asked to speak to a supervisor I was told that I would have to wait until the end of the call. Then the agent told me that she was having trouble with her computer and couldn't complete the service until the computer issue was resolved. I explained that we had been connected for over an hour and that I had called on a line where I was paying by the minute and asked if I could call the agent back directly or if she could call me. She explained that she was unable to call out and that I could only call back on the 800 number and that I would get a different agent. I decided to wait for heer to fix her computer problem, however after another 5 minutes on hold, I was given an "Intereaction Number" and told that I must call back and give the agent the intereaction number so that they could continue to resolve my issue. I called back and waited on hold for over 10 minutes! When the agent picked up we were immediately disconnected. I called again and got through after waiting on hold another 10 minutes. This time the agent on the other end said that they couldn't hear me. While I was switching phones, the agent hung up on me.

Needless to say I am fed up with Net10 and will look for another pay as you go service for my son. In the meantime, I will do everything I can to expose Net10 for their poor quality equipment (3 failed SIM cards in 8 months) and outrageously bad customer service.