Visible cellular by Verizon $25 unlimited talk text and data.

PNW_Steve · 12-14-2019, 03:50 PM

Hey Everyone,

I came across this offering from Verizon that gives you unlimited talk, text and data.

I have been told that when tethering or using the hot-spot function you are throttled at 5 mbps. I have not run into that. It is a bit slower than on the phone but I have tested at 8-9 mbps while tethering.

The plan is $40 a month for one line of service. $35 for two, $30 for three and $25 for four.

We tried one of the "family plans" a few years ago and it didn't work out. I wound up paying everyone's cell bill.

This plan is different as each phone is a separate account. If someone joins my Party -Pay group we all enjoy the lower rate but each member is responsible for their own bill.

I have two slots open on my Party. If I find two more people to participate in my group we will all have $25 unlimited everything.

I currently have one phone tethered to a router and am sharing it among all of my devices.

Thank you Josh for helping me get off the fence and try it.

I will likely still carry my AT&T hot-spot as I am already finding a few spots where AT&T has better service than Verizon. However, it definitely has better coverage than AT&T overall.

Ping me if you have interest in this.

http://www.visible.com

brokedown · 12-14-2019, 04:27 PM

Hey Steve,

There's a section on Reddit for posting party pay groups/finding ones to join. Hillary got hers filled in about an hour.

https://old.reddit.com/r/VisiblePartyPay/

brokedown · 12-14-2019, 04:40 PM

Just to add some notes for people who may be interested in this service.

I've had it for about 1.5 months. At that time, the best deal they had on a phone was a $20 model called the Visible R2, but it was free if you sent in an old phone that was incompatible with their system. We just set up Hillary with their service and their phone selection has changed, they have two phones at the $99 price point that you can end up getting for free after ending in an old incompatible phone. She got the Visible ZTE Blade A7 Prime which is more or less the newer version of what I have. It's slightly larger but is a pretty big upgrade over the R2.

Hillary had a full price Verizon plan, so we were able to test the performance of Visible vs Verizon a few times. Visible was never faster, and occasionally was substantially slower, but whenever I had signal I felt that I had enough speed. I've done speed tests as high as 50 megabit, but that's not the norm.

Both these devices have wifi and USB tethering enabled. Connections to video streaming services like Netflix and Youtube may be throttled, but so far I haven't experienced it.

john61ct · 12-14-2019, 05:24 PM

I have a Nexus 6 (Motorola XT1103) that originally came with a Verizon ROM, so presumably originated from a postpaid account.

Any way to check the IMEI (ESN) to verify it will be accepted onto their network?

brokedown · 12-14-2019, 05:30 PM

Very very few phones with with their network, they have some special sauce on top of Verizon that makes them incompatible. Iphones with current software should all be compatible but android devices mostly aren't.

They do have an IMEI check you can do:

https://www.visible.com/compatibility

john61ct · 12-14-2019, 10:38 PM

Thanks.

If the phone is Verizon branded, it is compatible as far as the CDMA LTE bands go.

But if you buy the phone from someone who did not finish out their VZW contract or otherwise left in bad graces, often the phone can then only be used on one of the GSM networks, and likely the LTE band coverage won't be optimal there.

Some VZW-compatible phone versions are sold by vendors directly not through Verizon, some Google Nexus / Pixel and iPhones being examples, might require signing up as postpaid with VZW direct to get them to manually whitelist the ESN / IMEI.

brokedown · 12-15-2019, 04:17 AM

It looks like Pixel devices still receiving updates are likely to work now, they should have all received the carrier updates in their regularly scheduled OS updates.

My Nexus 6p boot looped a while back and the "fix" both severely impacts performance and also prevents me from installing any updates without getting boot looped again, but my understanding is that updated ended in January.

It's more than just band support, any device compatible with Verizon has the required hardware... Purely a software difference.

PNW_Steve · 12-15-2019, 03:03 PM

We got the $19 R2's.

They are OK phones. I liked my Blu $49 better.

I am going to use it for a while and decide whether or not to upgrade my phone.

Drew Bru · 01-20-2020, 08:58 PM

Steve, how are you liking the service? We're thinking about ditching our Verizon unlimited hotspot plan, and so we're shopping around for other options.

Sehnsucht · 01-20-2020, 09:18 PM

Been trying to get signed up for Visible for a couple of weeks. Don't expect any semblance of customer service. I tried to keep my old number - no dice. They dragged their feet so long that the offer I initially signed up under expired so I lost out on a free tablet and a $100 prepaid card. Then the new phone got lost in the mail but they still kept counting down the two weeks for me to return my old phone in spite of this. And you can't talk to a live person, just an AI via chat. So what you're getting for that low low monthly price is a further erosion of our basic humanity in the name of lean business operation for profit.

Oh, and BTW, those Visible branded phones like the R2 are Huawei devices which are the ones the federal government has banned because their firmware is Chinese spyware. Just FYI.

brokedown · 01-20-2020, 09:30 PM

The R2 is a ZTE phone, that's just untrue.

Hillary and I both signed up with no issues and have referred several friends who also did fine.

The customer service is not an AI, it's a person you can chat with, or you cal call. We've done both. Amazon are the ones using an "AI" for level 1 customer service now.

Sehnsucht · 01-20-2020, 10:59 PM

You are correct, I misspoke. I knew it was one of the companies the government banned for spyware and Huawei was the first one that came to mind but my fault for confusing the two.

My parents also signed up with no problems although my mom wasn't willing to trade in a $1,000 iPhone for a free $29 Visible phone which I understand. What I'm trying to figure out is if they can't use my existing phone in their network anyways, what's the point of my sending it back to them? They're probably reselling it back to Verizon for a refurb anyways and getting more for it than they're offering me.

And still, can't get ahold of a real person, their techbot support just keeps spouting back crap I already know and then when it reaches the end of its script says goodbye. If you can talk to a real person then for the love of god tell me how you did it because I'm ready to cancel and I haven't even gotten the phone yet! If they are this difficult now then I want nothing to do with them when I have an issue down the road.

brokedown · 01-21-2020, 07:22 AM

most phones don't work with Visible because they do some weird stuff on top of the radio. All current iphones can work, if they're not locked to a different provider's network. Android compatibility is increasing as their network support code makes it to more devices, in theory any Verizon compatible phone is a software update away from working with Visible.

The trade in phone thing is just a promotional thing, they aren't necessarily doing anything useful with the phone you send in. You can send them any old phone as long as the IMEI comes back to a phone that won't work on their network. I sent them a 10 year old phone with a broken screen.

The $29 phone is pretty low end, they upgraded it to Android 9 and I found it to be clearly lower performance afterwards. I since upgraded to the Blade A7 Prime which is the next generation of the device they used for the R2. If you had asked me 2 months ago I would have had positive thing sot say about the R2, it's small, it's light, the battery life was fine... but the update to Android 9 100% changed my opinion.

As far as talking to a person, you have to ask them to call you. The live chat on their web site or in the app is a real person, but let's be fair they have a bunch of canned responses they can add to the chat with a click rather than typing.

We had an issue with Hillary putting her order in wrong and were able to have a manager call us to get it taken care of.

They're still new and they aren't perfect but overall I'm very happy, especially when it's time to pay our bills. My bill was cut in half (from metropcs) and Hillary's was cut by 70% (from Verizon).

banman · 01-21-2020, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brokedown

most phones don't work with Visible because they do some weird stuff on top of the radio. All current iphones can work, if they're not locked to a different provider's network. Android compatibility is increasing as their network support code makes it to more devices, in theory any Verizon compatible phone is a software update away from working with Visible.

The trade in phone thing is just a promotional thing, they aren't necessarily doing anything useful with the phone you send in. You can send them any old phone as long as the IMEI comes back to a phone that won't work on their network. I sent them a 10 year old phone with a broken screen.

The $29 phone is pretty low end, they upgraded it to Android 9 and I found it to be clearly lower performance afterwards. I since upgraded to the Blade A7 Prime which is the next generation of the device they used for the R2. If you had asked me 2 months ago I would have had positive thing sot say about the R2, it's small, it's light, the battery life was fine... but the update to Android 9 100% changed my opinion.

As far as talking to a person, you have to ask them to call you. The live chat on their web site or in the app is a real person, but let's be fair they have a bunch of canned responses they can add to the chat with a click rather than typing.

We had an issue with Hillary putting her order in wrong and were able to have a manager call us to get it taken care of.

They're still new and they aren't perfect but overall I'm very happy, especially when it's time to pay our bills. My bill was cut in half (from metropcs) and Hillary's was cut by 70% (from Verizon).

Pardon my (tech) density -- in short: this service is super cheap but you can't call out? You have to txt somebody asking them to call you?

brokedown · 01-21-2020, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by banman

Pardon my (tech) density -- in short: this service is super cheap but you can't call out? You have to txt somebody asking them to call you?

No, his concern is they don't give you a phone number to call for customer service, and you have to ask their reps to call you if you want to actually speak to a person.

The phone service works as expected, and is super cheap.

john61ct · 01-21-2020, 12:40 PM

All these MVNO companies have terrible customer service, they would not be cheap otherwise, if you expect that stay away, stick to the four primary carriers.

Consumer Cellular is the only exception,

fantastic CSRs

but they use ATT network (or TMO don't do that)

PNW_Steve · 01-21-2020, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drew Bru

Steve, how are you liking the service? We're thinking about ditching our Verizon unlimited hotspot plan, and so we're shopping around for other options.

We moved two lines of service from another carrier and it was simple, quick and painless.

Overall I am pleased with the service. One exception is that I wanted to get rid of everything AT&T and replace it with Visible. Due to some dead spots in the Verizon service in places that I visit frequently I will be keeping my AT&T hotspot.

Sehnsucht · 01-22-2020, 09:37 AM

So I finally received my Visible phone and started attempting to follow their activation instructions. First thing to know is you'll need Wi-Fi access BEFORE you can actually activate so either keep your current phone with hotspot capability, or be at home (those that have one) if you have home internet service, or head someplace that offers free Wi-Fi (and enjoy a burger while yo wait for the process to complete). You have to go to the app store (Apple or Google) and install their Visible app which has the activation function in it. Not sure if you have to keep the app to remain activated but I can try it and find out.

The issue I'm dealing with now is that some of my biz apps don't seem to want to install or function properly but I don't know if that's due to the Visible service or device compatibility issue. This is why it would help if they had a real live help desk agent and not simply text or Twitter support.

brokedown · 01-22-2020, 10:06 AM

Your SIM should have had limited data service enabled before activation, having wifi should not have been necessary... I used mine for about 2 days before i realized it needed to be activated... but I was able to install apps, do email and facebook.... the only thing that didn't work was the web browser!

john61ct · 01-22-2020, 10:24 AM

Their app is required, since their capturing your data and selling it to consolidators / advertisers is what subsidizes the lower cost of service.

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