Is Fonus a Phony Phone Company?

Been a customer for 1 month and no complaint here. Yes the service and website looks and feel like a startup, but for 30$ a month on something new, you need to give it a try. I have a usa number, unlimited mms, sms, calling. Able to roam on MULTIPLE carrier, Bell, Rogers, Telus in my area and its working great. You might be throttled after 22gb of data. I think its a fair amount of data ( its not a home internet replacement, its a phone!!!)Its prepaid service, i was glad i bought 1 month and no regret so far.

I am a “few months user” of Fonus. The customer service is great since each time I reached out to them, I got my problem solved. Do you know why the phone bill in Canada is so expensive? That is because there are only a few telecommunication companies in Canada. And the business is monopolistic here. So the more start-ups, the better for users.

I live in alberta and am trying out Fonus for my first month on two different mobiles, and I have a mixed review. Due to my current circumstances, in which I am unable to have a wifi modem and router for an unknown period of time, I just needed as much data as I could get with functioning call and messaging features. I agree with everyone who has commented basically in one way or another. The website is glitchy. I pull errors frequently and at times I get a pure black page or the app gets stuck in a loop. I’ve found it common during my set up, for the app and website don’t indicate to you what is going wrong. You don’t get instructions from any type of message, but instead the buttons just don’t function. So you press enter, and there are no haptics or tapping sound if you have that enabled, and no action occurs and you are left not knowing if you’ve lost your connection or if your page is frozen, and you sit there like an idiot trying to tap the same button repeatedly at different pressures and durations in hope of an action which leads you the next step. Then when you contact the chat, you are generally either sent a link to follow or told that there is something wrong with your account and that they will take your issue to the dev, saying they will reply to you in a few hours. So in one of these cases- I waited, desperately checking my email (by switching to another another activated sim) to see if they have emailed as promised. Patience lost out, as I’ve been in this process for 12 days now and I get back on chat, to be told that someone else’s address is now registered to my sim so that is why I couldn’t move forward. Okay? So that’s pretty odd. But they rectified the situation eventually and I . But the request for porting that arrived, was moved into my spam messages so I don’t see it and you only have 90 mins to verify or you lose your chance. I didnt see it in my spam.until the next day. The problem is, this message simply tells me I’ve been sent a message to verify but gives me no way to verify. I tried texting YES back at the next attempt but that didn’t work. So I ask for a manual porting. They say they are on it. My provider says they’ve received nothing. Next attempt- I ask for my third porting and my provider gets an error. Tells me to get it manually ported and call them back as soon as the porting request begins. I wait for an email to say the porting request has been sent and nothing comes through so I go about doing the things one needs to do in their days as collectively- I’ve been doing this on and off for hours at a time for 12 days. I get home a few hours later from running errands and I’ve missed the email and my provider no longer has anything on their end. So I attempt to get to the bottom of what the actual problem is… my email notifications are on but I’m not receiving any notifications for these emails as they come in. Nothing in my pull down notifications and no number on the email icon. And nothing in my mailbox. But then I get on chat and say thety should be more accurate in saying that porting your number can take weeks not days. Then “Bruce” from tech support starts telling me there is no such thing a spam text messages, which he is incorrect about. Not every platform has it but I use an app that does separate spam text or mms from other less suspicious numbers, Then when I tell him my provider is either receiving errors or nothing- and say that I’m not receiving messages that are possible to verify he starts sending me screenshots of the emails they sent me. And saying yes I did receive these emails and starts fighting with me blaming me that my provider is getting errors or something? You know- like hes flipping the script aggressively on me. I’ve just explained I am going through cancer treatment and that not having my phone activated with my proper phone number is becoming a big problem as I am missing medical calls, and basically have to carry around three phones ar all times hoping these G.D. porting requests are going to show up sometime on one of them when I’m not asleep, and my chemo causes excessive fatigue, so that’s a bad match for the situation.
Just as an example, I had a text from a friend come in five hours late. So if I get the porting email five hours too late, my provider is shut down for the night and I’ve lost my chance AGAIN! So we are going into day thirteen after Bruce has “caps lock yelled” at me and blocked me from the chat, yes really he blocked me from the chat because I told him I haven’t been receiving messages I could respond to and that my provider was getting errors or nothing and that their emails weren’t getting to me, or not in time at least, and I try to explain that after being on chemo once already this year, before a double masectomy and radiation, I’m now on chemo a second time- I’m worn out. I’m trying to get this “guy” to understand I fall asleep while I’m sitting up in the middle of the day, I can’t really control this and going 12 days in my condition without a properly functioning phone isn’t really optimal, thinking maybe he’ll try to do the porting when he says hes doing it instead of hours or days later. So he blocks me from the chat. I try to contact “Anne” the other symbol for a rep, and tell her Bruce has been very rude and that this needs to be figured out already, she tells me that Bruce has already explained everything to me and blocks me. So now neither one will talk to me, there is no one I can call or write to becsuse “Bruce” and “Anne” have decided i dont deserve their time to explain why this isn’t working, other than showing me screen captures of automated messages I was sent sometime in the last 12 days, that didnt arrive on time on my end, or were not showing up at all on my provider’s end and i’ve waited 12 days to send and receive calls and messages reliably again, and spent 12 days patiently dealing with having to try and figure out this messed up process, involving someone else registering to my sim, not getting my calls and getting tons of errors (which I tried to show them through screenshots before they blocked me).I’m about to lose all my 2FA accounts registered through my phone number because I can’t sit here forcing myself to try and stay awake for another 12 days to get a request I can’t respond to again, I’m going to lose my number of 14 years and my accounts, and then need to change my number with every specialist and government agency and lawyer i deal with, just so I don’t lose my sanity. So- if you don’t want to port… Try out the company! Someone else might be registered to your brand new SIM, but that can be worked out. However, if its mandatory that you keep your number the same- because otherwise you will be missing your next apt with your oncologist, your next round of chemo, and access to all of your accounts, I suggest you find some company who doesn’t lose their sh*t on customers and block them for no legit reason.