Is Fonus a Phony Phone Company?

Few days ago, Fonus issued a press release claiming to be world’s first global phone carrier. The company is offering unlimited data, calling and texting for only $30 US per month. Roaming is also free in 40 countries. But before you get your hopes too high, Fonus may not be a legitimate company.

Fonus Website is too Simple

Fonus has a very simple website, fonus.me, and the simplicity of the site makes the company look illegitimate. The website has no company address and contact information aside from a contact form. A Whois search reveals the site is hosted on Wix, a free website maker.

The live chat feature has no real human behind the system, only another contact form to leave a message. The social media link leads to a Reddit page.

fonus reddit page

As for making payments to the company, the site does have a valid security certificate issued by Sectigo RSA.

The website currently allows individuals to order a SIM card, there is no mention of how they sign up for a monthly plan.

A legitimate company would provide an address, a phone number or at least an email address. Fonus provides none of those.

Complaints from Others

To be honest, the deal offered by Fonus is a pretty good deal. So, many people did jump in and ordered the plan from Fonus website. Unfortunately, after the order placement, the confirmation email received had no useful information. Yes, it is too early to comment whether this company is real or fake, but if you are thinking of buying their plan or SIM card, please be careful and wait a bit longer.

When you deal with a company with limited contact information, you are risking losing your money in case the company simply disappears. Keep in mind, Fonus is just a few days old. A website and a domain name do not make a company legitimate.

There have been cases where some users were refused refund when they raised concerns with the validity of the company.

If you dealt with Fonus in anyway, I would like to hear your side of the story. Please use the comment form below to share your comments so others may benefit.

13 thoughts on “Is Fonus a Phony Phone Company?”

  1. Hey guys… First, sorry for my english language, i’am french speaking from (Quebec Canada).

    I receided my sim on may 22 and i had activated this on may 23. One hour later, i reboot my phone et everything work, phone call, text message and data. For now i can’t say if data is unlimited.

    Details:
    – In Quebec Canada and at this time, Fonus work on Rogers network.
    – Phone number is from New york and i can’t get one orportint one into Canada Local.
    Consequence, anyone who call me is long distance.
    – Unfortunately, in my sector, Rogers don’t have enough tower and Fonus don’t work on Bell or
    telus network. I live in the countryside, probably Rogers is better in other region or in town.

    For those who say “it doesn’t work”, it’s because they haven’t tried it. Understand, if a french is able to operate fonus, anyone is able.

    Try it before you speak for nothing

  2. I’m sorry, JB, but I’ve been following the Fonus story and that’s simply not true.

    The SIM “works” because it is an AT&T card. Fonus is an AT&T reseller. It cannot roam in 40+ countries, data is throttled after certain amounts of usage, and you will never have the ability to have a Canadian number because AT&T cannot provide that.

    Found has failed to deliver on almost all of its promises. The fact that people who ordered in November are, at long last, getting their SIM cards in late May/early June does not mean that this is the service that was paid for.

  3. 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.

  4. Eugene Robitaille

    It makes about two years this article was written. Is there any long term Fonus Customers who can confirm the quality of a Fonus service ?

  5. 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.

  6. The service is a little glitchy. Sometimes I have had to reboot my phone in order to make a call after leaving home. It does seem to work as advertised. There are no bells and whistles that come with the Fonus app and is is not the least bit customizable but it does work. You get what you pay for. If you want a full service provider then expect to pay full price. Fonus comes no where near to charging what a full service provider charges so don’t expect it will be perfect. It is good….and sometimes good is good enough

  7. 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.

  8. A Scam company. I have used it for 1 year.
    1-I highly suspect ( 99.9%) they sell customer information to scammers and random people would keep calling me to verify my personal info. That would happen once a month almost.
    2- The service stopped for a month and customer representatives did not even acknowledge it and would give random suggestions. After I contacted them 10th time they accepted that their service was off and noone could call me for an entire month and they did not fix it and did not care.
    3- It was impossible to port my number out. I tried 25 times almost and finally, they gave up and let me do it. Do you want proof ? Go to your account and look for your port out info and the page will give an error and you won’t be able to view the port out info. It’s all part of the ID and money theft plan. They won’t let you go.
    4- I could not delete my account after I transferred my number and they were unresponsive to the emails. Proof? Try to go to your account and delete/cancel your account. You will see that the system won’t let you do it and will direct you to an error page.
    5- To sum up. The reason this company exists is due to cartel and monopoly in mobile providers in Canada. They charge outrageous bills for mediocre services and that is why people sign up for this company. But this company provides Canadian citizens sensitive information to the hands of scammers.
    6- This company must be sued and banned in Canada. It’s an illegal scam company with illegal operation practices.

    AT YOUR OWN RISK!

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