"You Are Roaming" Messages - Unable to make calls

[straighttalkvictim]

I should have looked here first....

StraightTalk, your service is like Longfellow's little girl with the little curl, when you're good you're very good, but when you're bad, you're horrid!

I brought two phones into the vicinity of a local tower and both had data service and 4G, but making a call garnered one of 3 results. Either the "You are roaming..." message, the "Call did not go through" message or the call simply disconnects. I called customer service and talked with them for nearly two hours about the issue with both phones (one at a time of course). The CSR's at Straight Talk have no clue what to do about it. I'm surprised they leave these posts here for the world to see.

Troubleshooting steps included:
sharing the IMEI/SIM Card last 4
Reboot
*73
Reboot
Escalate to Network folks (wait... wait... wait...)
The network is fine- it's your device!!!
Factory Data Reset
Reboot
Escalate to "my supervisor"
*****Supervisor means "rude person to get you off the phone" (The clock is always ticking with Straight Talk)
We are sending you a new SIM card.
here is your ticket number: xxxxxxxxxx
oh,another phone is doing it too?
We'll send a SIM card for that one as well as it most definitely had a simultaneous hardware failure issue.
Here's your ticket number: xxxxxxxxxx
have a nice day.

After looking through this thread, we carried the phones to another area nearby, rebooted and magically they're working again. Must've switched towers.

Get your act together, Straight Talk Customer Service. No customer should reset a phone when there is this much information on the internet about provisioning issues on between you and Verizon's network towers. No customer should have the issue mis-represented by you guys as hardware related when it's plainly related to an area/tower. You should have a resolution for this and know immediately how to apply it, or get out of the mobile network resale business.

I'm bracing myself for the "let's take this offline" message that I know will come shortly. Interestingly enough, I haven't seen a soul come back here and say what happened when the conversation was taken offline. If they don't disable my account, I'll update and put ****Update in the header. If it's disabled, no update.

[Cheri W]

I am also having the roaming issue. Have spoke with customer service and have done all of their fixes. user is a truck driver and needs to have access to all of the towers. please help correct this issue!

[ST - Mark]

Hi Cheri W. My name is Straight Talk Mark. Sorry that you’re having a problem. I will contact you directly with a private message. Thanks.

[tiersha]

I just got off the phone with Straight talk regarding their roaming.
If you make a call where they do not own a specific tower you are considered roaming. They absolutely do not bounce off of other towers like other companies...I was just told this. It costs too much for them to bounce off other towers that they do not own/lease. It alerts you to call a 905 area code number to purchase a roaming card. Funny thing is you will be unable to purchase this card, depending on where you are at. I thought roaming was dead and gone lol.
So I would like everyone to know that under Straight talk or any of their subsidiaries...they absolutely do not have a continental US coverage, they don't have coverage in all of Oregon and limited coverage in Wa. I know because over Memorial weekend I broke down near John Day and I was in roaming and could not call my AAA. I could call 911 and get patched through to my AAA but that isn't exactly the point.
Yesterday, 22 miles outside of Goldendale I went to make a call and the same thing happened. In the area that I was in, what if I was broke down in that spot...where the side of the road is barely 3', the side of your car is over the fog line and just barely around a corner and this is a busy section for semis...
It is such a lack of peace of mind that just because you have 2+ bars & 4g, does not always mean you will get to make a call or reach social media for help.
I've been a long time customer but I wander alot and this...will not work, especially knowing that I can't even get through in my own home state.

And their terms of service state: "Although there are no additional charges for using the Service while roaming domestically, Straight Talk does not guarantee your ability to roam nor the availability and/or the quality of Service" They tried to get me to call a 905 # to purchase roaming...what the heck is that? Like mamy of you, yep I am escalated also but no call back and I am filing with the FCC and changing carriers. I had service on my phone, couldn't get out and had I not thought of 911 I would have died in the desert next to a broke down car.

[ST - Larry]

Hi tiersha. My name is Straight Talk Larry. We need to take this issue offline so we can address it further. I will contact you directly with a private message. Please click on "New Messages" beside User Control Panel to view your forum inbox. Thank you.

[tiersha]

Larry, thank you for your response but as I have read through these posts, there is a long standing history of this. Additionally I am already aware of removing aim card, rebooting, resetting to factory ect and you guys reprogramming or saying you are reprogramming then admitting otherwise. I truly see no reason to take this privately. I am aware that you would want to for my act privacy but what I believe you may fail to recognize is that I am leaving your company and I really am filing an fcc complaint. I've already gone through customer service and no matter what I say you will say and ask and do the same things as I've already gone through and as, it looks like, most people here hAve already gone through, but to no avail. Why would I want to subject myself to the frustration of doing all the steps over again?

[lewis5305]

I to am having the same issue. I just switched to straight talk and can't believe the problems that I'm already having. I've removed my sim card and rebooted phone 3 times and it still says roaming and can't make calls.

[Shelly_ST]

Hi, lewis5305. My name is Straight Talk Shelly. Sorry that you're having a problem. Please check your Forum inbox for a message. Thank you.

[Frustrated unlimited]

My older phone worked great with straighttalk; but once I upgraded to a 4g phone, it says I am roaming. We have our business phones with them and in total, all 8 phones roam constantly preventing any calls or texts. When we finally reach customer service and they have us reset phones, it makes no difference. The older phones worked better. We regret leaving verizon as we hardly lost service and their customer support is much better. Yes straighttalk saves us money, but you get what you pay for

[Frustrated unlimited]

I have a Samsung Galaxy SCH-i545 CDMA phone that I ported over to the straight talk network. Ever since I ported it over I am having an issue with roaming. When I am in certain locations, every time I'm there my phone will connect to a tower that will not allow me to make or receive any calls. When I try to make a call it plays me a message like "You are roaming. To purchase a pin number on the american roaming network press 1..."

I've called Straight Talk customer support on this issue several times, and each time they "reprogram" something on my phone and spend a half our to 45 min on the phone with them. The last time the operator had me go stand outside the building I was in and reboot my phone. It reconnected to the ST network. I asked him what he changed and he admitted that he didn't "reprogram" anything, he just had me reboot my phone. Every time I go into this building my phone gets on the "american roaming network" and when I leave the building, even though there is 4G verizon coverage outside the door, my phone will not leave the "american roaming network" until I reboot my phone or go in and out of airplane mode.

The weird thing is that when I search online, I don't seem to be finding others with this issue. Which makes me wonder if its particular to my phone, etc. I just don't understand why ST can't change the tower list in the phone to have it not connect to the "american roaming network". I would rather have no service on my phone that have it look like I have normal service and be unable to make a phone call.

I will add that sometimes when this happens it says "extended network" on the top of my phone and sometimes it all looks like normal.

This issue is really annoying and I'm thinking about switching from ST to another service if it cannot be resolved.

SAME HERE