Republic Wireless Reviews 4,320

I have been a Republic Wireless customer for around 10 years. I auto-renewed my annual plan back in January 2022, which give a discount if a full year of service is paid in full. After the switch to Dish, my phone stopped working around my house as "the cellular network is not available for voice calls." I called Dish customer service, and their answer is to "upgrade" to the same plan that I am currently on and paid in full into January 2023, since a new sim card is needed for my phone to work after Dish took over Republic Wireless. However, their same plan is more expensive than I already paid in full for. I'll get a credit for any unused money under my old Republic Wireless plan, but my annual plan will end prematurely and I'm forced to switch to a new more expensive Dish monthly plan. The kicker is when I asked to cancel and get a refund of my unused annual balance, Dish told me no. I'm a lawyer, and this is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. I had an agreement with Republic Wireless last January for a year of service that I prepaid for. Now, my phone does not work. Dish's answer is to change over to a new, more expensive, monthly plan for the same coverage; and, they won't refund my unused balance if I cancel. I did Facebook RW's support team about this, and there is absolutely nothing that they are willing to do, nor will they honor my prepaid annual contract pricing through next January.

My wife and I (and I added my Dad) have been trilled with RW for years. Since DiSH took over, it has nothing but problems. I had issues when I tried to get my Dad a new phone. DiSH was making changes that took about 4 weeks! Then my Dad passed away and I tried to cancel his account and they gave me the run-around for days. I finally stopped all payments. For a couple weeks, we've been unable to get voicemails. I called just 20 minutes ago and was told our phones can't get voicemail... but we could get newer phones or up[grade our plans! DiSH is insane. Next they'll probably say you can't make phone calls. It's a phone!!! And they don't warn you. They are the worst. I'm moving to another service ASAP!!!

So sad that the current situation since partnering with Dish. Can't call Canada anymore, visual voicemail keeps vanishing, plans for new customers are connected to being Dish customer ?????, prices are so high. Used to recommend ALL the time and hope I can do so again but not presently! UPDATE - Lizette - why would I continue to reach out to Customer Service when I, and other customers, keep getting the same answers? Like so many others, we switched to Mint after so many years with Republic.

I am a Republic Wireless BETA customer (ie a customer for a very long time) along with my wife and son. The transition to DISH is a disaster to migrate from 3g to 5g as: (1) ONLY a 2 day notice - May 30th to terminate cellular service (Sprint CDMA) - was provided to me as a customer. RW should have known sooner and provided customers a heads up.
(2) Forced upgrade to a new phone while on vacation without cellular service. Ordered phone on JUNE 2nd and was to receive $50 credit (none given to date).
(3) Charged $21.44 June 2nd when I ordered new phone for monthly service fee - supposed to get $5 credit being a BETA customer. Charged again when I initiated service on June 27th. Again, no credit for the phone rebate $50 or $5 monthly credit - now for 3 months. (4) Dealing with OS call center that does not have a clue on rectifying customer issues. They only memo the "Back office" who promptly loses ticket requests. 10 hours lost and running calling them many times for support. Took 4 weeks for them to initiate voice mail on my number.
They did not respond to "unlock" my phone so I can move to another carrier.
If you enjoy a pencil in your eye, sign up. Otherwise, look for a better option. Caveat Emptor.

Updated on Monday August 8, 2022
I received a response to my post to contact RW "Cares" on social media by a RW employee to get help. I'm not on FB but joined just to find a path forward to getting help. No link was provided by the RW person for FB and I only see reviews on other dissatisfied legecy customers. My next path will be to dispute charges on my cc company to bring RW's back office to call me and resolve my issues. RW cannot charge customers for services not rendered, not should they claim they have "happy customers" when they misbill, double bill and wear you out on long hold times trying to get CSR's who are not empowered do resolve anything, but enter tickets to the back office who becomes MIA.

Update: I left a message on Republic Wireless (Google Republic Wireless legal to get number) and left a message indicating my issues and that I was going to file a FCC complaint. I got a call back from corporate person and she was very helpful once she understood what I experienced. I received my credits and I will keep RW until it becomes a billing issue again. I only called the legal number because I disputed my overcharges. RW suspended my account on Sunday before labor day without a call or email. I managed to get my account reactivated, but still had issues until I received a call back. If RW wants to be a viable company, they need to be responsive and allow customers to communicate with them by email or billing dispute address. Neither exist yet. Verbal requests with verbal agreements are not legally binding so RW can decide later not to honor them or modify terms without notice. That's why they do not provide you to write them. Since the Dish acquisition, it appears RW completely changed to verbal tickets versus ones customers submit in writing. Gone are the days that RW business model was created. FYI I am a customer from the original BETA program.

My girlfriend and i were with rw for about 4 years. We had no problems with them until this year. Earlier in the year randomly text messages wouldnt be received. I'd come home from work and my girlfriend would say "why didnt you respond to my text," and i'd say "what text?" Then a few months ago we both started having trouble calling people. Then the phones weren't recognized my the network. We called many times to customer service and they never fixed anything. The last lady we talked to said we had to upgrade to a different plan and get new phones. Everything was way past frustrating. We ended up transfering to visible. So far so good with them. When i tried to transfer my phone number from rw to visible that was a huge headache. I think it had something to do with changing my address. They keep all of you old info so when i put in a port in request from visible it would always get rejected because of the wrong zip code. I called customer service on both carriers for 2 months and it didnt help. My girlfriend who never changed her address when we moved, her port in went through in 3 seconds. I ended up having to text 100 people to tell them i got a new phone # and had to call so many businesses to switch it over with them. Funny thing is when i text a lot of those people, they were telling me how they text me months ago and i never responded. I missed a lot of texts/phone calls with rw towards the end. Glad that headache is over now. Anyone considering rw, beware.

Beware! We have had Republic Wireless for years. When they changed ownership, our service was immediately interrupted. They began billing us for the full year, multiple times a month. When we called to resolve it, they denied that they were duplicating charges, even though we could see charges coming out of our account. We spent hours upon hours trying to resolve it. When we tried to change phone companies, they suspended my account, even though I had already been charged for several years of service. So, I had no phone service and couldn't change over to a new company. It's not worth your time or money. Aside from the disruption of not having service, we still don't know if we will be refunded the extra charges.

Been an extremely happy customer with Republic Wireless for over 10 years now. Since the take over by Dish their service and customer service has gone to complete crap. Run away and do not ever deal with this company. Nothing but bait and switch, and up sell up sell.

It's a shame that I must give this review even 1 star because it deserves a big fat zero. I've read a bunch of reviews all with similar experiences to mine. I was a satisfied and loyal customer for years and ever since DISH came into the picture, I have had nothing but trouble. I ran away from DISH with my cable and now can't do the same with my cell service fast enough. I find voicemails from calls that never registered and for which the phone never rang. Often, I don't get the voicemails either. Last week, my service was automatically updated and now things are even worse, if that's possible. My phone has been rendered essentially useless. Calls don't connect. Calls are dropped. People on the other end complain that I keep breaking up and they can't hear me. To hear voicemails, I now have to dial a number that takes anywhere from 1-3 minutes to connect. And that's if it even does connect. Sometimes, I have to keep calling back over and over before my voicemails will play. And, best of all, get this ... ALL my old voicemails are just gone. No warning that old voicemails would just vanish. I had a few voicemails from my mother, who recently died, where I could hear her voice and now they are just gone. Do you not think that I would have made an effort to save those voicemails if I had received any sort of notice that they would be deleted? When I called Support to help me retrieve those old voicemails, I was repeatedly referred to an article about "How to Save Voicemail Messages." I tried to explain that I don't need to save voicemail messages that no longer exist, but it was not getting through to the rep on the phone. I do feel bad about abruptly hanging up on her, but I just couldn't take it anymore. My advice: DO NOT sign on to ANYTHING that is associated with DISH!!

Been with Republic Wireless for about 7 years and have always been happy with their service....until their recent merger with Dish. They just updated my service yesterday and visual voicemail disappeared from my phone along with all my stored voicemails. Called tech support and was walked through re-setting up VM, but that did not restore my VM's...they are gone for good. Now, I have to dial into VM to listen to all the robocalls instead of just deleting them when its obvious what they are from the number. The second lovely feature they gave me was the non-stop notifications on my phone that the carrier is "not supporting voice calls". I get a half dozen of these a day. All tech support could do was to offer to sign me up for one of their new plans. When someone wrecks my phone service, signing up for more headaches is not the direction I want to go. It was great for 7 years but not so great now. I'm shopping around for a new carrier.

Response to Republic Wireless Reply: You may be shocked by this, but not everyone dives into social media so they can be sifted like wheat and merchandised by Meta, Twitter and many others. I have no social media accounts. Life is too short to live it on a smart phone which is exactly the reason I just want the basics to work without spending my time fixing problems created by improvements to my service. Additionally, should not your tech support line be the definitive source for problem solving?

Good to read the other reviews and know it is not just me. Customer for 4 years. After the take over of Dish, started having problems with some pictures/texts coming through. Got online and found out that Dish was part of the picture. Called them, told I needed a new plan & sim card. Got it and all seemed okay for a few days, but then had same problem. Called their number and tech had me typing stuff into APNs. In the next week more problems, new tech said it was a Motorola problem and called them. They could not solve the problems. Now group texts won't go through. Not receiving pictures. Going from bad to worse. Have been considering getting DISH as a TV provider but will refrain. After reading all the reviews, I guess I will have to go with another provider.

Update: Decided to get a new phone via Republic Wireless to try to solve problem. Was told by Andy today I could get two phones ON THEIR WEBSITE RIGHT NOW AS PROMOTIONS. I researched the two phones, called back, have talked to 2 different people who told me the promotion ended two days ago, that I could not get them, and they said their website has not been updated !!!!!

Update again: Now told I can't get the phone because I am not a DISH customer, even though I have been with Republic Wireless for 4 years.

My wife and I have been ripped off by $64.71 by the new Republic Wireless by Dish. We both had prepaid 12 month 4.0 plans before the Dish buyout. The current Republic website states that “You can move to one of our 5.0 plans on your existing account at any time during your billing cycle.” Also “You will be credited for the unused days of your legacy plan.” In addition “You will be credited part of the prepayment amount based on your activation date.” I had 31 days left in my prepaid plan and my wife had 50 days. Our transaction history on their website show credits of $21.54 and $43.17 respectively. They refuse to give us these credits due. After three extended calls to customer service, we have been told that no credit is due for all kinds of nonsensical reasons. So Republic by Dish has ripped us off for $64.71 and we apparently have no recourse. We have had Republic Wireless for the past 10 years and loved it. But now that Dish has ruined the company, we will be switching to Mint Mobile in the next few days.

I have been a customer of Republic Wireless for years and have had a good experience until the were purchased by Dish. When Dish took over I lost my cell service and texting when I was in my home, which is in a valley. Previously I had been able to text and call with my wifi when in my home. After this change to Dish, I could only call and text if I left home where I could receive a good cell signal.

To remedy the situation I called Republic by Dish. Their first tactic was to try to get me to buy a new phone. I have no desire to do this. The practice of buying a new phone every couple of years is terrible for our environment and the people who are exploited to mine the minerals these electronics need.

For a while I lived with it like this. I then contacted them to ask about putting in a new SIM card. The person who helped me this time said yes that would work. I got the card, put it in and activated it. After that, nothing worked. I couldn't even get service when I left my house. I called to tell them this and the representative told me it would take a few days to work. So I waited. It didn't work.
I looked up some information myself and found on line that my phone won't work with their 5G service. So I called again and was told it would but it doesn't.
I then decided to switch to a different company. Now I have new layers of hell. I have put the new company's SIM in and activated it. Still no service. So I called them. They said the problem was that Republic by Dish was not releasing my number.
So began the back and forth first calling Republic by Dish and Consumer Cellular, the new company. Consumer Cellular kept telling me I was giving them the wrong information so I would call Republic by Dish and get a different set of information. Then I would call Consumer, give them the info. It never worked. After around 8 calls between the two companies, Republic by Dish told Consumer Cellular that the release was on hold. First it was until 8:45pm that day. Then noon the next day. I just called and now they are saying midnight.
All of the people I have spoken to have been friendly but none of them actually knows what's going on or what they need to do to switch my service.
In addition, I'm not even sure that the new company, Consumer Cellular, will be able to offer me service here in this valley I live in. I told them that it could be a problem but the first and fourth person I spoke to assured me I would have service here. We'll see. Since I'm in cell service limbo I may never know. For now, my phone is a small computer that can get me to the web but it provides no service for calling or texting, which is a provider problem. My phone itself has an option to use wifi when cell service is not available and it's turned on, so what else can it be but a provider problem?
I'm so angry and frustrated. Republic was great until big fish Dish came and ate it. We actually have Dish for our TV service and I'm so angry with their inadequacy on the phone service, I'm considering quiting the television service as well.🤦🤬🤬🤬🤬

Bad experience, multiple representatives told me I was receiving a refund for $150 that I never received. Lots of time wasted. Reason for cancelling was that the phone/texting service often did not work despite living in an area where the service should have been fine.

Update: I contacted them just as Carrie P. suggested below, and they did not help.

I have been a republic wireless customer for more than 5 years and never had an issue with them until they were bought out/combined with DISH. Since that point it has been nothing but disappointing. Setting up the phone to work was nothing but a pain. Then after finally getting the phone working, if you run out of mobile data, you are no longer along to send and/or receive picture and group messages anymore.

Update: After Republics response. I consulted them on their social media and I stand by my statement even more then before. Their solution was to have me go to a more expensive plan rather then try and fix the issue I was haveing

Where do I start? Save yourself time, money, and frustration and go with a different phone carrier. I joined Republic wireless a few years ago and have been fairly happy with them until Dish bought them out. Now the service is horrible! My phone stopped receiving group messages so I called RW and was told I needed to upgrade my plan and get the new 5 G sim card. Trusting them, I agreed to do that. Then once I got the sim card, I still had problems. I couldn't receive pictures, group messages, or texts with emojis. I was told that would resolve after 5 days after activating the new SiM card. When the 5 days were up my phone still didn't work properly. My husband's did, but mine did not and we have the same phones that are only a year old. It was at this time that I started to read reviews and was horrified to see that many people did not receive money back. Previous to the phone issues (back in March) we paid for an annual plan for two phones. They refunded this credit to our RW account not our credit card we paid with. Because I was worried we would entirely lose the money we decided to keep my husband with RW until this credit was used up since his seems to be working (I hope it lasts!). And I canceled my line as it had not worked for weeks. Then I waited to be reimbursed for the money I had paid to upgrade my plan. No reimbursement. I was worried this would happen because of the reviews I had read so I called and asked them to see if they would refund me my money that I paid for the upgraded line. I was told that it would automatically be refunded. It was only refunded to our RW account which I didn't want because we want to be done with them as soon as possible. My new carrier is half the cost with the same benefits and WAY better service! Anyway... After repeatedly calling and wasting a bunch of time I was reimbursed a partial amount of what I was owed. And then today I was told I would be refunded the rest of what I was owed. I guess we will see as I have been told a lot of things by this company that ended up not being true or coming to fruition. My biggest issue with this company is the fact that they cannot be trusted! I should not have had to waste a ton of time to get my money back when they have a 30 day money back guarantee! Here's to the next year of suffering with this company we don't trust so that we can use up our account credit from our annual plan, due to the fact that we can't trust them to return it if we canceled both lines. Save yourself money, time, and stress and just go with another carrier.

Follow up - I followed the instructions given and PM them on Facebook. After chatting with them for more than three hours due to them constantly delaying their responses all they offered was a repeated sales pitch. No apologizes, no offer of a refund, no help. They discontinued their primary service without a word and have continued to charge me. Don't walk run away from this company. I was a loyal customer since 2016, I really regret all the times I recommended this service.

I AM EXTREEMLY DISAPPOINTED.

Call quality and reliability is now WORTHLESS!

I would NOT RECOMMEND Republic Wireless to anyone at this point.

I used Republic Wireless for a couple of years and WAS HAPPY until the company was acquired by Dish.

I contacted their support team to deal with the issues and was hung up on three (3) times.

AVOID REPUBLIC WIRELESS!

I WAS a very happy Republic wireless customer for five years until about a month ago when I could no longer receive MMS photos.
I called RW and was told I was on the old plan and needed to buy data and get a new phone as Republic was going off wifi to data.
I am switching carriers.

There was no response to support emails, so I had to call in. Call forwarding quit working on the old plan, so I upgraded to the new plan. Call forwarding still doesn't work ("SIM card error" even though everything else works), and support can't help and tells me to call the manufacturer of the phone. Also, there is no more RW app, which stinks, and that's where call forwarding used to live. Now you have to do it in the phone app. Also, it is extremely cumbersome to add more data because it has to be done through several clicks on the website, and it makes you log into the website every single time.

Because of the lack of any useful response for 11 days from Republic Wireless about their termination of my service, after 13 years with Republic Wireless, and with 5 months left on my prepaid yearly account I decided to change service providers. I set up to transfer to Google Fi and after 2 days the number has yet to port. Is this another example of the lack of service from Republic Wireless 'Care" team?

The only suggestion I receive was offers to upsell me new service at four times the cost plus the expense of new phones.

It seems like Bait and Switch to me!