Jitterbug Flip Reviews

I purchased a Jitterbug Flip phone for my 84 year old mom who has some dementia. Her Verizon phone broke after many years and all the other flip phones under Verizon were too difficult for her to learn. The Jitterbug was easy for her to operate because of the simple options and large print HOWEVER! She got this phone in May 2020 and it worked fine for the most part until mid August. After mid August for no apparent reason the phone went into "NO SERVICE" mode! To this date it's still in "NO SERVICE" mode.

Updated on 08/05/2020: If you have trouble with a Flip phone don't count on any sort of trade-in or apology from this company. We ended up buying an Alcatel phone from Verizon and now my husband is without the Five Star button that we counted on for his security. Verizon switched its towers to 5g and left the Jitterbug Flip phone behind. End of story.

Flip phone will not pair with BlueTooth. Great call tells me that some vehicles don't work. Did not inform me when I signed up. Replacement battery was not of same quality as original. I can live with that but not being able to use BlueTooth. We are talking about basic functions here.

I have an old flip phone with Jitterbug. Just a simple phone to make calls in an emergency. No camera. No texting. Just a simple phone. Unfortunately, after having this phone for many years, the case is falling apart. So I wrote them, on their site. I've written them 3 times. But I've gotten no response. I'm not even sure anyone is there anymore. I had my credit card hooked up to them. It's also hooked up to Amazon and Spectrum. And suddenly, my credit card company informed me of a $500 charge on my account! So they closed out that card & sent me a new one. Since no one has ever gotten in touch with me from Jitterbug, I have a feeling that they used my credit card for themselves. I will not give them my new card number and I think I'll just cancel them out & try **!

Updated on 07/22/2020: I would like to update my previous review. This review is no better than the first one. After my sister contacted Jitterbug directly and explained the problem that we are having with my mom's not working and after they tried to troubleshoot it from their end, they decided that they were going to have to replace the phone because they could not fix the problem. I purchased the phone for my mom on 2-29-2020 and have had nothing but problems from day one. It finally got to the point were she could not make outgoing calls or receive incoming calls. So I thought that by replacing the phone maybe we would have better luck. Wrong....When the phone arrived it was not a new phone, it was a used refurbished phone that they replaced my new phone with. This is just wrong.

Voice quality is very poor, sounds muffled yes and no controls for call history deletion and voice messages saved /delete don't work properly. Monthly cost advertised is misleading. I bought this phone for my senior mom, save your money better off with a medical alert button more dependable.

Told me to stand outside to reception, salesman lied and said had same reception as Verizon. Wouldn’t release my number and held it hostage. Wouldn’t give me my money back, gave Verizon lady a hard time and said she was lying. Very muffled when talking, frequently didn’t get incoming calls and texts. The only thing it didn’t have on the back was Mickey Mouse. And had to shut the phone off every day to use it. I would like your lying response back to this.

I got the jitterbug flip for my 95 year old father. It had various problems, the most annoying was "No Service", it would come and go. I am told Great Call uses the Verizon network which is a strong network in my area. Every member of my family has a phone on the Verizon network and have never had a network/connection issue. I would call the jitterbug phone from another Verizon phone in the same house and the jitterbug would not ring as an example. My father has a 15 year old LG flip phone on the Verizon network and we never had a network issue. I called customer service on these various issues and the usual standard answer was I don't understand. The phone has multiple problems what don't I understand it doesn't work.

Difficult to hear the user's conversation---very distorted. I got this phone for my 95 y/o mother since her facility's room phone's volume was too low for her to hear. When we talk to mom, her voice is so distorted we cannot make out most of the conversation---it's not the volume it's the distortion. This is not serving us well during the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine---for one thing, mom probably has only a few short months left due to a terminal illness. As soon as we can visit the long-term care facility, I will replace the J-bug with my older i-phone; I should have thought of that to begin with. I would steer clear of this phone.

This phone is not at all what I expected. I bought it for my husband who wanted a flip phone and needed one with large buttons.

My mom is older and only uses the phone to talk to friends and family. We got her the Jitterbug because it advertises the larger buttons and easy for seniors to use. The buttons are larger but the phone itself is awful. Most of the time you cannot hear her when she answers the phone. She has to call you back in order to actually hear her speaking. The phone fades in and out, it tells her she has missed calls from me when I haven't called her. We have called customer service several times and they replaced the phone once and have told her to be patient service will be better in a few days...which is a joke. Her best friend is having the same issues with her Jitterbug phone. Both ladies pray they don't have an emergency before they get new phones.

I bought the phone. It seemed wonderful until you add contacts. The phone does not update in alphabetical order, but in the order you enter it. I can not see deleting all of them to re-enter in the right order. Plus I have received several calls and texts 5 days later when I needed to know right away. For having the coverage that they are supposed to have it really stinks to the heavens. I was lucky enough that the doctors called the landline and left a message because I could have lost my organ transplant due to great calls inefficiencies.

For many months my 92 year old father was paying $.35 a minute for each minute over his 600 minute plan. The plan is auto billing from his bank account. I called when I discovered the problem and found that Great Call had changed from 600 minutes to 1000 for the same price and would make the change. Why was my father not notified of this change/opportunity? Why wouldn't Great Call just make the change for him automatically? I think the answer is obvious. My father has dementia and I take responsibility for not catching it sooner. Nothing aggravates me more than elder abuse and from a company that caters to the elderly I am saddened and feel he was violated for profit. Buyer beware.

My mother is 98 and legally blind. She has a VERY old LG flip phone, and I sometimes have difficulty with our calls. May just be operator error, but I thought a simple new flip phone was sure to offer superior sound for both of us. I did thorough research (or so I thought) and decided on ** and their Doro 7050 flip phone. I purchased it at Target and the customer service rep was awesome! Set the phone up quickly, told me there was a 30-day return guarantee, set it up with a temporary number but assured me I could easily change it to her old number when I had the information about the old carrier. A very pleasant experience.

Wow, where do I start. I bought the flip phone from for my 80 year old father who has very bad eyesight due to a degenerated eye condition. It’s obvious to me that the designers of the phone do not test this phone with people who are visually impaired. Using the confusing buttons was not an option for us since at some point my father could not see them. I then downloaded the voice recognition version of the phone and was excited that this might make my fathers life easier. Although the premise of how it works is nice (no buttons to find and push), it was a huge disappointment. The voice recognition software is very poor with about 8 out of ten tries resulting in the wrong name being recognized. The sheer frustration for my father was excruciating to watch. Now I’m left with poorly designed phone with no refund available.

I bought four of these phones, consecutively, for my 95 yr old dad as they had good features: large print, emergency button, simple operation. The first one worked perfectly for about a year until it failed. The 2nd one worked for about 8 months but it had " no service" to " poor service" connectivity. Great Call uses Verizon cell towers. At my dad's senior living community my Samsung smart phone and my husband's iPhone have 2 bars of connectivity, but they work. My dad's phone could connect about 10% of the time, if he was in the lobby. But not in his room!

I purchased this phone for my elderly parents 92 and 96 yrs old. It was purchased due to the large buttons as well as the 5 star and link app. Unfortunately there is a significant number of spam texts and calls. As a result the phone now is hardly ever turned on thus rendering the link app essentially ineffective. Other reviews have similarly indicated the unfortunate spam issue. Similarly since the unit is off the 5 star function cannot be instantly used. The device first has to be turned back on. While visiting my parents this past week I also noticed the repeated fully charged signal when I turned the phone on and kept it in the dock. My parents keep the device in the dock to always ensure it is charged. So again they shut the device device off to avoid the repeated fully charged indication. Basically these annoyances really impact device/service ratings.

I rate this a zero. We just bought this phone for my dad last week. The speaker quality is so poor that we’re having to drive to see him today because we cannot understand one single word he said when he called. Is it just the Great Call service or is the phone?

Bought this phone for my mom. She loves the phone, however cannot stop the spam call and texts she gets. Like 40 a day!!!! Called GreatCall, there's no way to block. NEVER had this many on her old service.

I have been a customer of Jitterbug twice in the last 7 or so years. The first experience was hard to beat. The phone and service was better than what they advertised. I only left as my employer required a smartphone. Bear in mind also that at one time in my life, I was a supervisor that manufactured flip phones for the Japanese.

Flip keeps chiming when fully charged and plugged in. I just got the Jitterbug Flip phone for my father. I haven't even given it to him but had his old number transferred over. When charging it in the cradle, the phone continuously sounds a loud (as I have the ringer volume up as he is hard of hearing) chime. Jitterbug recommends keeping the device in the cradle and keeping it charged so it is ready but if it is chiming all night, that is unacceptable. Now I don't know if I can get the phone returned and the phone number back to Verizon. How can this not have been addressed. I called customer service and they said company was "aware" of the problem. Geez.

The inability to increase the audio to a level of understanding the caller's conversation despite additional speaker help was a deal breaker. Was advised that a replacement would have the same deficiency, wow. What a shame in that the phone has everything we wanted in a phone except the audio which negates everything including the wonderful customer support. The phone must be returned and the process has begun requiring our paying all postal fees and being advised it will take 5 to 6 weeks for a refund, why we ask this long and told they must examine the phone to assure the phone is not damaged, it takes 5 weeks to check out the phone?

Just sharing the experience my Dad has had. We both liked the idea of him having a user friendly phone and being able to call for help if he fell, etc. His complaints are that even on speaker the sound is not loud and he has to hold the phone close to his ear. Also, he says it's difficult to make a picture larger to see the detail. That could be user error or not. Unsure. However, my main concern as his daughter is the scammy fees and add on costs. There is no unlimited text/talk/internet for one set price. Each of them costs a fee and then even more money to get more internet time. He ended up not getting the emergency call system because of the increasing cost.

Had an early model which worked well, and the battery held a charge for approx. 6 days. The Company sent a Newer Model (which I did not request), and deactivated my original Flip phone. The "New" Model will not hold a charge for more than 3 days - even when turned Off! It also takes approx. 3 hrs to recharge! Called about this and was told to replace the battery - Not Cheap, Yes they charged me for it! Did not resolve the problem, in fact it got worse! Now if it holds a charge for 2 days I'm lucky! You can't travel anyplace in the USA without carrying the charger with you and God Forbid you travel to another country (You're out of Luck at getting it charged)!

May seem like a small problem but it is very large for a 99 year old woman (my mom). Caller ID on her phone has stopped working. She has been told to hang up if she does not recognize a number/person because of all the scams out there. She cannot tell it is me calling. So I can't contact her. My brother tried to associate a ring tone for family members but that does not work either. Jitterbug support acknowledged the problem with caller ID but offered no workaround and no fix date. It's been two weeks. This is not a good phone or company for the elderly! It's all marketing with nothing behind it.

I wish designers had experience with elderly people with beginnings of dementia. Telephone is not simple if an inadvertent press can disable a phone or make it not ring out loudly. First, the manual is incomplete. It lacks a full description of the menus. By the way, menus are of no use to people with dementia. They can perhaps open and close the phone, and dial a number. That is about all. A slide on/off button clearly labeled would be good - where you can see that the phone is on or off by looking at the button or by feeling it.

Purchased a phone for elderly mother's use. Everything checked out for area coverage so we proceeded just to find out they have issues with network and devices! So, their service might not work for you. Ok, so now,what? Initially everyone is very helpful trying to "troubleshoot." In our case it just meant much wasted time. On the phone back and forth (you never get the same person to see the process through) and time mom was without a phone, returning one phone to be sent another and.... trying again. Only to conclude this isn't going to work. My next disappointment was how again, everyone is scripted to be helpful and understanding and assure you they will seamlessly help with returns and refunding you, but I guess if you aren't going to be a regular customer you kinda get put on the low priority.

I have bought 3 phones beginning November 29, 2018. I was told when I added the other 2 phones that I would get free activation fee since I was already a customer. That was a lie. Also, I was told I could ask for Tootie and she would help me. That was a lie. Had a bad mix up with telephone numbers getting changed that shouldn't and other mistakes made when I bought the 2nd phone.

I purchased this phone for parents because of the simplicity of its functions. There are two major issues. First, the ringtone volume is too low. Even at maximum, they rarely answer the phone because they can't hear it. Even myself and my brother found it difficult to hear. Also, if one of your contacts call you, only their number appears on the screen. We all know how scammers target older people. I've always told my parents to not answer the phone if it's someone they don't know. They can't remember all of their contacts' number - who can!! So there is no protection from scammers - they answer their calls not knowing if the call is from a scammer or not. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND.

Basically, I love this easy flip phone EXCEPT for this major issue. EVERYONE tells me my voice is muffled! I have called and complained about this. I have to end all calls early because the other person can't really understand what I'm saying because it's so muffled. I cannot keep this phone, unfortunately, if this continues!!! It's a major flaw. What is the point of having a phone where no one else can hear a clear voice??

Have been a GreatCall customer for many years. Bought my Dad the original flip phone which finally just wore out. Upgraded his phone to this new flip phone that specifically advertises LOUD QUALITY SPEAKER. What a HUGE disappointment!! The sound quality is absolutely HORRIBLE!! My Dad is slightly deaf, so he prefers to use the speaker option. I can't even hear it and my hearing is fine!! Even the sound in the actual earpiece is ridiculous. Called GreatCall immediately after activation. Come to find out that this is an ONGOING PROBLEM with the phone. Apparently something to do with "the software". It's disgraceful they continue to peddle this phone KNOWING it's faulty!! Shame on GreatCall! Will be returning phone and switching to another company/carrier ASAP!

Jitterbug Flip Phone has broken software that makes it so callers cannot hear you on the Jitterbug. We got the phone in 6 months ago and are slow to acknowledge the fatal issue. We were also told that after 30 days you cannot return the phone for refund. GreatCall says in the comments here just call them to "resolve" the issue. And no you cannot return phone for refund after 30 days. The Samsung Smartphone works fine. But you sure do not want the Jitterbug that they know does not work.

I bought a Jitterbug flip phone for my senior citizen mother and within a few months it has multiple problems including occasional 'brick'ing with inability to charge; failure to indicate ring tone when calling; a diagonal line distortion that now crosses the entire LCD internal screen. What are my options with getting Jitterbug to do something about this? I have no confidence in the phone's reliability for her when she needs it.

Ordered the Jitterbug on their 30-day "trial" basis with a temporary number until I decided to transfer my husband's number over. Trying out the phone at home was difficult to hear and had a bad connection. My husband didn't like it and I sent it back with-in about 15 days. I received a refund back (because they charged his card $120.04 in the beginning (in case we decided to keep it). But the credit was minus $12.53. Not only did I pay for shipping it back to them, but they charged me for their shipping cost (hence the $12.53). This was never told to me when she "sold" the phone. Just beware and ask about all costs!

Updated on 10/15/2019: My first review of this is from early September. I had the same issue that continues to happen with the garbled speech with no resolution....appears still no resolution. I did cancel the contract and sent the phone back. I have tracking number that they received it back on 9/16, but still no refund. I sent an e-mail to the person I'd been working with - every e-mail takes 2 days for a response. Today, I got response that they had no record of receiving it back. I have tracking number showing the time and date received. I was waiting as they indicated could take 20 or 21 business days to process. They have now had the phone back in their possession for a month!

Purchased this device a few months ago for my 90 year old father. He needed a device with larger keys and ease of use. This device has the larger keys but is confusing to use. It doesn't operate like other phones. But the most disturbing thing that I encountered is that it does not ring very loudly even on the Max setting. Since I live several hours away I was not able to observe him using the phone prior to the 30 day refund period, now we are stuck with it. Customer support said that the phone rings no louder than any other phone, but I find that it does not ring as any that I tested it against. I will be returning him to his pre-paid phone.

TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE PHONE AND SERVICE! My parents (83 and 87 yrs old) wanted a simple phone for emergencies. We bought the Jitterbug Flips and have used Great Call for 4-5 yrs. Everything was fine until my dad's phone died. We got the newer flip phone in early June and it still IS NOT usable. I cannot understand a word he says. Called CS many times and their comments were, "We will send a software update out", "blow in the speaker to try and clear dust out", "we will escalate your update", "you will be priority and phone should be updated by (day)." Well, after several "phone should be updated by.." the phone is still useless. We are currently facing Hurricane Dorian.

I bought a Jitterbug Flip on 8/4 for my 80 yr mother w/ dementia. Was drawn by the easy to read functions and in particular the voice command feature. It has been nothing but a nightmare since. I had to return the phone, per customer service, phone not functioning properly. Received second phone, seemed to work for about a day. Trying to call the phone is a hit and miss deal. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. More NOT than than anything. The calls usually do not go thru and I'm told to contact CS. I need the phone w/ me to troubleshoot. Phone is 30 miles away. So I have to wait until my next visit to call. Voice command is also dicey. When I ask it to call so & so in my phonebook. I'm told there is no such person listed.

I bought this phone for my husband who has a hearing aid. Even when I have it on speaker I have a hard time hearing and my hearing is excellent. I've called many times (twice today) and they say they are updating the software but nothing changes. We love everything else about this phone but volume is the most important for my husband. Look for another service for him. More than frustrated and disappointed.

I purchased a JBug for my 70+ y.o. Mom. She wanted something easy to use for emergencies. In some ways the phone is easy to use, in other ways it is very frustrating. #1. The buttons are VERY STIFF and hard to press for arthritic hands. You would assume they would be soft touch but they are hard to push. #2. Phone has this crazy "yes/no" system of asking you if you want to do something, but it's not always easy to determine what is it asking you. There were times she wanted to delete a text message that the phone would just take her round in circles and she would be back at the main menu and it still showed she had unread messages. The only reason we got the phone was because of "Adam's Father" (can't recall his name) who advertises it. He seems very trustworthy. Surprised he would lend his rep to this inferior product. There are certainly better basic flip phone available, such as CC, which we now use. Thanks.