Wind Mobile

You get what you pay for. If you want terrible coverage, vile lying staff and apauling service this is the company for you

I have had very poor service from Wind – impossible to connect for support help. Drop outs, blank outs of connection — pure crap. You need to make some serious changes or lose all your business.

Rude staff and terrible customer service. I had a problem with my phone and it took 6 months and 6 visits to get a replacement.
Also, they rarely answer the phone and don’t have voicemail set up. Go anywhere else.

In a word… disappointing. Details… phone coverage is spotty, is off/​on in various locations across Vancouver and particularly unreliable on Langara campus. Staff appear to be interested in customer service, however company ‘policy’ keeps them from being able to be proactive or helpful. Some service issues have been escalated and the outcome has not been satisfactory. Other issues may relate to problems with a new model Samsung which may require the phone be sent into the manufacturer for assessment. WIND will not provide a loaner phone of similar quality & capability (their loaner phone is a simple ‘flip phone’), but will continue to charge the regular monthly fee. Additionally WIND will charge extra for a loaner with messaging capability. This appears to be a $$$ grab. Their business practices do not live up to their advertising. Unfortunately I may need to take issues to the CRTC.

The Worst Reception & Customer Service Ever!
Wow, an impressively bad experience being locked into a Wind Tab with this company. I was enticed in by the $ 40 unlimited data & calling but ended up paying off a dead phone that couldn’t be used anymore and that Wind would not do anything about. Add to that missed business because of dropped calls, very spotty reception and various mysterious problems with their phone. Believe me their cheap deals are very very expensive in time, frustration, and ultimately paying off a inflated wind tab just to break free of them once and for all. It is a shame that a company/​underdog like this can’t make up for their lack of reception power, etc, by at least retaining some customer loyalty through reasonable service standards. It is not the employees fault and there never seems to be any supervisor or manager available to address issues. Everyone there seems to be powerlessly following their script to the best of their ability but no problems are ever actually addressed. It seemed marginally better in Toronto where I originally signed up but here in Vancouver reception and service are worse than a bad joke. Don’t let that one star up there mislead you because no stars are merited here!

Service is absolutely unbearable. Here is couple of things you need to know if you are in Greater Vancouver area.
— Loosing service in Vancouver down-​town on daily basis even though I am within the coverage area, all of the sudden it goes to either «emergency calls only» or «wind away» and you have to manually set up mobile networks setting back to Wind. and that is DAILY!
— No Service on the west side of the Stanley Park. For those who don’t know Stanley Park is in the very center of the city. If you have any kind of problems biking or roller-​blading early morning or in the evening when there’s not a lot of people around you will not be able to call for help.
— I get «the number is not in service» message to numbers that I call every day for months and some for years. Have to retry and in some cases it won’t work until I enter it manually in the dial pad.
— Frequently, several times a day I get «doesn’t look like the call can be completed at this time, please call our people at 611» message and that is the same «frequently used numbers» story as above.
— Wind Mobile does not have call display feature. They don’t mention it to you when you sign up, They also don’t mention that their «unlimited data» HAS A LIMIT. They don’t turn it off but they make it so slow so it is totally useless, when you exceed the limit you actually feel that your mobile data has been turned off.
— Missing calls, at least 5 out of 10 calls. I never had a phone call and it is not in the missed calls log but I get a text message that I missed the call and I need to check my VM. People are constantly complaining that my line goes into VM right away where I know that I haven’t been using my phone.
— Customer service is absolutely unexceptable. It feels like CSRs have absolutely no training and can only read of the script often wintout even understanding what they are reading. 90% of the time I just give up and get off the phone just because I feel that I am not getting anywhere and not getting any help after trying to explain to someone with very poor english what my issue is over and over again.
I live in Vancouver west end and use Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. I tried my best to keep emotions out of my review and just to give your the facts that combine my experience with Wind. Hope it helps.

This is not a review of the store but rather of Wind in general.
I travel a lot to the U.S. for business so I was attracted to the Wind plan of unlimited North American calling and roaming for only $ 50.
But the network is brutally slow! I live and work downtown and I can’t tell you how many times people would call me and it would go straight to VM despite it showing 5 bars on my iPhone.
I would try calling out and every 5^th call would fail. Sending texts was difficult and they can’t do iMessages!
The cellular network is equivalent to 2G speed. It was soooooo slow. Twitter would take forever to load.
The savings was not worth it. I’m now back to paying $ 100 to $ 125/​month with Rogers but my phone actually works.

Even with 4 staff in store they are quite busy so you can expect to wait for a little bit. The people there are friendly and helpful, especially Mark and Callus who have helped me. This is the location to go to if you need to change your sim card like I had to do. They have a fair selection of cell phone cases and are in a great location to people watch while you are waiting for the next free staff member.

Switching away from wind to Telus was the best decision I ever made. I was a loyal customer to wind for at least 5 years and always suffered from poor cellular service but I sucked it up as I was a student during those years and their cheap plans were attractive. Most of their wind stores are not connected to the HQ so if you had any concerns the people at the stores couldn’t even help you or could be bothered by your questions. I switched out the day my plan expired and there must’ve been a mix up because they charged me $ 200+ for cancelling even though my contract was done. When I complained they said they’ll send me a cheque in which they did but it was only for $ 7! It’s too late now to follow up but I definitely felt my loyalty was wasted.
Tip: if you lose your SIM card, buying a replacement from this location is cheaper. Sorry I don’t remember exactly how much it cost

I love the plans, the reception is a little spotty and data speeds are a little slow but it’s really cheap and need to save money. Wind isn’t perfect but it’s worth it to save the money plus I use a lot of data and Wind has the best data plans. I almost never leave the dt area so coverage isn’t an issue for me

Yeah, i’m just a bandwagon: walked by the other day, $ 39 for unlimited everything but get this: US roaming too! Wished it wasn’t so packed as they only had 2 staff with about 8 ppl waiting, no kidding. at this month plan, no wonder they’re losing $$$, with this high Robson rent.
Pretty big store for a Wind… beside the Cupcakes store ;)
plenty metered parking all around.

This isn’t a review for WIND mobile. Their prices are phenomenally cheap, and that’s great.
This review is just for the service I’ve received at this location, excluding the one representative that actually knows how to do her job.
Anyone who knows me will know I’m not a tech-​savvy person. Technology confuses and enrages me. So finding out that I couldn’t return my phone because there was a dent on the corner I hadn’t noticed when the phone had not been working properly for the week I’d had it? Made me pretty furious. Bordering on tears «I-​spent-​a-​months-​worth-​of-​rent-​for-​this-​shit» furious.
Furious enough that I refused to buy another phone, or even a protective case for my brand new 700-​dollar purse weight, lest I drop another cent on this store.
My SIM card was swapped with the hopes that it would fix my issues. Either that or they could send it to somewhere far away and I’d have no phone for 4 – 6 weeks. A half working phone is better than no phone, right?
The representative failed to copy over my contacts.
To be fair? I failed to ask. After all, it’s my job to know how your phones work, right?
No wait, that’s YOUR job.
I called the store when I got back to work and realized I had ZERO contact information on my phone. They said it wasn’t their fault/​problem and I would have to take *more* time off work to come in and get my old SIM card back. Lucky me, they would refrain from throwing it in the garbage until I could make it back.
When I got there, they said I would have to swap the contact information over myself, and me being in a hurry I just left it at that.
I’m still working on it.
I am hoping to figure it out soon.
I don’t think I’ll be buying another phone from WIND mobile.

It is hard to beat $ 30 per month unlimited talk text & data. Very, very hard to beat. When I called Fido to cancel and switch to Wind, even the guy on the phone was like «yeah, we can’t offer anything that competes with that.»
Of course the main downside that comes with this is the poorer coverage. Actually in the lower mainland I’d say it’s really good, lots of improvement over the past few moths/​years and always getting better. But if you leave the lower mainland you get switched to other carriers’ networks and it’s quite costly to use your phone. So this is more for people who generally stick around Greater Vancouver. Note that they offer a 2 week free trial if you’re concerned about coverage.
The staff at this particular location was very helpful. They have a big selection of phones and explain their plans really well.

Wind really can’t be beat on a few fronts:
— no contracts
— great 6 – 9 month rebates when you sign up
— unlimited text in Canada AND the US
— unlimited calling in Canada
— service (my Android battery died after a month and they replaced it no problem)
But what they lack is coverage. There are MANY spots throughout their «home» zones that actually register as «away» which means I end up getting charged for a text or phone call. They have also made several mistakes on my bill and one month didn’t send it at all which means I forgot to pay blah blah.
My point is they are still very new which means slightly less dependable but with better deals. If you plan on staying in Vancouver proper you won’t have a problem. But if you move around a lot, it may not be the best deal for you.