Some Visible customers are now invisible after losing their accounts and phone numbers

You might consider Visible to be an experiment run by Verizon to see whether a completely digital wireless provider can succeed. Visible has no retail stores and everything including the purchase of a new phone (and Visible has all of the latest "hits" from Apple, Google, and Samsung) is done online. You can even arrange for a 15-day free trial without giving a credit card number.

Service is $40 per month but through various promotions that can be reduced to $25 per month. And if you can entice a friend to sign up, you and your friend pay just $5 for a month of service. So if you get 12 of your buddies to become Visible subscribers, for a whole year you'll be paying just $5 per month for wireless.

However, there is a fly in the ointment. On Reddit, some Visible subscribers are complaining that their accounts are being shut down without warning. As a result, subscribers are losing the phone numbers that they have had for many years. If there is one thing that these now invisible Visible customers had in common, they all were taking advantage of Visible's latest promotion.

This promotion allowed new Visible customers to get two months of service for $22 and a $200 gift card from certain retailers. Reddit subscriber lizhejerry84 wrote, "Transferred from Mint (2 months before my Mint term ended) on 2/3, trying to get the promo with 2 for 22 and $200 porting in credit. Today, 2/21, this morning, they cancelled my service with no reason."

But follow what happened next. The first Visible rep that the customer spoke with said that the phone number and the promo would not be lost. Visible promised to fix the issue in 4 hours and send an email when everything was settled.

But imagine the customer's shock when he received the email within four hours and instead of bringing happy news, it said that he cannot rejoin Visible. So he went to the company's chat platform to get his account number and PIN in an effort to keep his phone number. But the second Visible rep told him that "there is no PIN attached to a terminated account" and that if he wants his number, he needs to call the FCC.

As a result of this, during the 20 days that he was with Visible, he and his wife lost their 12-year-old phone number.

It would seem that most of the Visible customers who had their account terminated had ported over their number in time to receive the $200 gift card as per Visible's promotion. Some on Reddit came to the conclusion that the accounts were terminated so that Visible wouldn't have to hand over to these subscribers the gift cards that they were promised.

Others put the blame on the customers noting that the deal was for new customers only and guessed that these subscribers were trying to get a $200 gift card that they weren't entitled to. We will try to get some more information from Visible and when we get a response, we will update this story.

This has not been the greatest of times for carriers running promotions. You might recall that T-Mobile and Verizon were accused of holding back a $100 rebate that was being offered by Apple for those who followed certain conditions when pre-ordering the Apple Watch Series 7. Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman got caught up in the same issue.

Of course, Gurman, being a high-profile "personality," was able to get T-Mobile to respond more quickly than they might have for John Q. Public. As Gurman wrote, "In response to my questions, T-Mobile will contact customers via text who were incorrectly denied rebates and automatically process the promotion and ensure they are enrolled."

The issue with Visible is not exactly the same thing, but it is hurting consumers. And remember, Visible is owned by Verizon and has deep pockets. It isn't a small carrier seeking to save money by failing to live up to a promotion.