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Lively (formerly GreatCall) is the leader in connected health for active aging. With health and safety solutions for older adults and their family caregivers, Lively’s innovative suite of easy-to-use mobile products and dedication to customer care helps aging consumers live more independent lives. Products and services include Jitterbug Flip and Jitterbug Smart phones, the Lively Mobile Plus medical alert device, plus health & safety services Urgent Response, Urgent Care and the caregiver Link app.
Reviews 267
khs mn
Aug 24,2023Lively's phones are absolute garbage. I lose service at least twice per day. Whenever I contact customer service they try to convince me that I am doing something wrong.
lisa lisa
Jul 26,2023Bought the phone for my mom (she's 83). Never works unless you turn if off then back on. Service is spotty at best. I thought these phones were for the elderly... Most Unreliable Phone I've ever had.
RocketRancher
Jul 15,2023If you want to make an outgoing call, you have to Power off the phone, wait 10 seconds, then turn it back on. . . EVERY single time, for EVERY single call! This has been going on for a year now and customer service tells us that constantly turning the phone off and on is the fix. Also, Voicemail always shows 1 message but there's nothing there. Don't get this "service" or buy this phone for seniors. It's unreliable and I doubt if most can make it work.
Sandra Burke
Jul 11,2023Rude employees who won't listen but yells over you. I had paid over phone yet no one ever said I was charged $5. Till I called and rude twix who didn't explain all of sudden data shot up, Sent email and still no one cared to help a customers. Hope they all choke soon. Two reps told me to turn off wifi and being dumb I did and thats when data shot up per new carrier and I even told them I was told to use it, not honest company.
C. Smith
Jun 14,2023Purchased the Jitterbug 2 Flip Phone and the 19.99 plan for my sister who is in a nursing home. This phone was supposed to be simple and easy to use but it is not. I set my phone number up for 1 touch calling and the phone keeps dropping the 1 touch number from the contact. This phone is a rip off. Called on 6/13/23 to have phone disconnected but my credit card was charged for another month on 6/12/23. Was informed that Lively will not give me credit for June-July service because I was on autopay. I have used autopay on several other accounts I have over the years and have always received notice that my credit card would be charged but Lively charges you and then sends you an email. I am a senior and my sister is a senior and it is a shame that so many companies choose to rip senior citizens off. Congrats to Lively for being one of these companies. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY
Professor Lugnuts
Apr 28,2023I purchased a Jitterbug Flip2 at BestBuy based upon AARP magazine and Lively website noting that the phone was capable of voice texting. This is only partially true. You can compose and send a text using voice but you cannot have inbound text read to you. Upon calling their help desk, I was told to turn on speech within accessibility options. This is basically a screen reader which seems to only work on menu screens and sub-screens but, not once you are into the text conversations list.
Mani
Apr 26,2023I have had service for elderly family members for about a year. The Jitterbug flip2 phone is okay, but you really need to understand its capabilities and menu settings. For instance, you can hide Alexa, and basically everything on the main menu just having phone, txt, pic and nothing else. You can access this through settings accessibility, then go all the way to the bottom, where it says hide menu items. I learned this from a customer representative that was really good and went out of her way to explain the options and set up the phone correctly. This made a world of difference. Unfortunately, I have called before and have gotten some representatives that you can tell are frustated and not helpfull at all. This really kills the company hands down. I had a problem with the phone was running slow for some reason. Took the battery out restarted it still was running Super slow, almost to the point that it was nonresponsive and unusable. The representative just told me it had to do with the net work, and they had no control of it. I told her it seemed llike it was a firmware issue. Basically disagreed and left it at that. I almost canceled the service and junked the phone. Fortunately, when I called back to find out about resetting the phone, I got the other customer representative who walked me through updating the firmware, resetting the phone and hung on to make sure all was working correctly. in addition told me about the features i mentioned before and helped me learn about the setting. What a difference it makes who you get, they are all over the place over there. They need to do some training or reevaluating, managers, representatives, or some thing but they're gonna lose out on a product that you can't find anymore which is a simple flip phone designed for elderly. The ringer, the cradel charger, you can update contacts for the old man from the website. you can get a human rep, stuff that is disappearing fast that no one else has and I feel they are going to lose it if they don't get their stuff together. FAST. Just look at the previous readings here. I thought I should take the time and write a quick review, cause I am happy with service NOW.
Gary
Apr 02,2023The device would randomly make loud noises at all hours of the night waking my father up. One time it screamed as loudly as a smoke detector. I phoned the company and they claimed it just needed a software update, which they installed at the time. It did not fix the problem and the company tried to tell me that the device wasn't in the charger properly. It was in the charger because the charging light was flashing. When it was in the charger the app on my phone for it claimed that it wasn't in the charger when it definitely was. Once again their answer was that it needed another software update until they saw that it was just recently updated. All in all the entire lively experience was a costly frustrating experience and the help line was way less than helpful.
E C
Mar 04,20231. New flip 2 phone would not "auto-connect" on initial power-up 2. After few minutes phone screen automatically said to call service number, which I called, and placed on wait for 7 minutes. I started my called at 5:53 pacific time - time stamp. My number ends with 4085 if anyone at Lively is interested. 3. At 6:01 I was disconnected. No one greeted me. I was just cut off. 4. I called back immediately, and received automated response that service hours were closed as of 6:00 pm. 5. I had dinner, and I am writing this review on the same evening at 6:57 pm. 6. Tomorrow I will return the phone. 7. As a physician who works with the geriatric population, I will now discourage my patients, family and friends from using the Jitterbug phone system due to very poor service. 8. Our seniors, more than any other population, need good, patient customer service. Poor service is an insult to our seniors who need help the most.
Nanci
Feb 09,2023Scams. Misleading. I called to downgrade a data plan that we never use and the supervisor tried to upsell me to more data! They charged us $211 to upgrade the software, recognized the error when I called, and still attempted to upgrade the charges. Terrible terrible service. Poorly trained staff.
Terry C Wise
Feb 04,2023First, it's a great phone and my mom, who's never had a cell phone before, picket right up on it. (Flip or Jitterbug.) However, we've had no luck getting her phone number transferred with excuse after excuse. Now the deadline for her landline to be turned off is near and her number she's had for 50+ years may be lost. But most concerning to me is all the spam they made her listen to when she called and that, despite saying "no" to all the questions, she ended up with charges for services she didn't want or need. It's been a challenge and she is stressed to the max.
Rhonda
Jan 29,2023I first purchased two flip phone ones with medical alerts and two fall buttons for my folks. They both learned how to work them…very easy…they are in their late 80’s. They stopped working on Jan. 6 and were sent flip phone twos…hard to work…nothing like what we had initially ordered. Hated them! Note…Fall Buttons were purchased AFTER the recall for the fall buttons….Lively already knew they did not work and would not keep my elder parents safe. On the 6th of January their flip phone twos stopped working and my elderly folks had no phone service….I took my phone…which did not have urgent care… to them…as they don’t live close by…so they would at least have a phone. Then mine stopped working….after being told only the flip phones that had emergency response button were not working. One lie after another. This went on and on….they ended up sending phone after phone….none worked. Finally, the 20th of January I had enough of empty promises….now we are all with Consumer Cellular....much better. I had been with jitterbug for 20 years and was treated like s___!
Bkeepr A
Jan 25,2023In January 2023 Lively made a system change that caused my 96 year old mother's Lively Flip Phone to stop working. Lively replaced that simple, helpful phone with a "new and improved" Lively 2 flip phone which is completely unsatisfactory for her. The new menu is no longer simple, nor large enough text for her use. It requires far better vision than she currently has, and too many button clicks for any action to be considered simple. Alexa is no help for her. The old, pre-upgrade Lively was perfect, and she was happy with it for years but this new software makes this phone worthless. I see from other people's feedback that my mother's situation is not unique. The Lively 2 flip phone may now be better for younger people, but is completely useless for many disabled or tech-impaired seniors.
Gary
Jan 18,2023First, phone service is advertised $20 monthly. Every bill I received was $30 monthly. When I enquired bill was 50 percent more than advertised and asked for explanation at best buy (place of purchase) no one could give an actual answer; just possibilities. I was told to call the customer service number programmed in the phone. Called a dozen times over 2 day period and placed on hold every time. Last call I was on hold 4 hours before hanging up. Second, phone began misdialing recent numbers I would select (not occasionally but every time). Third, it takes 5 steps to actually dial out. I am a tech savvy,60 year old with good cognitive abilities that found the programming frustrating at best, yet the main selling point is how easy to use. My droid dials out in 2 steps. The best experience I had with the jitterbug was literally putting it under a sledge hammer. What really annoys me is that a company like yours is allowed to continue to fraudulently sell these
JJ
Jan 17,2023DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY! When I first signed my mom up in 2022 the customer service was great. Now, I've been trying for 2 months to reach them but after holding for so long, I have other things that come up and cannot hold indefinitely. My mom's smart phone is JUNK. It does not get internet even when there are 5barss and that's only in town...we live in a rural area where cell service is spotty. My mom tries to get internet in town, but when she cannot, she doesn't know how to call them and even if she did, she wouldn't know how to help them diagnose the issue. She is not tech savvy whatsoever. I've called 3x now and it's always from home where we have 1 bar but have wifi. Most times the phone connects to wifi and when I call lively they try to diagnose it when it's connected to wifi, so of course it connects to the internet then and even turning off the wifi it doesn't work. It's when trying to connect via the towers it does not even connect to internet. They are unable to figure out the problem. Next thing is the phone is always DROPPING names and numbers from the contacts. As I sit here, on hold now for 15 minutes, with no indication of anyone ever ever answering, why not update your recording to at least give a # in line for waiting in the queue, or the # of minutes of anticipated hold time? No consideration that older people don't want to hold. Service just all around sucks and I am moving my mom to a regular phone (instead of this proprietary POS that Lively cannot even figure out) and regular mobile service, because this is not worth it. They should be paying me to sit here and hold!
Carol
Jan 11,2023I can hear on the phone. Only good thing I can say. To get to use the alert button, you have to take the $34 plus taxes plan. 3 months later I got charged $35 more for over data usage. This month my bill is up to $175. I will not recommend this phone to anyone.
Ngi
Jan 11,2023I purchased a stupid $100 flip phone for my mom after an incident happened to keep her safe! Here it is a month later and they were trying to charge me $55 for a $15 plan claiming that they didn't charge me last month except for the activation fee! The rep that I called was rude, he kept talking over me! I'm taking that overpriced flip phone back to the store and I canceled the service! Thank goodness I didn't do the automatic payments otherwise I would have ended up paying it anyway!
Mary Kiley
Jan 09,2023“No service” since 1/1/2023. They want to beat you into submission to upgrade your phone. What they are doing to the elderly is immoral and criminal. PLEASE contact your Senators, Representative and FCC and file a complaint against Lively. Cancel your service and get as far away from this company as possible.
Amy
Jan 09,2023I wish there was 0 stars. No service for 6 days already (since Jan 2nd) where even 911 emergency calls won’t work. Ridiculous company scamming seniors and the elderly.
10945 Vista Sorrento Pkwy, Suite 120, 92130 , San Diego, US
https://www.lively.com
Sharon Wack
Aug 27,2023I’m Absolutely LIVID with Lively customer “support” . A TOTAL JOKE! I spent 3 hours on the phone with them this morning because of their account transfer error AND my phone still isn’t Fixed. It’s Saturday - I’m told I have to wait until TUESDAY to MAYBE have THEIR ERROR FIXED! I DO NOT RECOMMEND!!!!!!!