Company Details

At first I loved Pinwheel and the service however after the phone charging port broke after 5 months and they would only give 20% off another phone to replace it I have decided they are awful. Ulephone the brand of the phone itself offers a year warranty however if bought through Pinwheel it is not covered. The breaking of the port is one of the more common problem on the Ulephone. My daughter was 14 when she got the phone and knows how to plug in a phone. We have never had a charging port break before. BEWARE what they offers is great but their phones and customer service are AWFUL! I would definitely searchbout another program similar and go with that.

I gave my 10 year old son one of these Pinwheel phones, and he loved it! There were games and apps that kept him happy but not addicted, and we had customer support immediately after something went wrong. Nice work, Pinwheel!!

Great phone for the price. You can't expect a phone that you paid minimal price for to be outstanding. Customer service is absolutely awesome and very easy to contact which is an added plus.

I chose a pinwheel phone for my 12 year old because my partner and I wanted robust parental controls and the ability to choose/restrict which apps could be installed on the phone. While the parental controls have worked so far we have encountered numerous other problems. The app is fairly buggy, sometimes my child will suddenly be unable to use the phone at all until it has been restarted several times, but my biggest complaint is when it comes to apps. There is an 'approved' list of apps you can install and pinwheel advertises that there is a way for parents to request apps they would like added to the list - however, these apps must go through an internal, and entirely opaque, approval process- so if you'd like your child to have an alarm app, or perhaps a chess app, maybe they need goodreads for a school assignment, you're going to have to ask pinwheel to approve it. The catch is that they won't. You don't get to control what your child has access to, a board of unknown experts do. If you go through customer service instead of their app request board - which their website states can expedite your request - it won't help. Every app I have requested has either had the request ignored or denied.

I'm absolutely furious with this terrible phone and service. First, I had to order a Pinwheel phone thru their website and my choices were ancient (a Galaxy A13) to be able to use it on my phone plan (which is Verizon). Then as I got the phone up and running it kept playing the Android chargeup noise randomly for no reason. Usually 2-3 times a day, but eventually it kept going off nonstop to the point it was becoming a nuisance. After a few months i plugged it back in, and lo and behold.. the damn thing wouldn't stop making the sound. My kid couldn't sleep with it next to him. Customer support demanded I record a video of the tone. I called customer service and requested an address so I could mail this POS phone back. They couldn't give me a physical address and told me to keep the phone (which is garbage). Needless to say this company is a huge waste of money forcing you use ancient phones with software that barely works, forced you to learn some backwater programming just to keep the thing working, and it's absolutely not worth it at all.

I was so excited to get this phone for my 11 year-old daughter and it worked well for a couple of months. She was careful to take good care of the phone and it has no physical damage, however, after just 6 months, the phone started malfunctioning to the point of being completely useless. It opens and closes apps at random, won't let my daughter text, won't let me access the settings, etc. Their customer service just asked for more and more proof (long descriptions, more descriptions, videos of the phone malfunctioning, longer videos of the phone malfunctioning, clearer videos, etc) as a stalling tactic, but would not replace the clearly defective phone that we received.

I have had tons of problems with this phone. From text messages not being shown to issues with the device not working with the presets I put on as a parent. Customer service has not been helpful at all. Telling me to “turn it off and turn it back on” is not tech support.

We purchased a Pinwheel phone for our son last summer, and it has been an amazing experience. I've been able to easily customize settings for my son using the app. On two occasions I wasn't sure how to proceed, but the live chat on the website was able to assist me promptly and provide me with the information I needed. We have his phone set to only receive texts/calls from approved numbers and it has worked perfectly. Furthermore, approving new contacts is super fast and easy on the parent app (as is revoking them if they're no longer needed). A+

My son had a Gabb Phone for close to 3 years with no problems. We decided to get a phone that would let him get needed apps, but would also not let him have full reign of the internet. We bought a Pinwheel. Big mistake. We bought the phone several weeks before Christmas as a Christmas gift. When we finally activated it, it worked for 2 weeks, then completely went black. We wanted to factory reset it, but there's no way to factory reset it like a normal phone. After multiple emails with different people at pinwheel, they finally told me how to factory reset it. Oh, They also said I can't get a refund for my purchase because I've owned it more than 30 days. Which I explained is a dumb policy, because I bought it as a Christmas gift, and it clearly wasn't activated until just before Christmas. I pointed out that they can clearly see that it only works for 2 weeks. Anyway, after resetting it, it just spins in an endless loop of being unable to log into any Google accounts, or set up the phone at all. So I paid $200 for a POS that doesn't work, $15 for pinwheel's "service" as well as the monthly fee to Mint. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY OR TIME. Pinwheel is the worst phone I've ever used, which says a lot because I used a $35 TracFone for years when I was young and broke. UPDATE 1.25.23 I had to work with the Pinwheel IT support to do a crazy (nonsensical) set of steps to reboot, then factory reset the phone. Then I couldn't get the phone to set up again (like a normal phone). It worked for a total of 5 days, and it's doing this again. The phone is frozen, can't make or receive calls, and NOW IT WONT CHARGE BEYOND 20%. This was one of the WORST purchases I've ever made. Their customer service is crap. Although friendly, they refuse to give me a refund for a phone that has worked for less than 1 month.

When I was having difficulty figuring out a new app for my child's device, Rachel went out of her way to troubleshoot for me and got it up and running in mere moments. So helpful!

Chen was amazing and walked me through the process, and made it easy!

Chen B did a wonderful job addressing my need quickly and efficiently. And with great kindness!

We've been using Pinwheel for a year now. First, pros are an easy user interface for parents, and customer service reps who care and want to make things right. However, cons include tech glitches that require us to contact customer service far too often. Our main issues have been around texts. First issue is the phone not receiving random texts (after weeks of not figuring out how to resolve, Pinwheel gave us 3 free months which is a total plus). Second issue is that the phone has randomly stopped notifying the phone when texts are received - no icons on screen and no vibration/sound notification. Both issues have happened twice in a year. All 4 times, it took hours to go through Tier 1 and figure it that it wasn't our phone settings, etc., but needed to be escalated to the their tech team. The inability to get text notifications was never resolved. The first time it just randomly started working one day long after we reached out, but then it happened again and we are still not getting notifications. They have always been friendly and helpful, I wish every company had the customer service level of Pinwheel, but unfortunately their system glitches simply make it unusable at times.

Very helpful and friendly! We solved the issue quickly.

The customer service was great, and my problem was solved!

easy prompt tasks

Chen B. Was very patient and worked diligently to figure out the problem!

My problem was a simple mistake that I kept making, and my rep Chen helped figure it out right away.

Ems helped me to make sure my daughter's replacement phone was ordered and made sure I understood everything.

The agent was very patient with me because it did get confusing if we were talking about an app account, pinwheel account, Child's phone, or parent's dashboard. My problem was fixed with his time and attention. Greatly appreciated!