InmateSales Reviews

The fees for anything jail or prison related is ridiculous. It’s almost like the loved ones of those incarcerated are punished. InmateSales is one of the most expensive. 10% fee. I don’t exactly have a choice but to pay it either.

Unfortunately I can’t get started with an account. Get the email verification and then I can’t set up the password. Out of this world. Tried both on InmateSales and on the website to get my account started and nothing. Bunch of trash developing skills we got here. They’re willing to take money from us but do little to invest in a simple app..

I hate InmateSales it has so many drop calls. It won’t allow me to answer half of the time . The only thing I like is you can see how much money you have left. It’s the highest I’ve ever had to pay to add money.

InmateSales anc website will take your money on whatever account. There is no way to check account balances. Inmate cannot use the “call my number only” money, of at least there’s no way to know if it’s that money being used without being able to check balances. They have a “chirp”
Device for texts, I put money on now again, no way to check balance. No link to connect with inmate for that. Only email, schedule video visit or schedule remote visit. Yet to he have a pretty hefty “service” fee when you purchase time for the inmate.

InmateSales is garbage it won’t even let me enter any text so I can put my information in to talk to an inmate. Another trash thing about InmateSales is the wording is so small and sometimes it won’t let me zoom in which makes it unreadable

I tried creating an account, and when I get to the e-mail verification, it takes me straight back and to my browser and says “Verification Link Expired”, and of course you can change your password, but not your email or your phone number.

When emailing an inmate it gives you the option to send pictures. I’ve sent pictures of our dogs that were never received. I also pay money to send emails that aren’t received. If there’s an option to upload pictures I would think it makes sense to allow them to see once approved for viewing. Emails not being received is the biggest problem. Please update InmateSales .

Appalling example of the way people without money are further penalized in our criminal “justice” system. The “convenience fees” charged for putting money in these accounts just to have the ability to talk to your loved one or allow them to get basic necessities are the worst kind of greed. Disgusting, especially now that in person visits are no longer allowed.

Want to pay for a video visit? 20 minutes for $6 is reasonable. But wait…add an additional $5 fee to it, so now it’s $11 for 20 minutes. The max you can buy at a time is $18, and there’s a $5 fee for that too. Why not allow us to buy $50 or $100 at a time instead? Oh, because you’d lose out on ALL THOSE FEES.

Similarly, you can only buy tablet time in $50 increments instead of $100. An $11 fee for every $50. This is an absolute ripoff.

I’m a local politician, and I’ll be bringing all this to the attention of the media. I don’t begrudge this company a reasonable profit, but to make obscene amounts money on the backs of the family and friends of inmates is deplorable. Many of these families just lost their primary breadwinner to incarceration, and now must pay huge amounts to speak with their loved ones. Who for the most part, if they’re still n jail rather than prison, haven’t even been found guilty yet of their accused crime.

Although people on the customer service phone says a customer can't see their phone balance on their app, I think it should be possible for a customer to be able to see what their balance is especially since people buy their services for others to have. It's 2024 that is possible to be done on InmateSales if the programmers know how to program.

Pros:
- InmateSales is pretty easy to set up and use.
- I’m grateful to be able to see and talk to my loved ones who are incarcerated.
- The fees don’t seem exorbitant.

Cons:
- The fees don’t seem exorbitant until you realize you only are allowed 20 min video visits and 15 minute calls.
- Make sure when you have a video visit, you aren’t walking around with the device you’re using for the visit because the inmate won’t be able to hear you very well at all. I have a phone holder I put it in when I have visits. Facebook messenger offers video calls for free and I can walk and talk and hear people normally. I pay for this service and it’s terrible if I move the device even a little bit.
- When my bf calls me on the phone, it normally rings through InmateSales but once or twice a week, for some reason, it wants to ring through my iPhone call app and when I press 1 to answer the call, I can’t hear him on the line and it hangs up. It still charges him to place the call though.
- Also once in awhile, when my bf calls me and it goes through, sometimes midway through the call, it mutes the inmate for around 30sec-1min by itself. I thought I was accidentally pressing the mute button with my cheek, but last time it happened, I know I didn’t do that and anyway the mute button would mute my voice, not the inmate’s voice.
- If I write a longer email, InmateSales usually logs me off after a certain amount of time and deletes everything I’ve already written. I have to write it out in my Notes app and then copy/paste into an email in InmateSales .
- I paid for chirp texts but now his chirp screen went black on his device 4 days ago and he still hasn’t gotten it fixed or a replacement. Idk if that’s an app issue or something the jail handles.

Feedback:
- It would be very helpful to have an option to save a draft for emails so everything doesn’t get deleted when it logs me out after a certain amount of time.
- Fix the glitch that makes the calls come through as a normal phone call and not through InmateSales .
- I don’t know if this is app feedback or if it’s up to the particular jail, but make the video visits longer, please! We used to have in person visits when he was incarcerated years ago and they were longer and it was in real life. I get it that COVID messed those in person visits up, but please make the visits longer if possible. There isn’t much you can say in 20 minutes, and if you schedule another visit 10 minutes after, you get charged another $4.
- Please show the phone airtime AND the Chirp text balance on InmateSales so we can see when it’s low and refill the minutes. It shows the balance for emails and video visits, why not the other items we pay for?

Overall, it has potential to be a great app. The developers are making plenty of money. Just in the jail where my bf is at there are over 400+ inmates so do the math if even half of them have family and friends buying different services through InmateSales or website. For the money they’re bringing in from offering these services we buy, please do some revamping on InmateSales to make it a little more user friendly. It’s hard enough for us not having our loved ones with us in person and we need to be able to handle business with them so they (and we) don’t lose everything out here and be able to talk to them to try to lift their spirits. My main issue is with being able to save drafts for emails and the glitches with the phone calls. Thanks for reading and I hope you take some of my feedback into consideration. Thank you for providing the ability to talk to our people that are incarcerated. It is greatly appreciated!

It’s not bad for keeping in contact with a loved 1 in jail. Don’t understand why ppl think it would be top notch amazing perfect. It’s a jail app cmon now

InmateSales is very helpful and very easy to use. It makes it very easy to connect with loved ones.

InmateSales is responsive and has worked great so far. I like being able to repeat recent purchases. It’s convenient being able to not have to fill in everything each time. Being able to call customer service from InmateSales has also been super helpful, no more dialing myself!

It’s so helpful to be able to see my balance and make deposits easily!

Very easy to use. Cheaper and better than any other inmate sales app I’ve tried.

Bought my girlfriend a new milk tea ecig. Way better than going on the website

InmateSales is very easy to go through and it looks 🔥

This simple app makes it easy to connect with your incarcerated loved one. After selecting a product to add funds to, the user is prompted to continue the process through easy steps, taking the guess work out. What’s more, if users have any problems they can contact a LIVE CPC representative to help them. InmateSales is game changing!

Easy to use and navigate. Setting up an account and making purchases was fast.