ConnectNetwork by GTL Reviews

Not happy with ConnectNetwork at all but unfortunately it’s the only way I can communicate with my bf. I believe y’all have taken now almost $40 of my money saying “funds are expired” when I just put the funds in there?? Why not REFUND my money instead of taking it sayings it’s expired?. Where do y’all have it written that funds expire? It’s only been a month. Same thing happened before and when I email y’all not once have y’all replied to me out of the numerous emails I’ve sent. And when I call no one has answers for me and still nothing has been resolved. I am extremely unhappy with your service! How u can justify taking money that’s hasn’t been used yet and saying it’s expired right after I deposit it is beyond me. And not right at all. The least u could do is notify us the funds are expiring and REFUND US OUR MONEY BACK. I won’t stop until I have answers. This is messed up! You can’t just take peoples money like that and think it’s ok. Furthermore you need to update your app bc the facility my bf is at doesn’t do messages anymore and y’all are still taking peoples money for that too and your call center can’t figure out the problem. Well I figured it out for u. So frustrating having to deal with shady apps like this. My review will change once y’all fix this huge and important problem on your end. It’s not right.

ConnectNetwork WAS great, up until about 2-3 months ago and I have been using app since at least 2016 sometime.
I can NOT even get a correct BALANCE NOW when I try to see without going through the whole internet via phone or computer. Which is a longer process. I am NOT new to GTL I’ve FAITHFULLY (weekly or daily paying money)used service ALONE since 2012. And even before then ConnectNetwork WAS a great addition for me and unfortunately NOW it is wasted space on my screen. I either can’t scroll up to the NO THANK YOU part to click it or MY BALANCE SAYS I have money in it and there IS NOT ENOUGH FOR A CALL.
I would just like it fixed.
If it helps I am Ana iPhone user, and am not using “dark mode”thank you

I actually love ConnectNetwork because it allows me and my husband to stay connected through texts , pictures and videos. As the other reviews say , the messages are taking a week or 3-4 days to be delivered to me or him. I think if we are paying our hard earned money for these things it should be on the timely matter promised . Also I think it should let us receive pictures from our loved ones because of Covid . Due to covid we cannot cost our loved ones . So the inmates should some how be able to send a picture, I haven’t been able to see my husband since he made it their nor our children. Don’t get me wrong I’m very appreciative of ConnectNetwork but like I said the messages are not being delivered in a appropriate time and also seeing if we can get pictures from our loved ones .

Some days messages will go through fine and quickly and I will receive confirmation emails, and sometimes messages will take days to go through and I won’t receive an email at all telling me it’s gone through. I really wish those who handled ConnectNetwork and the system would care more about reviews and fixing the issues. Our loved ones may be incarcerated but that doesn’t mean that they’re not humans deserving of a proper communication system that’s ironed out. It’s not entirely difficult to fix the issues within ConnectNetwork and the process for getting messages through at a reasonable and consistent pace and having a notification system that allows for peace of mind on whether messages have gone through. WE ARE LITERALLY PAYING and we still are not getting an app or system that is even mildly reliable. PLEASE, I am begging you, PLEASE fix SOMETHING, ANYTHING PLEASE

ConnectNetwork is not giving me the contact I have already put in system and found! I have been trying to send a pic or video for months and it’s not finding contact or not giving me the option after finding the contact so that makes no sense! We as humans grow and live by interaction and touch is already taken from inmates. The cost and the difficulty in navigating a simple picture or phone call that u can hear well! Covid is destroying families and lives all over the world. Inmates are unable to protect or quarantine! A guard leaves and comes back all day everyday exposing inmates and then grouping 8-14 men in one room with no supplies no bedding,hygiene supplies, no clothing! Nothing from their cells they are left alone with no answers or reason they are moved and put on ground floor to “quarantine “ after the test they face came back positive in less than five minutes!! Lies lies lies. Not ok not right in any way, shape or form. USA?????!!!!

This is the worst app I have ever used and my husband and I have both loaded money on our prepaid phone acct., but yet we still cannot receive calls from our loved one. It goes straight to voicemail with no ringing or anything. I have contacted my phone servicer, my phone company and this company numerous times and have spent countless hours troubleshooting and the end result is still the same, no phone calls or anything!! They indicate that they are not experiencing any issues on their end and all is good but yet my acct is still not correct. They don’t know how to troubleshoot to see what the problem is. Totally clueless. I can’t believe a company of this, and doesn’t have better technical support and with as many people having this issue cannot resolve the problem I am going to call the Better Business Bureau and complain. Totally unacceptable!!!

I figured out one reason why messages are unable to send. You guys are lying to people that the character limit is 2000, but in reality it sends when I only type 1000 characters. This is how I found out. I had the idea to use GTL’s webpage login to send messages there instead of ConnectNetwork . Since there are God knows how many people have complained about ConnectNetwork, and I just thought maybe ConnectNetwork is bad, but the website isn’t. After I typed my 2000 character limit, I tried to save it as a rough draft on the website in my browser. THAT’S WHERE IT TOLD ME IT WAS UNABLE TO SAVE, BECAUSE THE LIMIT TO SAVING IT AS A ROUGH DRAFT IS 1000 CHARACTERS.

I know other people also complained about their messages said they sent, but their inmate says they didn’t get it. My inmate is currently on lockdown right now, so once I have a phone call with them asking if they got my message. I will update on my review.

So for now, the solution to texting messages to your inmate is to limit your character text messaging to 1000.

I hope this helps a little bit to people who require GTL to contact their inmate.

*Little update: My inmate got my text messages after just using 1000 characters :)

With any other situation. People wont change until something hits close to home with them. The fees are insanely high. Yeah they didn't put my loved in their situation however, they are human and they are loved. This company uses our bad situation to make money. After this last phone call. I will no longer be dealing with ConnectNetwork. People forget, we can still write letters, send pics through the mail. What did we do before ConnectNetwork? We wrote letters and made visits. Its still the same. This company is a rip off. I will no longer be spending my
hard earned money on these outrageous fees. They still don't have the correct facility on the drop down list. Ima start an app where the fees are not outrageous and people can talk to their family members without all these issues.

I have contacted customer service multiple times after waiting on hold for over an hour the customer service supervisor says he updated my account which was already updated all my information I could see on ConnectNetwork it just would not allow me to deposit money onto my phone number it was only allowing me to put money on as a debit payment for the phone and that’s not how I wanted to pay due to the fact that the incarcerated person could call anyone with a debit account and this has caused problems beforeSo I’ve called trying to get the account straightAnd they told me that I have to call and make the deposit into advance payments In the end result was that I was told that would have to be the way I had to deposit money

I called to add $ & was told I needed to download ConnectNetwork & make a profile before I could add $ to a debit account. I did exactly that. ConnectNetwork wasn’t working correctly but after my 3rd try I got a confirmation of transaction. Come to find out they charged me twice! I called & they tell me since it was a gift they can’t refund my $. Seriously! They can take your $ but supposedly their hands are tied when it come to refunds from their system glitches!! They won’t even combine the duplicate charges & add the duplicate processing charge to account! True story. So beware if you are in the same situation & have no choice but to use these crooks to stay connected to a loved one. So after it’s all over I paid $10 for $4 on the debit account. Rip offs!!

ConnectNetwork constantly lags. It is constantly buffering while trying to do ANY TASK, also will charge you multiple times for messages and videos. Videos and messages will be 'sent' but the person receiving them will get a BLANK MESSAGE showing only a subject; It will also show that way in your sent messages displaying 'Not available for download' and only show a subject. Customer Service is NOT HELPFUL. I have called and explained the issues to them, they can't help with anything besides ACCEPTING PAYMENTS!!! (Imagine that🙄) The calls are 20 cents a minute!! App is WORTHLESS. Video calling is always under construction &NEVER WORKING (its been MONTHS) ...Yet they still want you to pay for all these services that THAT DONT EVEN WORK!! 🤦🏼‍♀️

The only issue I have is that the “request to call” does not work, never has. I emailed my concerns twice and never received a response so I called. I was told there was no problem on their end and to just keep refreshing. Huh? I’ve had ConnectNetwork for over 6 months.. refreshing is not going to solve the problem. Was told to sign out and then sign back in. I’ve tried that. I’ve done all the updates and it still has not worked. Was told there was nothing that can be done because it works on their end. So frustrating!

I was really excited to use ConnectNetwork for 2 days then suddenly I am not receiving any messages and my messages aren’t being delivered!! I don’t get any kind of error message or anything! No support is offered to fix the problem. My money is just stuck on ConnectNetwork useless in credits that I can’t use! My loved one has been sending multiple people messages and theirs aren’t being delivered or received either!!! This is ridiculous. You know there’s a glitch in your system so FIX IT!! There’s a deadly virus circulating earth and we just need to know our people we’re paying you to keep us in contact with are safe everyday. Improvements will be appreciated.

I know the facility my loved one is at indeed offers the messaging service within this site, as other inmates are using it. The only thing mine gives me the option to do is add money onto my loved ones trust fund, which I did again today (I did it online over a week ago as well and he got to use it today finally (now that he’s in the unit he’s in). I downloaded ConnectNetwork for the purpose of the messaging service and photo sharing capabilities. I don’t see this being an option on ConnectNetwork I downloaded.

This is the worst app I have ever dealt with, with connecting with a family member incarcerated. These emails take 3 to 4 days before you even receive them. Your family on the other end things that you're not even writing them. How sad is that? The facility should go to CorrLinks. This is the worst app ever! I cannot stress it enough! After spilling out your guts, telling your family how much you miss them, that you love them, that someone has passed away, that someone has graduated, you get to the very end of your email, and it deletes the whole thing! When you try to complain, they tell you to use your Microsoft word to write out your email first, then copy and paste! Worst service ever!

Families have already lost so much when someone is incarcerated, so for an organization to tack on so many fees each time money is deposited is highway robbery. Talking to a family member creates normalization, stability, and supports mental health of not only the inmate but also for the family members. As such I now often feel guilty when I don’t accept a call because I can’t afford too with all the fees. Why is there not a flat fee at the beginning for a new user? With COVID delaying court systems around the country, times have also lengthened for those incarcerated and have added to the communication bill. I will definitely be writing the jail to recommend a different source or company.

ConnectNetwork doesn’t even function I can’t even successfully login or create an account because it literally just blacks out or force closes for no reason it’s past a glitch ConnectNetwork just doesn’t work at all I can’t connect with my loved one only able to do phone calls and send pics through another app this will be better to catch up through writing and less expensive but I can’t even login or create another account haven’t even got far enough to add my inmates info it’s the holidays and I just wanna talk to people I love this is sick the developers need to re-evaluate this piece or crap ZERO STARS

Yes, if you're looking for the worst ever written piece of software, well now you’ve found it. This is an embarrassing piece of software, and this company is the very perfect example of what you will be dealing with if we give the government control of choosing and deciding for us. This is the best example of the junk you will get when government removes competition from the marketplace. The government employees that took so little time to research and choose something like this should be fired, and this company is only in business because they can pass it off to people not doing their jobs as they should.

Watch out when purchasing credits, it will appear as tho you haven't purchased, which will make u think to hit submit again and that's how they get you. Also, the messages can take days to approve sometimes and good luck sending a pic. It seems to crash everytime I try. Unfortunately we pretty much have to take it if we want to communicate with our loved ones other than through snail mail.
This would be a beautiful thing, specially during covid if only it worked as intended.

Please update ConnectNetwork to where we can have real time notifications when we receive messages ... I’ve received messages and didn’t respond until 2 days later because I did not know a message was there ... Please make it to where this is like a text message or any other messaging system where there are notifications that pop up to your phone ...

The so called customer service pirates refused to transfer the money or refund it back. They make millions of dollars off of (often poor) families with incarcerated loved ones. They know they have you by the short and curlies. Maggots. Been using the service UNFORTUNATELY for 10 years. Never ever made a mistake. They will take your money and NO AMOUNT of logic will get it back. Can barely speak English. Don’t waste your time. So mad.

ConnectNetwork is a nice concept. But version 3.4.0 needs to be fixed (I have an iPhone). This version is the latest update (as of 2 days ago) and all it has are bugs. I cannot see any of my messages. I cannot see my contact list. I cannot create a new message or reply to a message. When I try to do this it force closes ConnectNetwork . Please fix this update that I was forced to do. And while you’re at it, please enable the use of emojis for family members. How is it that the inmates can use them but the family members can’t? My app was working just fine until this update. Either take it back or send a new update. One more thing... is there a way to have a 24 hour turnaround on the receipt of messages. 3 days is a bit much to be waiting for a message.

I am no longer able to use ConnectNetwork. It used to work well, but now I can no longer open my messages on ConnectNetwork. I have sent a help request and they say all emails will be answered but over a week has gone by and no response.

I will keep posting in all available websites including the BBB until this is resolved. Ever since I download the new update app I haven’t been able to sign on to my account to read or send emails to my husband. When I called last week they said there was a problem with the update and they are working on it. I tried today and nothing. Saying my credentials are invalid. I called today and got a rep that did not speak English well at all. I tried to explain issue and he kept asking me the same questions over and over. I asked to speak to someone I could understand and he had the nerve to tell me five times he didn’t understand what I was saying. Finally he elevated my problem to a very
nice woman named Christine. She sent me a link to reset everything. Alas it didn’t work. I called back and got someone named Stu but I’m not sure if that was really his name. He was rude and told me it was me having a problem not remembering my password. I told him that I had my father-in-law try it on his computer and it worked. He said he did everything he could on his end and I should just create a new account. I asked him what about the credits I had on there and he said I’ll lose them. Really? I told him that was unacceptable and wanted to speak to someone in a higher position. He said there wasn’t anyone higher. Again really? Connect Network is horrible. I’m so frustrated and no one will help me.

You will save more money by mailing a hand written letter thru the postal service. They break everything down so an extortion fee can be charged for everything. If anyone else tried this with an app they would end up in a courtroom. They shouldn’t make it sound like it’s a way to contact loved ones since the people managing ConnectNetwork should be in jail themselves. Families have enough of a burden to bear when a head of household is in jail. The makers of ConnectNetwork are just shaking it like a money maker. A fee to put money in a trust fund, a fee to purchase debit links, a fee to buy message credits and a fee for advance phone pay. They have their hands in everyone’s pocket every step of the way for an app that barely works, nothing tech savvy about it. Good luck trying to contact them by phone, I sat for two hours waiting for someone to pick up while being barraged by advertisement with an annoyance level I never experienced. Inevitably I hung up and not long afterwards they just stole the money I had on advanced phone pay. Someone needs to regulate this type of service since it’s riddled with fraud.

If I could rate this company 0 stars I would. All they do is steal your money, charge OUTRAGEOUS prices for phone calls to a loved one, and take a huge fee out for an “Applicable Transaction Fee” which takes out about $4 for no reason. No processing fee is $4 every time you make a transaction, they have to be making so much money off of people who just want to talk to their loved one. Whoever made these prices should be sent to jail themselves, it makes talking even harder. It’s like they want everyone in the process to suffer even more than they already are. If you are looking for a way to talk to a loved one, just add money on their commissary (it still takes out a fee but you can do regular commissary money as well as phone money) and have your loved one call you off debit instead. You’ll pay less fees and be able to talk to them longer for much cheaper. I hope this review ends up helping someone, I wish someone told us to do that before I wasted so much money on this scam.

I have a iPhone. & Since the new update the messages will not show that I received a new message. Only time I know is because it tells me in my email that I received a new message. Then when I go on ConnectNetwork it dose t show or nothing none of my old message sent or received are there any more. When I try to compose a message it closes out the entire app. Idk what y’all did with this new update but it sure doesn’t feel like a new update because it’s not working at all. I have to go on my safari just to log on n send a message which doesn’t work like ConnectNetwork was once working. I haven’t spent a lot of money with ConnectNetwork for it to shut down the way it does. I have uninstalled n reinstalled it so many time to get the exact same results. Fix it please cause this is unacceptable when this is one of the many ways we can contact our love ones. Please bring the old update back or fix the new one. Sincerely a validate customer!

Ever since this update ConnectNetwork has been very glitchy. I have the latest version but each time I try typing a message a notification pops up saying “download the latest version” to update, but I already have the update, unfortunately it doesn’t allow you to close that update window so then I can’t save the message I was in the middle of typing. I just lost a message that I finished typing because of that update window blocking me from doing anything! I’ve uninstalled and redone loaded ConnectNetwork numerous times and have just updated my phone to ensure it wasn’t an issue on my end. I believe something is flawed with your new update and now I can’t even send messages because each time I open ConnectNetwork , regardless of redownloading it, it tells me to update and doesn’t let me click on anything. Please fix this issue ASAP.

ConnectNetwork was doing fine until this new 3.0.0 update. I’ve updated my device, deleted and re downloaded ConnectNetwork and it’s still not working! Ugh I’m just disappointed. This needs to be fixed.

UPDATE: ratings have went down since this new 3.0.0 update. I have an iPhone 6s Plus and every time I try to message my loved one, it won’t even allow me to the get into ConnectNetwork ! I get a message saying something about update to the new version but I have updated all of my apps! Then it won’t even give me the option to update ConnectNetwork again. This is frustrating but before this glitch ConnectNetwork was working just fine for me. It took awhile to get messages and I never received notifications but it’s a good app. Just needs some work.

Needs improvements! There should be more push notification options ex: If you receive an email you should be able to receive it a text or push notification. The only option I’ve seen is email which most people don’t check as often as others. Two, there should more functionally with ConnectNetwork, more user friendly options but also making it more appealing to look at. Three, ConnectNetwork lags a lot & it becomes annoying after a while.

I have left several awful reviews for ConnectNetwork. Long story short it barely even downloaded it was so bad. However, as of yesterday absolutely EVERY feature of ConnectNetwork 100% WORKS on my IPhone 6 Plus!!! Not only is everything working, it’s faster and better than the actual website!! Thank you to WHOEVER has been working on improvements for ConnectNetwork because your progress IS showing! Seriously, lol - thank you! I only give 4 stars because I want to make sure it’ll keep working as it is. Will update to 5 if this progress stays consistent!

*** I would like to see NOTIFICATIONS when I receive messages from my inmate, so I don’t have to constantly go into ConnectNetwork to see if I have any messages ***

I can’t sign in. I got to sign in once but that didn’t last long. I got to read my letter but I went to write back and I couldn’t cuz it was saying that he was released and I know he hasn’t been released or I wouldn’t be writing to him. So now I try to sign in to my account and I can’t do it. This is really getting very frustrating especially to me. I don’t know why. Why would it tell me I can’t write to him cuz he’s not there? Why would it say I can’t write to him cuz it keeps saying that and that I have to go through and pick his name again? Do I have to go through that every time I write to him. I would like my account fixed soon please. Every time I call they give me a different thing to do this time it wax uninstall it so I did so now i can’t get back into my account. This is frustrating to me. I’m sure it is to my boyfriend too. Please fix this

I honestly cannot believe how many times I have had to contact “customer service” in the last 6+ months. I’m always transferred 2 or more times before anything can ever be resolved. Now, ConnectNetwork has always been a pain to navigate as well as compose messages on. However, since the newest update, I have lost all information on my account, i.e. inmate information, inbox and outbox information. I have spent far too much money with this company to be unable to communicate with someone I hold dearly to my heart. Honestly. It’s 2019 I have NEVER had these kind of issues with any other platform for communication. There’s really no excuse as to why this issue occurred “because of an update”. Fix this. People pay you their hard earned money for a service YOU ARE OFFERING TO PROVIDE. If you can’t, DONT OFFER IT. It’s seriously so simple.

I love how convenient ConnectNetwork is to communicate with loved ones incarcerated; however I don’t think it’s fair that messages are delayed when sending and receiving, and ConnectNetwork synchronizes too often making it hard to retrieve messages. If we’re paying for credits there is no reason why ConnectNetwork should have this many problems. Also the inmate are allowed to use emojis but we’re not able to. I think this should be allowed. It won’t hurt to enable that feature. Thank you for making it more convenient to communicate with our loved ones but please fix the issues especially the delayed messages. Sometimes I won’t receive a message sent until 3 days after the day it was sent, which defeats the purpose.

ConnectNetwork is great especially for the inmates!! And families and friends ... I have been home for a few months but I still am able to contact my friends ... it’s no greater feeling for your loved one if they are inside because a pictures worth a thousand words... plus you can send money for commissary instantly which becomes necessity!! So if your thinking oh I’ll just drive waste gas to keep putting money on the books it’s gonna cost way more than $5 to do so!!! And emails are like 30 cents!!😘