Pinwheel Caregiver User Reviews

Firepit Inc

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Great idea, bad execution

The actual idea behind this phone service is great. The problem…. It only works about 30% of the time. Texts don’t show up in the caregiver portal at times, and the gps tracking almost never works. And I constantly have to delete the app from my phone and re download it because it is constantly messing up. I regret getting this service completely, wish I had gone a different route. The rugged version of the phone that’s almost $300 broke with in the first week as well. But like I said, it be great if it all worked properly.

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BrittAubs128

2 years ago

Response from developer

Hey there, so sorry to hear about your experience with our service! Have you reached out to Customer Care yet to see if they're able to help out? Please send us an email via support@pinwheel.com if you haven't yet! We'd love to be able to get things working for you.

app troubles

So far my son and I love the phone. The app however, has frozen at a white blank screen multiple times. This in turn causing me to delete and re-download the app. I wish Pinwheel is able to fix this bug soon

WiLLdaB33st

2 years ago

Response from developer

Thank you for the review and I'm so sorry for the not-so-stellar experience with the app. Rest assured we're looking into it and working on a fix soon. If you haven't yet, please do reach out to our support team to see if there's anything else we can do for you! Email us at support@pinwheel.com

Glitchy and not user friendly

As others have said, the idea behind this is great but the execution is terrible. The time locks for different phone uses don’t work, you have to enable all or lock all. If a certain lock is on for apps or whatever, the phone wont receive calls or texts. And it’s 15/month on top of adding it to your phone service. The platform is clunky and glitchy. I wish I would’ve just gotten my son an iPhone at this point.

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Jen081912

2 years ago

Response from developer

Hi there, appreciate you taking time to write about your experience. I'm sure one of our Customer Care agents would be happy to get things going for you. Chat/Call us up or send us an email via support@pinwheel.com. Looking forward to help out!

App works 2 out 10 times

Pinwheel needs to fix the APP ASAP. The pinwheel phone is fine, but you… as a parent, will need to reset your phone 1-2 times a day just to get the pinwheel app to work. It’s beyond awful for such an important feature of the phone. We’ve been faithful to pinwheel and hoping they would fix the app, but it’s been months and months.

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chloe K Randee

2 years ago

Response from developer

Hi Chloe, I understand how important the app is for the phone and we'd appreciate hearing more about the issues you're facing so we can take a look at what's happening. Please email us at support@pinwheel.com if you haven't yet! If you already did, feel free to bump up your request so we can follow-up.

Glitchy, works 60 percent of the time

App needs significant improvement

Bill bobnm

2 years ago

Glitchy

So so glitchy. Completely unusable half of the time.

jbtarheel10

2 years ago

Needs serious work

App not working. It works once and then crashes with a blank white screen. I’ve had to delete it and re-install every time I want to use it. The premise of this entire Pinwheel phone is to be able to manage your child’s phone. This is impossible with this app. You pay $15 a month for the pinwheel software so this needs to be addressed.

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kellyrunsfar

2 years ago

Response from developer

Hello there, I'm incredibly sorry to hear about your frustrations with the app. If you haven't yet, please send us an email via support@pinwheel.com so we can see what we can do for you!

Software Support/Maintenance is not 24/7

We have been using Pinwheel for about 7 months now; the phone is a great concept. However maintenance/support is seriously lacking. Today, Google Maps started giving an error on boot that the app needs to be reinstalled. We tried several times and contacted support, who told us that the team doesn’t work on weekends. So our child, who depends on Google Maps for navigation, is now unable to safely navigate until their software support team comes into the office on Monday to begin working on this.

For an add-on phone service that maintains an entire phone OS, not having 24/7 software support team for critical applications such as maps, is a huge gap - especially in the communications/mobile device industry. This could become a safety issue for children who use the phone if a critical application becomes unusable without support for days on end. Could emergency calls or disappear if android pushes an update that Pinwheel is incompatible with? Could the phone brick on a weekend? Pinwheel should behave like other companies in this industry by providing 24/7 support and treating the service they provide as critical infrastructure, especially if access to apps can become suddenly blocked.

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OliveFurb

2 years ago

Great solution, execution needs investment

This is a great solution for parents wanting a phone for their kids that can be fully managed and supervised... But the app needs a lot of work. It's fairly user friendly but it's quite unstable.

FoManCompressor

2 years ago

Caregiver App Doesn’t Function Properly

I had high hopes for this phone. However, it has proven to be quite a headache. I can’t access anything from the caregiver app, including even giving me access to *give him access.* I’m sitting here helpless, trying to Google how to make it work. I’m being told there are icons like a “lock” in the upper right hand corner will help me unlock certain features. But there is no lock icon in the upper right hand corner. So okay. I wouldn’t recommend this phone. The idea behind it is solid. The execution of it is not. Don’t make the same mistake we did and overpay for this silly phone. Just buy a standard phone and disable the browser or any other apps you need to. This is a waste.

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Anna M.H.