WhistleReviews of whistle.com

Terrible service. Awful customer service I've witnessed. Average product no better than their competitors. A company that I see now also doesn't care about it's environmental footprint or it's buildings effects on local residents. I'll never use them again

I have had this product for five years. Here is the net: it sucks! Cant find a phone number to call on website. If dog gets Out it is 20 mins before it connects. Poor product. Spend another $500 to $1000 and get something that works all the time.

Product doesn't work, app doesn't work, customer service is terrible

This company has terrible customer service, and their policies are extremely dishonest. A year ago I reported a device missing and they continued to charge for a whole year of a subscription on a device I did not have. Even though I have original copies of the email stating the device was gone, and they can confirm that the device had no tracking data for the past 12 months, they refuse to refund their mistake.

After my internet provider updated my router my Whistle stopped working. After spending two weeks trying everything the support told me to do over email they said that they I needed to get a new internet service provider or I needed to get a Wi-Fi extender so I can change certain Wi-Fi settings that my router didn't allow me to change. Mind you - these settings are basically Wi-Fi 5 settings which are very old and would slow down the Wi-Fi service for the rest of my devices. It would make my faster Wi-Fi (that I pay for since I work from home a moot point). I bout the Wi-Fi extender that I chose with the customer service person on the phone and confirmed all settings were correct. After trying to setting it up and still failing - they let me know that this one won't work because I can't edit the WPA2/WPA3 setting. After additional failed attempts and no real clear help from them I asked for a refund and will be going with a different dog tracker. It is absurd that Whistle is not planning on updating their hardware to meet new Wi-Fi specifications and I predict that this will continue costing them customers. I understand that they want improved battery life but they could provide alternatives. It would be great if they could sell a Whistle Wi-Fi extender (similar to those that are used for Hue light bulbs or Ring home devices). These allow the signal to be converted in the way needed for the devices to work. It seems they have no plans to so I will not be working with them anymore. two years subscription and hardware cost down the drain.

I have had it for three years and I had to buy a device three times. After about a year it stops working and when you try to track your dog, it always says that it cannot find it. if your device breaks, customer service only option is for you to buy a new device. They don’t even offer a discount with an active membership. I lasted with the company longer than I should have.

I purchased a Whistle Health in February 2023. Unfortunately, after a few months of trialing it, I found it too big and heavy for my small dog. I had bought it in-store with a free three-month trial, then extended the trial to the annual plan for 2023, hoping it would work out. When it didn’t, I set it aside with plans to revisit or donate it. Fast forward to today—I noticed a $40 charge from Whistle on my credit card. Looking back, I realized I had also been charged last year. Assuming I had missed a renewal notice, I checked my email. Nothing. No renewal reminders, no payment confirmations—just marketing emails and battery life notifications until December 2023, then radio silence. TL;DR: Whistle charged me for two years without a single renewal notification. I contacted customer service to request refunds for both years. While they refunded the recent charge, the rep—who was more interested in arguing than assisting—refused to refund 2023’s charge. I asked for proof that renewal emails were sent or even the sender address. After putting me on hold, they returned with, “We confirmed they were sent, but we can’t provide any details.” Essentially: Trust us, but we won’t show receipts. Companies like Whistle are exhausting. This is the definition of dark patterns—sneaky auto-renewals with no transparency or regard for customers. I actually liked the product and had been contemplating purchasing the new Whistle device—but after this experience, absolutely not. Whistle has turned a satisfied customer into a critic. I guess the $40 was more important to them.

I bought this to travel and hike with my dog, but ran into a lot of problems. The first was that you have to have a safe zone with a Wi-Fi network that you are generally in to keep the battery on the Whistle from running down in approximately 24 hours. I have a mobile network, which solved that particular issue for me, but buyer beware. If you were planning to do overnight hikes or camping off-grid, it’s just going to keep running down. But I wouldn’t recommend it for traveling anyway, because… The main problem that I had with this is that the GPS tracking simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in urban areas, it doesn’t work in suburban areas, and it certainly doesn’t work in rural areas. We traveled all around the United States and it never successfully tracked the device, not even once. Even surrounded by fantastic 5G signal, the app could not locate the Whistle device. It also never sent any alerts when my dog would exit a safe zone that I would set up via the app. Sometimes it would alert me one to two hours after my dog had exited and re-entered the safe zone, but more often than not it never notified me at all. On multiple occasions, she went and visited neighbors or was off exploring in the woods without the device notifying me that she had left the area. When I contacted customer support, it was endless unhelpful emails, and a complete and utter lack of accountability. They refused to replace the device and kept insisting that the device was working perfectly “according to the information on [their] end.” I sent screenshots and lots of detailed information… Ultimately, they informed me there was no possible way they could consider a refund after the first 30 days, but wanted me to continue helping them troubleshoot the problems. I canceled my Whistle subscription and bought a Tractive GPS, which worked very well right out of the box. I don’t know if Whistle paid people to positively review them or what, but their product is basically useless. You can’t even get an accurate summary of your dog’s activity, since the GPS has no idea how far your dog has walked at any given time. I would highly recommend staying away from Whistle. I regret buying it, as it was a couple hundred dollars thrown into a black hole with wasted time and frustration.