Minimalcompany Reviews 29

This company is a complete and total scam. They only thing they are good at is taking your money. They accepted payment for my phone upon ordering and then did not ship the product for over a month. During that time, they ignored my requests for updates and to cancel the order. Upon arrival of the product about 2 months after ordering, I requested a return and send the phone back. They have received the shipment and are ignoring emails to issue a credit. Do not buy this phone under any circumstance.

Scam. Didn’t ship for weeks then issued a fake tracking number to stall. Then promised a refund but stalled that for weeks. Had to get credit card company to reverse it.

I purchased a phone from the website where there were advertising "shipping in 3-5 days." After waiting through the holidays and hearing nothing I requested a refund and to cancel my order. They were extremely slow at responding and initially claimed they never charged me. Once I provided evidence I had been charged they said the refund would process in 7-14 days. After waiting 14 days I followed up and they said they had actually just put the refund through and to wait more. After a few more weeks I still had no refund and they asked me to just keep waiting. I ended up having to dispute the charge with my bank and get my refund that way.

Undelivered order, refusal to issue refund

I placed an order (#12223) more than a month ago. The product was never delivered, and no tracking number or proof of shipment was ever provided.

Customer support initially promised that a tracking number would be sent within 1–2 days, but this never happened. After that, they stopped responding entirely.

When I formally requested a refund, the company replied that they “cannot process refunds due to an internal system error” and instructed me to file a chargeback with my bank instead. This is unacceptable and highly concerning. Internal technical issues are not a valid reason to refuse a refund for undelivered goods.

At the same time, they continue sending marketing emails advertising “fast delivery” and encouraging new orders, despite failing to fulfill existing ones.

Based on my experience, this appears to be either grossly incompetent operations or deceptive business practices. I strongly advise others to be cautious and avoid ordering until this company demonstrates that it can actually deliver products and honor refunds.

They take your money immediately and never ship the product. I've been waiting for over a month. They promised to ship on 3 different dates and lied every single time.

When I finally asked for a refund, they refused, claiming the order is processing.

The ONLY way to get your money back is to file a credit card chargeback. Do not wait for their email. File a dispute with your bank immediately, or you will lose your money.

Update 2 - returned because it didn't work with Mint Mobile. Still one of my favorite tech products I've owned for going directly against the grain of modern tech in a way that significantly benefitted my mental health, so if it works with your carrier, go for it (or use their plan, it's pretty cheap, I just didn't want to switch :P)

Updated from 1 star because my unit was finally delivered, and the product itself is 5 stars for sure IMO.

Many of the negative experiences shared here happened because of updates not being finished or poor management in late 2025 & early 2026. The product keeps getting new updates, and management has changed, so hopefully your experience will be better than mine and we'll start to get more positive experiences & then positive reviews, since this company absolutely deserves to succeed.

==========
Minimal Company Feedback - if anyone there reads these (Consumer Review Below):

- Just communicate! This is CRUCIAL, since if I had just been given updates as to why my product didn't ship for a month and a half, I would have had a much better experience. Surely it's not that hard to draft a single email to send out to everyone with outstanding orders to tell them what's going on
- Tell people the product ships from Hong Kong & takes longer than a US-based delivery might
- Don't use GoFo for last-mile delivery. No one likes GoFo, they're unreliable and add unnecessary stress to the delivery experience.

==========
CONSUMERS:
Now, for everyone else:

TL;DR: I wish everyone I knew had a phone like this. So many people waste so much time scrolling through meaningless content rather than producing any ideas, content, projects, side hustles, etc. themselves. The Minimal Phone helps you take your time and attention back from Big Media so you can use it how you actually want.

Full Review:
- Nothing else on the market compares to the functionality of this phone while also reducing your blue light intake & doom scroll time-wasting.
- It's actually painful to watch videos on, so if TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube is taking up hours out of your week but you still have other smartphone apps you need, this could be the phone for you.
- It literally does anything you need in a phone. My State Farm app can still track my drives for my driver discount, I can use remote climate control on my Nissan LEAF, online banking is a virtually identical experience. You really won't miss too much.
- The one downside is that some apps/websites are not designed for the aspect ratio of the screen, so I have poorly-designed apps I use daily that get cut off, but for the most part they're still usable
- With that, KNOW what you're getting into before you buy. This is not a phone to get for novelty's sake, because the novelty wears off after a few days. This is a device meant for people who want to live their life intentionally, and do more in the real world.

If you're okay with a little bit of uncertainty on the delivery window (hopefully that will be fixed soon), and know why you're buying this phone, I'd say go for it. I believe it's definitely worthwhile.

==========
Original Review:

The Minimal Company appears to be a uniquely poorly run company, and could use some serious business consulting if they want to stay afloat, which I hope they do. I truly love the concept and would love to see it stay alive.

Here are my bullet points from my experience so far (will edit as things progress):
- Customer service is slow and unhelpful. You'd better ask some specific questions if you want answers on your order status.
- Despite claims that they "now have inventory in stock" and aren't waiting on an order like they were for pre-orders, their 3-5 days until shipping has turned into 30+ days (blatant FTC violation btw)
- Absolutely no proactive communication about order delays or anything

No comments on the product itself, since I still haven't received mine. When I tried to cancel, they said it had been shipped, but no tracking number or delivery estimate. We'll see if it actually ever shipped or not, but I'm assuming I've just said goodbye to my $500 for good

This appears to be a scam. The customer service after purchase is very poor.
To receive any updates on your order, you are required to download an app. Once the app is installed, you are repeatedly prompted to purchase the phone again.
The support team provides expectations and dates and claims that the order has already been processed, but there are no actual updates regarding the delivery.
The last communication stated that the phone is already with a third party and that I am therefore not entitled to a full refund. However, I received no information about the shipping process at any point. This is extremely disappointing.

Similar to the other reviews, customer service states each week the order will ship and it never ships. From the mention that products will ship within 3-5 business days on the website to the inaccurate information from customer service, my experience has been terrible and I fear I have been frauded.

Like so many others who left reviews, they took my money and promised always to ship the phone in a week, week after week. Finally they just stopped responding. Tried to get a refund but they claimed they “couldn’t do it because the item was about to ship.” That was an obvious lie. It never shipped. Had to dispute the transaction with my card company to get my money back. This is a fraudulent company engaged in a criminal enterprise.

have you ever waited for a phone fro a year??
Nuff said

Paid nearly five hundred dollars to have no phone shipped and no communication about delays of over a month from the advertised shipping date. Don’t buy from this company.

Absolute scam. Device never shipped, no responses to a request for cancellation, just took my money and ran - also booted me out of the Discord server when I raised an issue. The founders of this company are a total joke and have no idea what they’re doing - avoid unless you want to lose your money. I have reported them to my bank’s fraud division.

Apalling customer service, there is none. They lie, saying it will be sent within 48 hours. I am a month after they first said delivery has been processed and nothing has arrived. I've now initiated a chargeback with my bank and expect, due to the lies and not receiving the phone, to gain a refund in full. Shocking company as is clear from the reviews left here.

The company does NOT comply with European Consumer Protection laws. It has not delivered the product I purchased for over a year now. It's a YEAR late. Its the case + screen protector. After I disbanded our purchasing agreement, I asked for my money back. Per European law, they have to provide the money back in the way it was received. They refuse to do so. Instead they force me to make an account with Paypal or Wise. Something I do not agree with. Now they are witholding payment. This is illegal! This company is a fraudulant one. Do not buy here. They do NOT respect applicable laws. I have filed a police report.

Out of the 10 months since I purchased the phone, I waited seven months to receive it. Then I realised it was a very poor quality release, used it for a week, waited six weeks for a software update (supposed to solve the poor image quality, the lags and frequent unexpected resets, the random loss of settings and app configuration, etc.) which never happened, and then waited three months for the refund after I sent it to their office. However, they eventually came forward and issued a full refund for the phone and the case and the screen protector that were never sent to me. I've later learnt that the cases were not finished and that the screen protector was so bad they had to retire it from the market.
Replies via email were flaky, and I could send four emails over a month without an answer.
As a wrap, the concept is good, has a lot of potential, but they shipped a half-baked device full of bugs that was of no use despite the promises. As a company, they might have been victims of their own success (based on customer hopes) and have no capacity to deal with the reality of running a business that takes hundreds of dollars from their customers. On the bright side, I got my 450 bucks back, eventually.

I ordered a phone and 2 accessories in March 2025. I received the phone in July after many many requests. Then I never received the accessories after many many more requests. I finally called my bank and told them I was a victim of fraud. I don't want a nice phone with no case or screen protector. They reimbursed me for everything. Then, 1 day later my accessories shipped. Interesting.

I paid $499 for a top of the range Minimal Phone on Feb 1 on their website.

So far (as of Aug 11), I still haven't received the phone. The order status on Minimal's website is forever 'pending'. Multiple enquires to their customer service team were not answer (other than an automatic message saying 'we will update you as soon as possible').

I am increasingly suspecting that this is actually a scam.

I recieved my phone, faulty. Upon contacting the support email I was quickly contacted and offered a replacement / refund. At my own expense I sent the device back. Received a confirmation that the device was received and asked to confirm if I wanted a refund or replacement. Since confirming I wanted a refund I have been ignored.
Now, several months later I cannot get a response of my existing ticket, nor a response to a single new ticket of the many I have raised. Nor the email, chat and Facebook attempts to contact them.

Meanwhile I get an "update" that my case is about to ship.

Do NOT buy from this company.

UPDATE: I received My phone a week ago and the company is definitely NOT a scam, as my past review said.
I have to say I'm impressed with the phone, it works really well, I think I can even use it as my main phone. Since it is 100% what I was looking for a minimal phone with ink screen and qwerty keyboard.

I've read a couple of reviews saying their phone is too slow or it gets stuck with basic apps, this has not been my experience I've installed several apps in my device and is has run every single one without an issue, have installed whatsapp, kindle, audible, uber, Grok, and more, and it has been a great experience.

Of course this phone is not designed to watch videos or photos, that's the whole point of a minimal phone.

The camera is funny, and would never use it to take a good photo, but I don't usually take photos and can live without a camera, it does read QR codes and can use it in apps that need it.

I like that it has google wallet, and I can go out with just my phone.

I also loved that it has android auto, and it runs super smooth as well.

Literally the only 2 downsides I can think of are that, 1: The display is too bright even at the lowest brightness its a lot for reading at bed at night, and 2: It is a big phone, the thing about minimal phones is that they are not supposed to take this much space, but I suppose you wouldn't be able to fit a qwerty keyboard in a smaller device, maybe with a keyboard like blackberry or something it could be smaller.

Overall the phone exceeded my expectations, I can really say its a 5 star phone, with everything working just as advertised.

I'm leaving 4 stars because the customer Service is non existent, literally, its been months since my first emails and DMs and nothing.

I have to say even with my horrible experience with getting in touch with the company, I do hope they find some success and keep shipping, if somehow they manage to survive long term as I would be willing (and would love) to give a smaller minimal phone a try.

Overall the phone is 5 stars
The customer service is 1 star

Ordered my phone in March and received it in September.

Past Review: This is literally a scam, I don't know how else to describe this company and what they do, I've tried to get in contact with them for 3 months, wrote a lot of mails, DMs in Twitter, Instagram.

Found a tracking tool the co-founder @mryoukhna shared, at first it said I missed the Tax ID in my order (it was in the contact info), then it said it missed a phone number?? (it was in the contact info, you literally cannot purchase without a phone number)

5 Months have passed and NOTHING, now when I search for my order it says my order doesn't exist??

Seems like only influencers got their phone

Then @mryoukhna only has positive comments on Twitter, which makes me think those are all bots.

Avoid at all costs $400 dollars to the trash

There are so many problems with this company, but I'll just focus on two.
1. They don't honor their return policy. They will simply stop responding.
2. Their phone is not good. I'm someone who used a dumb phone exclusively for 8 years, and a FLIP PHONE WITH T9 TEXTING IS MORE USEFUL THAN THIS. That's not an exaggeration. The buttons don't have screen control, so you have to use the laggiest smartphone screen you've ever seen to try to get through apps and websites. It's really bad. Nobody buy this.