My mother passed away last June and I wanted to keep her cell phone for sentimental reasons mainly. My husband has had a Tracfone for a long time with no problems, so I thought things would go well for me.
I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
We went out and bought the one-year air time card with double minutes and called Tracfone to change the phone number on my mother's phone. She lived in FL and I do not. If I could have understood the fellow's name who I talked to, I'd tell you. I couldn't understand him very well and he kept asking me to slow down as he couldn't understand me either.
I explained that I wanted to change the account info and reactivate the phone with a new phone number in my area. The gentleman said fine, and proceeded to have me enter a billion codes on the phone. It took over 30 minutes because we couldn't understand each other, but finally the phone showed the air time minutes and new expiration date.
THEN — he started to give me my new phone number and it was the SAME area code as before! I was a little angry but kept my cool and explained to him that I needed a different area code as I had explained in the beginning.
When I gave him my zip code he put me on hold. Came back on and said he had to speak to a supervisor. Then he came back and told me that my phone would not work in the zip code I'd provided, but they'd be happy to send me a different phone. Of course, he'd already activated the air time card, so the option to tell them to stick it was gone. I couldn't get a refund.
He couldn't understand why I was upset. If he had told me from the beginning that my mother's cell phone would not work for Tracfone in my zip code, I would have tried a different provider. I wanted HER phone, not just any cell phone.
I said fine, whatever, since I couldn't get my money back for the air time minutes and gave them the info to send my replacement phone. He then deactivated my mom's phone and asked if there was any other way he could help me. What a laugh.
It turns out that deactivating the phone also cleared the phone book. Another thing that they didn't tell me beforehand. Upset doesn't begin to cover how I felt at that point.
The new phone came, got it activated after three attempts at contacting them - all three times was disconnected after being placed on hold. Got the minutes put on the new phone.
Three weeks later, it stopped working. Every time I tried to dial out it told me that I could only make credit card calls or collect calls. Any incoming callers were told that my number had been disconnected.
I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Customer Disservice only to finally be told that I had to be given a new phone number. It took another 20 minutes to get that taken care of. I was livid about the whole situation and they did compensate me 25 minutes of air time for my aggravation. Doesn't seem like a fair trade.
NOW — I've been getting advertising spam from them every week in my text inbox. It would seem that every time they spam me, my phone tries to text a five digit number which won't go through, and they deduct. 30 units every time! I called on Dec. 12th and spoke to 3 different reps, having to explain the situation over and over and over. Finally, the last rep told me that he would escalate the claim to the corporate office because "this has never happened before" and I should hear from them within 10 days. It turns out, I am NOT the only tracfone customer this has happened to. Googling those five digit numbers revealed this.
I called back today because they never got back to me. There was no record of my complaint and the first rep hung up on me when he put me on hold to "discuss this with" his supervisor. What a load of hooey.
I called a second time, same thing happened.
I guess the third time really is the charm because I got ahold of a woman in "Direct Sales" who FINALLY was able to help me and didn't need me to speak s-l-o-w-l-y. She said she would take me off of their advertising list and that if I was still having the problem with the outgoing five digit texts after 10 days, to call back. She compensated me five minutes of airtime for all the aggravation.
I promise you — I will NEVER EVER use another tracfone. Once these minutes are gone, I'm going to burn the damn phones. I tell everyone I meet, even strangers in line at the grocery store, to never use tracfone.
Sorry to see that so very many other people have had such bad experiences with them. What will it take for them to change their practices?
D
Waupaca, Wisconsin
U.S.A.
0 comments