TracFone abruptly ended my activation in the middle of a business call, with no interruption to inform me that they were shutting off my phone... This from the same company who sends you multiple messages each day on your TracFone informing you of the wonderful bargains they have for you! I tried all day to get hold of someone who could reconnect me, but kept getting a message that they were too busy, try again later. That evening I was able to get through and spent over 3 hours trying to get a straight answer:
1. This person informed me that since I had left the US, my phone was de-activated to prevent me from making calls outside the country... I informed her that Montana had not seceded from the US (yet!), and assured her that my phone was in my hands inside the US boundries. When she attempted to connect me with a supervisor, they hung me up.
2. This person told me that they would take care of the problem, and was sorry that I had been hung up on... A considerable amount of time went by before he told me that the department that had de-activated me was now closed and he couldn't do anything about it until tomorrow.
3. I tried to re-activate on the Internet site, but after putting in all the info they demanded, I was again rebuffed by a message that told me that it couldn't be accomplished on the web-site, but I would have to call customer service.
4. This person, after another considerable waste of my time, tried in vain to activate my phone, but was unable to do so... When I asked to be connected to a supervisor, she put me on hold and there I stayed for 15 or 20 minutes... After realizing that this was a ploy to get me to go away, I hung up and resolved to call back the next morning.
5. This person, Alfonso, went through the same machinations as the previous service center employees with no more success than the others. He told me that the only alternative was to buy a new TracFone, but I couldn't transfer the minutes or the ending time. I asked to be connected to a supervisor (which took about 10-15 seconds), and the supervisor informed me that there was no such thing as de-activation for leaving the US (implying that I was imagining that excuse for their incompetence), but I had been de-activated because I had used more minutes than I had paid for and they showed a negative balance on their computer. Now really, what idiot can imagine the computer allowing a negative balance of minutes if it can shut off your phone in the middle of a conversation? I informed her that I still had 1812.3 units left on the phone and she said that the phone was not properly deducting the minutes. I told her that I had had 2800 minutes before I went on a trip to Oregon, and now that I just got back it registeres 1812.3 minutes, so it was, indeed, deducting the minutes. Then she changed the subject to my other TracFones (we have 3) and started telling me that the ones which were originals were in fact replacements and the replacement that I was complaining about was an original. Her computer showed that the one with the 1812.3 minutes was an original, off the shelf, and I told her that her records were wrong, because TracFone had sent me the phone as a replacement for one which was no good. Some data-entry slave-wage drone in India had put in the wrong information, because I bought one of the others at Pamida down the road, and it wasn't a replacement. After about 15 minutes of haggling over the source of the phones, I got her back on track of our original complaint. The upshot of her answer was that regardless of the 1812.3 minutes and two months that were still on the phone, I was going to lose them and I would have to buy another phone and start over.
TracFone wireless is a RIPOFF, and when my other two phones go tits-up, I will not be replacing them with TracFones... And if I were you, I wouldn't use this (non-) service either! TracFone is like any other large corporate-greed company, They care notheing about the current customer, because there is always another sucker out there who will use them for phone service!
0 comments