To them Smart folks at Tracfone

The BBQ Pit
1

It’s been a long saga, but I’ll keep it as short as possible.

August 2006 I bought a prepaid one year phone with 450 minutes from these folks which arrived promptly. Everything was fine, except the phone wouldn’t take the minutes. Hours on the phone with tech support failed until they determined that they’d actually sent me a Net 10 phone, not a tracfone.

To their credit, they got a replacement to me quickly. Problem was, it was another Net 10. I called them again to let them know of their error, so to correct the problem, they sent me a third Net 10 phone.

Starting to see a problem here, I cut my losses and went to the local Radio Shack and bought something that worked. Then I started trying to return the three phones and get my 115 bucks back.

After innumerable phone calls I just mailed this third letter:

March 4, 2007

Tracfone
[Removed]
Order # 1251323

I’m gonna give it one more shot. Finally heard from one of your representatives a month after my last written contact, trying to get resolution to our problem.

The issue: I still have two of your phones that I’d like to return to you. Your representative, Chuck (ext ) called a total of four times. Even after I explained that your preferred shipper does not service my area, both in writing and on the phone, he insisted that they do service this area and would pick up the next day between noon and five pm. The shipper, DHL called the next morning and told me what I already knew and tried to tell you and your fine representative: DHL does not service my area.

When I finally got past the phony number Chuck gave me for contact and got him to call me back, I gave him the contact number and the name of the nice lady (Kim) at DHL for confirmation.

Now Chuck tells me there is no way to resolve this problem, since DHL is your ONLY shipper.

I don’t want to sound too intelligent here in suggesting how you might improve on your otherwise dismal business performance, but wouldn’t it be possible to mail me a couple more pre-paid Priority Mail Envelopes from the United States Postal Service?

After all, that’s what you sent me for the return of the original phone, and I assume you got it in good condition, although neither Chuck nor anyone else I’ve spoken to seems to be able to confirm that for me.

I have an idea! Maybe you could send Chuck (ext ) out to the post office on his lunch hour to fetch a couple priority envelopes to send me. He doesn’t seem very effective as a phone representative, so make him a gofer.

You must be getting tired of stonewalling me, I know I’m growing weary of it myself, so why don’t you just take these extra phones you sent me erroneously and send me back the $115 you owe me? I’m not going to give up until we resolve this.
So, there you have it. I’ve also decided to post here on SDMB in case there is someone who actually cares at Tracfone, and happens to read here.

I’m open to suggestions on how to solve this problem, but in the meantime, if anyone wants to lobby for my cause, perhaps you can give Chuck a call at

2

while I fully agree that Tracfone is the mother of all asshat bureaucracies, you might want to edit out that last part (if your 5 minutes isn’t already up) or email a mod to do it, because

(from the Pit Posting Rules sticky)

3

You have a tracfone? What are you, a terrorist or a drug dealer? :slight_smile:

4

bare, as noted by Azeotrope, posting contact information in order to encourage others to initiate contact offboard - i.e. lobbying or campaigning for or against someone or something - is against the rules.

This is a warning. Do not do this again in the future, and do not post the removed information again. I have removed it from your post.

5

I’ve had a Tracfone for a few years. For the most part it was pretty painless. Yes, a few problems here and there (not receiving the minutes when I referred someone to them, “lost” minutes, that kind of thing). Through those experiences I learned how to get through [read: past] their India based customer service and always managed to have decent service once I was able to connect with someone who did not read from a script.

Until the lake debacle. The Kid dropped my phone in a lake. Into the briny deep. With over 500 minutes sitting there.

I called Tracfone and spoke with Hugo (Dude, if you get to pick your Western sounding name WHY go with Hugo?). He assured me that if I bought a new phone they could transfer everything over.
Me: Even without actually having the phone?
Hugo: You do not have the phone?
Me: No, it’s at the bottom of a lake.
Hugo: Oh. Well, yes. Yes, we can transfer everything over.
Me: You’re positive?
Hugo: …Uh… Yes, yes I am positive. Once you buy a new phone you call back and we will transfer the information from your old phone to your new phone.
Me: I can keep my minutes AND phone number and putting them on a new phone will work even WITHOUT physical possesion of my old phone?
Hugo: You do not have old phone?

Spoke with someone else who didn’t believe they could do anything to help. So no more Tracfone for me.

6

I have a Tracfone. No gripes so far, except that I can’t reload minutes on-line. The ESN number they gave me at the store doesn’t work. An elderly neighbor who also has a Tracfone came over yesterday for help reloading minutes. (She doesn’t have a computer.) Her ESN number didn’t work either.

When you load minutes over the phone, you have to have your Tracfone in one hand and your land-line phone in the other. Back and forth with * this on the Trac and # this on the land-line and enter a bunch of numbers and hit the “OK” button. Where the hell is the “OK” button?

Couple old ladies dithering, but we managed.

7

I’ve used Tracfone, AllTell (think that’s what it was called) and VirginMobile. Out of all of them, I’ve found VM to be the easiest to deal with. AlTell kept screwing up my account, Tracfone required complicated codes to be punched into the phone every time I added minutes. With VM, I can add time by either via the web, my phone, or I can set up an autopay option. The last time I bought a phone, they even included a mailer in the package so I could ship my old phone off to them.

8

Heh. I used to work for Virgin Mobile. One of the reasons we set up all those options was precisely because we didn’t want to be compared to TracFone.

Anyway, VM’s not bad as prepay stuff goes, but take it from a former insider: be paranoid when it comes to getting new phones on your old number. They may have fixed the problem since I left, but I doubt it, as it was rooted in politics more than technology. Anyway, numbers had a tendency to ‘vanish’ - they’d stop working, you can’t receive calls, or worse, someone ELSE is getting your calls but your minutes are vanishing, that sort of thing. Let’s not even speak of the ‘call won’t hang up’ issue, which is closely related. Voicemail problems, too, but that was more Sprint than Virgin Mobile, honestly (Sprint didn’t – still doesn’t? – like Virgin and tends not to fix stuff for them as soon as they should).

So yeah. If you upgrade, get a replacement phone, whatever… keep a close eye on the account for at least the first 72 hours after the switch. Just some friendly advice. :slight_smile:

9

Never had any of the problems you describe, so I’m guessing it’s been fixed.

10

I have had a Tracfone since they came out,I had a few times it took an hour to get my minuets installed,and once I bought a 450 minuet card and found out through Office Max that their cards were faulty and wouldn’t work as the numbers needed were not on the cards. They then gave me 250 free minuets,and I have all had my minuets moved from an older phone to the new one with no problem.

I have had relatives buy a Tracfone and they are happy with theirs.

Monavis

11

Well, I must say, we’ve got a Tracfone, and it seems to be working pretty well. Just purchased a 1 year/500 minute plan online, and that was painless, too. Registered online first, and then fed in the phone’s ESN # (or whatever the hell you call it). Paid and waited. Poof! Minutes appeared on the phone without having to punch in the codes. Seems that registering does the trick.