TracFone Wireless
reviews and complaints

I bought a Tracfone about a month ago. I know that was my first mistake! I had trouble right off with the service.
From that point I spent about an hour and a half every day for almost a month trying to get it corrected. I’ve never talked to a group like tracfone techs before who is so good at lying cheating and in essence stealing from whomever they talk with.
If this group of people believes in KARMA, as a group, as a civilization they’re doomed, because their KARMA is black and dying.
I’ve since got rid of the tracfone and I feel much better, now that I’m no longer sharing their souls darkness.
All I can say is, if you’re thinking Tracfone or every get a Tracfone, run away screaming. Your soul may depend on it.
I'm Feeling Much better now,
John

On their web site they offered the lg420g for $19.99 with lifetime double minutes and free over-night delivery if ordered before 6/22/2011. The site did say that you couldn't expect over-night if you ordered on the weekend. One would assume that was because they don't process orders on the weekend and that one's order would be processed monday and the phone delivered on tuesday. But no! Because I ordered my phone on sunday (1:15am) tracfone is not obligated to send my phone by "over-night" and are not shipping it until wednesday and I should get it thursday. Monday, when they told me this, they wouldn't just cancel my order and let me re-order so as to get the phone on tuesday. I was on hold for over 90 minutes after speaking to a human for the first time.

When you buy a phone, you expect to be able to make calls and rcv calls. I bought this LG TracFone, called customer svc to activate it, which took 20 minutes, and flew across the country to use it on vacation. First, the phone wouldn't make outgoing calls, so I spent another 20 minutes with customer svc to fix that. Then I discover that the phone doesn't ring! People can only leave text messages. Customer Service said that I had to call from ANOTHER phone to fix this, but I was on vacation and this was my only phone. Got back, complained that I didn't have a working phone for my vacation. Too bad, no refunds. Something that should be so easy became sooo complicated. Not a satisfied customer!

The company tracfone, deliberately makes is impossible for their customers who wish to buy airtime, online... Instead, tracfone forces their customers to call them, to purchase airtime. This way, tracfone forces the customer to go through a long, air-winded speech, by their employees. - who ultimately are required to try to up-sell more minutes, to the customer!
This has been going on, for months! And, I wish more attention was put on this company, regarding this terrible, sales tactic that tracfone, continuously get away with!

I have been a loyal tracfone customer for around 5 years. Perhaps because they were cheap and seemed easy with no contracts... Well sometimes folks I guess you get what you pay for. To put it into perspective... i have bought so many minutes from this forsaken company that I have my airtime membership until 2048!

I have run into countless problems adding minutes and not having them appear on my phone, bad reception, and hours and hours and hours of on-hold time to their customer service center. I like to be loyal to companies I really do... but I have had enough. Hopefully this rebuke steers some of you away from the same.

Just today I tried to add more minutes to my phone from an airtime slip and "the network was busy" I tried again... the same. and again and again. Finally tried online. Hurrah minutes accepted. However no mins on my phone. Called the service center (keep in mind this has happened the last three times I purchased minutes) was put on hold 8 times taken off of hold and to ask if I could continue to hold. After 20 minutes I got so frustrated that I hung up.

Well the stubborn person I am... lol... I called back to get to the bottom of the matter, and hopefully a different operator that could actually help. . . well . . . long story a tad bit shorter... It took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to resolve the issue which was accomplished by typing codes into their product (basically programming their malfunctioning product for them. I have done this on so many occasions that I actually lead their operators to start giving ME the codes when they are ready!) It turns out they did approve my minutes this time... they just gave them to a completley different phone that was in no way associated with me. The operator told me that there was nothing they could do about it and I started talking lawyer... funny... things changed pretty quickly after that.

Look. These are cheap phones and I only spent a bit of money on those minutes but principle should mean something. The days of the handshake and returning a defective or poor quality product seem to be fading. There are other cheap phones out there without binding contracts. I URGE you folks, try one of those. I know I will.

Thanks for letting me vent.

regards

Don't be a fool. If you need telelephone service stay away from tracfone or any form of tracfone like straight talk or net10.
Here is what will happen every month. You will purchase a prepaid card and the instructions will tell you to go to the add airtime screen. When you as instructed on the card and on the phone you will receive a text that the card is invalid. You will then be instructed to call the 800 number. You will be charged for every minute that you use the tracfone to talk to "customer service" so you should call them from a pay phone. You will then go through the same process and will again be told by the computer that the card is invalid. You will then be put on hold indefinitely. If you persevere the wait you will be connected to a robot in the philippines who does not speak english. They will ask you for your name and then put you on hold for "three minutes". When they return they will ask for your phone number and put you on hold for "three minutes". They will then return and tell you that your number is wrong and you will repeat the number and they will repeat it back to you wrong and you will again give them the correct number and they will again repeat it back to you wrong. This will go on at least a half a dozen times and you will then again be put on hold for "three minutes". You will be told again that your number is invalid and then they will ask for the serial number of your phone. The same cycle will repeat over the serial number and then the will tell you to call back tomorrow and start over again. When you call back the next day and go through the same thing you will then be told to call back on the phone that you are trying to refill.
When you use the phone they will use up your minutes trying to "add minutes" and you will then need to call them back from another phone again.
After repeating the above process at least three times eventually your phone number will be entered correctly and become "valid" then you will repeat the process until the card becomes "valid".
So now you're all set until the next time you need to add time.

Ordered phones on Thursday at noon Central time. Paid $14.95 for overnight shipping but didn't come until Monday at 2:30 p.m..
I paid $14.95 thinking I would get the phones on Friday- thus, "overnight shipping". Wrong. NO Saturday shipping, then I had to sit at home to wait for them because they need to be signed for. I waited (and worried) all day Friday, Saturday (thinking MAYBE FedEx does Saturdays) and most of the day on Monday.
The moral of the story is...if you need them, don't wait to order them.

Then it gets better.
I have old Tracfone, I have new Tracfone. How hard can it possibly be to transfer my minutes and service days from one to the other? That took 2 phone calls to customer service.

THEN-

I wanted to port one phone from Smart Talk (Walmart, bad idea) to the other Tracfone I ordered, only to find out that they need to send me a new sim card, even though the for has one, and is brand new. I'm almost CERTAIN that will take ANOTHER call to customer service.

WHY does Tracfone make this TEN TIMES HARDER than it has to be? WHY?

I just sent back my 4th, LG420 cell phone because I do not get service at my house. I have asked repeadedly to send me a different model comparable to the LG420 and they keep sending me the same phone. My husband has a tracfone and gets service fine here. Now I am filling out this form, notifying the Better Business Bureau and filling out anothe form with the goverment. I will use up these minutes and throw the damn thing away. No more tracfone for this family...even my husband won't renew his minutes.

We recently purchased 2 Tracfones online from Tracfone that came with free accessory kits. One of the adapters that was needed to connect to the phone was defective. I emailed and called speaking to 2 different "supervisors" asking to replace the defective part to no avail. They insisted on me returning both phones, both accessory kits and to get a complete refund as the only solution. My pleas to simply send me a working accessory kit fell on deaf ears. They use these tactics knowing no one in their right mind would go through the hassle. Just hope you don't have to return anything to Tracfone. Just being on the phone with them is painful. Reps are very hard to understand and the connections are terrible.

Im a colombian citizen and im a proudly american citizen also, I had to come down here to colombia for a couple years and I started to work with the company who outsourced the call center for those companies.
Honestely I dont know what you guys expect if you dont even know how to find a serial number on your phone.
I really dont want to blame no people here but we are the people that have better accent than the other call centers and we always use to recieve the calls that other reps screwed up.

The point here that how do you expect to help someone who tried to make a ph call and has the ph turned off? How do you expect to assist a person who dont even tries to understand the rep. I saw people crying because of nasty customers who discriminates because where we are located. Many of the reps on my city are people who goes to public universities and they have been learning english by courses and they dont even had the opportunity to travel outside the country. Many other have been out the country and have been studied in bilingual schools and they work for fun actually. Just like me.

When I got asked where im located I have to say my actual location and that script that the corporate offices are located in miami, fl. When people asked me where I am from I simply say that im from colombia, when they asked about my english skills I make the statment that im also a proud american citizen. But honestly I can handle that way that many customers have to treat a person who is giving the best to assist them. You guys have no clue all the tools that we use to correct problems. I need to use 10 tools with like a 14 windows in a call. You guys think that we are machines or something? We deal with numbers and codes and references and numbers again and again and again... Come you guys and make an 8 hours shift dealing with that and dealing with people like you? Dont think so.

I belong to a tier 2 support team which handle problems with the coverage and I spent like 8 months being a tier 1 and thats so complicated.

Next time that you got placed on hold be pacient we are really working, if a tier 1 ask to place you on hold to have assistance for a supervisor think that they really need assistance. We got really well trained so be aware of that.

I just want to finish this complaint to the customers saying that next time that you call the 1800 number. Try to select spanish because sometimes we even dont understand the people from phillipes. And thats something that I supposed not to say.

And note to the one which is going to ask. Why in spanish? Because we are able to speak both. Not you guys that only speak english and please do not tries to speak spanish to say thank you or gracias!

Pre paid cell phone companies need to be look into in the usa. These company are not doing right by the people.

Companies like safe link wireless, tracfone and net 10 (All the same company). Give hope to low income residence

But a lot of the time they take that away when they turn off a phone for no reason, will not refund you money for unused minutes when you phone breaks or stops working and/or your feed up with bad service. They say too bad. Gift card companies have to turn over unused money to the state after 5 years. They had to stop charging fees. If you would looking into this you would find out that these company have it good. When hard working people like you and me do not. First they buy there minutes off at&t t-mobile ect. But these minutes have most likely been paid for by good hard working americans. Here how it works your going to love this. For example if you have a phone with one of these big company and you have a cell phone plan that give you 400 minutes per 30 days and you never use all of them. They sell these minutes to tracfone which in turn sells them back to us in the form of airtime minutes on there pre paid phone which use the cell towers of att or t-mobile ect. They stated to me on the phone that they give no refund on airtime. No drop call credits. If you lose your phone and do not have all the info that came with your phone too do bad. They need to look up codes on you phone oh you do not have it too bad. No refund. Sounds good so far. Safe link wireless now does business in pa. They say there cell phones are government supported. This can not be good at all. They give these cell phone to low income americans, but give very bad service. They do give out free minutes but they hope you need more minutes and hope you will buy there pre-paid minutes with the small amount of money these poor people have left to live on. I looked into this for you I am trying to help others. They took my money turned my phone off and I am out over 400 dollars. But I will find away to live without it. My late dad told me if you want something work for it. I will miss my phone the bbb will not help the fcc has not got back to me. I have written cbs nbc abc cnn fox news and many others about what happen to me in hopes someone would help me, but no one has. I have cried over this. I am crying right now. I have given up on getting my phone turned back on. Or a refund. I just want to help others now. I am and emt who takes care of this mother-in law who got sick two years ago. I do need a phone when I take her out which I spent all of my saving to buy me a van that had a seat that comes out of the van so I can load her in the van from her wheel chair. My mother in law was and r. N. Before she got sick. She lost her home for taxes and now stays with me. I found that this is not the first time this matter about wireless phone companies has come up. But without new laws these companies are not going to play fair. I need help getting the word out about this please help the ones who can not help themselves. And a great side note to all of this is that the company that owns tracfone is from latin american but has ties to at&t via board members from the company the owns tracfone work for at&t. You would think they would make sure the company plays fair but it all comes down to money. If you could help the others like me who have been taken advantage of I would be forever grateful

Your friend rickie g conard god bless you.

After several months my SafeLink phone display showed Sim Not Registered. I Faxed, Emailed and called customer service. After 3 months and 5 hours of logged phone calls, I realized this service is not free. You are expected to buy TracPhone air cards to keep you account active, pretty slick idea on their part. Lastnight was my final straw, my Service Rep said problem was fixed, phone would be online within the hour, and, if not to call them. No such luck, but this time they called me, rather than spend another hour on the phone with them, I dropped their phone in my glass of ice water, and hung up. For me, the problem has been solved. Now it's time to contact my state legislators about the rippoff scheme by SaqfeLink Services.
I made less than 10 called with this phone, it had 569 minutes of service and one year of activation left.
Stop wasting your time with these people, this was TracPhones bailout, cleverly disguised as SafeLink Services at taxpayers expense.

Andrew Napolitan

For $99 you can get 1 year's service with 800 minutes on TracFone. Since I don't use my phone that often, I decided to give it try.

However, when I tried to activate my voice mail, I got the royal run around. After spending over 12 hours on 4 different occassions speaking with "customer service, " I have finally given up. The last insult was them telling me that they were having difficulty activating my VM because I ported my number over. This was after a good 10 hours on the phone with their reps.

I suggested they give me a new number so they could easily activate it. They obliterated my old number (which I can never get back), told me they'd call me back when the process had been completed, and give me my new number. They never called back.

I called them, again, and was told in order to get a new number I had to send my existing SIM card to them.

In an effort to stay positive, I asked a friend who has TracFone to try and activate his VM. Same run around, same empty promises, no VM.

I asked for my money back and mysterously became disconnected after another hour and a half on the phone with them.

These guys are pros at misleading, stringing along, and falling short of their own guarantees. The supervisor I spoke with at one point was in Belize. Good for him. I'm sure he has VM.

Buyer beware. If you need more than basic service from you cell phone, steer a very wide berth around these con artists.

All the phones you can use when you have a Tracfone prepaid or pay as you go plan or cheap and low quality. I would like to get a Blackberry or a smartphone. According to Tracfone's website, you can only use one of he phones that they sell because their phones have special pay-as-you-go technology installed on them. My friends keep telling me that my cell phone looks like something an elderly person would buy. I have one of the better phones that they sell. My father who also uses Tracfone is very angry about how hard it is for him to send an email from his phone. As someone who lives on a low budget and can not afford a different cell phone plan, I am extremely frustrated.

Have been attempting to get service on a new Tracfone I purchased. It has been three weeks now

when I call, sometjmes I am kept on hold as long as two plus hours. I am at my wits end

I'm on the line with their customer service now. 97 minutes so far. I started trying to get my number changed to a new area code five weeks ago. Numerous calls, emails etc. later, it still doesn't work. Every transaction with Tracfone has been a problem, with even simple things like adding minutes resulting in errors. So you call, spend an hour or so entering codes, get put on hold again, enter more codes, turn the phone on/off, enter more codes . . . it always takes numerous looooong calls to resolve anything.

I got the phone to use only when I travel. At one point I took a six-day trip, and the phone was non-functional for three days, which I spent searching for pay phones to make yet another call to their customer service department. After three days and I don't know how many calls, they determined that they had switched me to the wrong provider. Switching me back took yet another one-hour call. From a pay phone in a mall. Fun.

I got this phone because it was cheap, but while it may be inexpensive in dollars (at least for my very minimal cell phone needs, ) it's pretty pricey in aggravation and inconvenience. Worst customer service ever.

Purchased double the minutes for life card last year and it wouldn't work yesterday when renewing our yearly contract. After 13 years of service they will not honor their double for life saying that we only ordered the 800 minutes and not 400 plus double for life! Why would we pay the SAME price for the minutes when we could have the better bargain? After over an hour on the phone and speaking to a manager they refused to honor the double minutes. We are now stuck here for another year as we already renewed both phones but are done with this garbage after this. BALOGNA!

Bought phone oct 19, 2009. Tried to add minutes, couldn't. Had to call for them to add minutes and went through long process. Next time to add minutes, couldn't. Called again and had to go through long process again. Did this everytime to add minutes. Since day one, got phone calls from companies all over us. Complained about this. Never did tracfone want to exchange or replace phone (Knew there was a problem). Turns out, tracfone sells refurbished phones. Information from old service was never cleared. So tracfone was never registered under my name even when I "supposedly" registered it when I bought it (Tracfone can't change information). So after 3 months, or after warrenty, tracfone supposedly disconnects phone. Well, I was still able to use it but kept having to call in for minutes to be added. Supposedly, they even sent me a new phone. It went to old registered user, who tracfone had listed, because I never got phone even though they kept saying I did. They even told me that they could see that my minutes had been transferred to another phone. Keep in mind, I am still using phone. After 5 months, I had had enough of tracfone! After numerous calls and e-mails since day one, they disconnect my phone. Now they won't give me a refund after I fax them a copy of the reciept that has the serial number of phone on the reciept. I have also lost the minutes that were on the phone. And now, all of a sudden, they can replace the phone, that I asked them to do 3 months ago when still under warrenty. I told them to send me the dang phone. It is the least I can get out of them. I have a sledge hammer waiting to smash the junk when it shows up because I will never use or trust tracfone again! Has anyone ever contacted tracfone and talked to someone you can actually understand? Spread the word to never use or deal with tracfone ever!

Tracfone is a horrible service. Their customer support people do not speak english very well and it takes hours to get get them to understand you. It also takes hours of being put on hold before you talk to them, and even more hours as you are talking to them. They gave me a free fone 2 years ago and ever since then I have never, repeat never been able to add minutes with a card. Every single time it took a call to their customer service and hous of being put on hold. They said they would correct the problem but after 2 years I am tired of waiting. Do not, I repeat do not ever consider getting a tracfone !