TracFone Wireless
Reviews and Complaints

I bought a tracfone from family dollar on maple ave in zanesville ohio. Spent several hours on the phone with you guys trying to activate it. Nothing happened the bow im stuck with a piece of [censor] phone battery drained my phone and wouldn't load anything. So I took the trac fone back to family dollar to get my money back. They refused to give me my money back. So I am stuck with a piece of [censor] phone that I cannot use!

Ticket 1171... dated 9/16/17:
Purchased a new tracfone and wanted to move my original tracfone number to the new phone. Told by CS this would be 24 to 48 hours. Called on 9/18, old phone had 2058 units, they were only transferring 1712. Wanted to know what happen to the units and if the port was completed. After being transferred 8-10 times including supervisor, managers and being disconnected and being on the phone with every department for over 4 hours, no resolution. So next day on 9/19, went on line to check the account and phone, both were "Deactivated" how and why? Call customer service again on 9/19, the first customer service person transferred me to lost prevention, told this person the phone was not lost or stolen or anything and I did not know why I had been transferred to them, so they transferred me back to customer service. After being on the phone with this person for 45 minutes, make calls to the new by tracfone, all seemed fixed, except for the minutes issue. The number was NEVER ported, this person had activated a new phone number, my original objective was porting the old number to the new phone. So I call back again after being on hold 30 minutes and with whomever this person was speaking with I am now told they need to send out a new SIM card before I can get the original number ported ticket 1171498...

I subscribed to tracfone in May, 2016. I had 1, 200 minutes of text, phone and data (each). I renewed in March, 2017 (3/27/17 phone call) for another year of service and was told everything would roll over as I had excess. I added told on my customer service call to renew that I had 2, 275 talk, 1, 497 text and 2, 307 MB data and was told my year of service was good through 5/8/18. On 8/27/17, my text stopped working and I called tracfone as to how I could have gone through that much in 5 months when it lasted just shy of a year during my 1st year with tracfone. I asked for my account records on the text because I disagreed and I was told I had to hire an attorney. I used US Cellular prior to tracfone and it was standard to receive detail on your phone automatically and more detail when requested. I disagree with you 100% and will look for how to file a complaint against tracfone without a cost to me. I will not recommend tracfone to anyone and your service is MUCH LESS than customer service. Those are my phone records...why should you charge me and accept pre-payment and not provide me with detail of how these minutes were used.

On July 24, 2017, I made an online purchase for an LG Smartphone along with a 1 year service agreement (Purchase # 9891222). I made the purchase using my Mastercard. The phone was shipped overnight Free. Within a day, I received a defective phone...no back casing, no battery, no sim card. I called Customer Service and was told to return the phone and I would receive a new phone. On August 1st, I returned the phone via FedEx. I have since decided to cancel the order after 3 phone calls and 2 online chat sessions each lasting 30-45 minutes with people who were difficult to understand. They said I had to wait until they shipped a new phone (from Miami) and then I had to return it and wait 30 days for a refund. It is August 26th and I still have not received a new phone, which I plan on returning. Of course, my credit card was billed promptly in the amount of $215.82 for which I have received no product or service. I have been without a cell phone for over a month now. Such business practices are without integrity and I have been greatly inconvenienced by this whole experience. I would appreciate any help you might be able to provide.

Thank you.

Jennifer Olson
Brookfield, WI 53045

I used tracfone for about 10 years, although there were occasional issues. This year my 2nd tracfone was dying and I purchased a 3rd from Walmart. When I tried to have my long time number transferred from #2 to #3, no one at tracfone could do it. I spoke with people at length and was on hold with a woman for 1 1/2 hours. She then told me she would call me a couple of days later, Friday, 07-28-2017 at 11:45 AM Eastern. She didn't call. I was sitting by the phone waiting. Finaslly, I decided enough was enough, that I was through with this company, and left. My wife later told me that a man from tracfone called about 200PM. I ended up returning the new phone to Walmart and loosing service until 12-16-17 and over 2300 minutes. It cost me a lot of money to buy another real phone and get cell service. I haven't aggravated myself my requesting a refund from tracfone. I highly recommend that any new user skip this company and find real cell service with an actual customer service available.

I recently upgraded my trac phone. On August 18 I purchased a new cell phone. I have been a trac phone customer for 12 years, this is probably my 7th phone. Every other time I upgraded my phone I ended up with more minutes, texts, and data than when I started. So the first part of the compliant is not all minutes, text and data transferred. Secondly I was on the phone/hold for over 1.25 hours. Secondly the rep. Tomar started out friendly and then kept repeating himself. I asked several times to speak with someone else if not a supervisor. He would say that I had the exact department and that that was all he could do. Tomar continued saying that the phone transfer was successful. To me as I stated to Tomar successful would be if all minutes transferred. I then asked for someone else again and he said, he was it. Somewhere after an hour of being on the phone he was able to say they could add 342 minutes? Somewhere around that many. On august 18th I had 3454 minutes, 2139 texts, 1603 data before the transfer. I believed that I would at least have what I started with. What I am asking for is to get what I had, if not more. I would like to have something for my time today. It should of not taken that much time, to basically achieve nothing. Please contact me with questions or resolution. It is not asking to much to of had what I started with. [protected]@outlook.com

I have had a TracFone for several years but need to change to another carrier. My Motorola LG has a message to indicate that it has been locked. When I first called to get it unlocked, I was told the phone was too old. When I called again, I was told TracFone could only unlock it IF I continued service with them. They could not unlock it so that I could get a new SIM card and change carriers. I purchased this phone. If they can unlock it to remain in their service, they can unlock it for other reasons. This is a bunch of crap and I have spoken to several who have indicated they were "supervisors". I would NEVER use the TracFone service again under any circumstances!

My daughter had a tracfone for a while and then for her birthday we got her a used iphone and transferred her account to it. Everything worked great and then I tried to activate her old phone using a new airtime card for my son. Somehow when I did this, it merged the 2 lines, messing both up. Over the course of several weeks and many long phone calls they were able to fix my daughter's line on her iphone but had to change her phone number in doing so. But they could still not get the phone for my son to work. They kept saying it just needed a different sim card so they would mail one out and we would wait a week to get it .Then I would call and try to activate it and it wouldn't work so they would mail out another sim card and I would wait another week and the same thing would happen. After a month I finally got someone who said they would mail me a new phone & I was on the phone with them for about 40 minutes and gave them my name and address (again because they don't keep a record of anything) and then my phone went out and dropped the call. So I finally was able to reach someone later that day and they transferred me to "corporate" (which they had done many times before) and after 2 minutes on the phone they put me on hold and never came back. I waited over 20 minutes before hanging up because I was desperate. So I called again today and of course they have no record that they were going to send a replacement phone and I have to go through the whole explanation as I do every time I call because they don't keep a record of the calls even though they gave me a ticket number and they tell me they have to transfer me to corporate but the hold time is half an hour so she will give me the direct line instead. So I call it and explain everything and they run through the same procedure and 20 minutes into the call I find out I am talking to another customer service rep and that corporate will have to help me. So they transfer me to corporate and they tell me they will check my account and put me on hold and never come back on the line. I waited over 20 minutes again before hanging up. So now I have not been able to use the phone I activated over a month ago. They will not replace the airtime card I used to activate it so that is a total loss but the worst part is that I have wasted over 7-8 hours on the phone with people who apparently had no intention of ever helping me. And there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot believe a company like this is allowed to stay in business.

I bought a 120 minute phone card from Family Dollar on 07/30/2017 at 16:47:[protected] [protected]. The cashier did not give the receipt that had my pin number on it so I called Customer Service. I give customer service the bar code numbers on the back of the card to verify that I purchased the card at this store. The agent state that this was a Net Spend card. I told him it was a tracfone card. He stated he could not add the minutes because this was a Net spend card and I had a tracfone. I contacted the store and they cannot reprint the pin number. All I want is the minutes added to my phone. My number is [protected].

Ever since i bought my tracfone its been nothing but problems. everytime i need to refill when the data gets low, they remove the remaining data i have left . its happened to me 3 times now & they refuse to credit my phone the lost data, customers service is no help @ all, they just want to take orders & process payments. they also refuse to give out any company info like name of the president of the company or an address to write a complaint

On Sunday, July 23, 2017 (approximately 4:30pm), my mother thought she lost her tracfone. She had recently purchased a new tracfone for my birthday so I called tracfone and asked to have her lost phone deactivated and transfer her phone number the new phone instead of me using it. When she returned home, she discovered that her phone was sitting on the kitchen counter and she never lost it. On this day, there was no issue with tracfone.

On Monday, July 24, 2017 at 6:00pm, I called tracfone back, had them transfer her phone number from my phone back to her phone and asked to have my phone activated. I also wanted to transfer my old Verizon phone number to my new phone. The man I spoke to at tracfone transferred my mom's number back to her phone and reactivated her phone, but in doing so, he transferred the 1350 minutes that came with my new phone to my mom's phone. I was not aware he transferred my minutes to her phone. So when he activated my phone, he gave me a new phone number. I reminded him that I needed my old number not a new number. He said he could not transfer my old number because he already activated my phone with a new number. Then he informed me that he transferred my minutes to my mom's phone and I could no longer get the minutes back. So I had an extra phone card with 60 minutes and gave him the number on the card. He added 60 minutes to my phone but said he could not transfer the original 1350 minutes back to my phone and he could not transfer my old number for an hour because it would take that long for the phone information to update. He gave me a ticket number to call back.

I called back in one hour and talked to another person at tracfone. I was on the phone with that person for about 30 minutes trying to explain exactly what happened and that I needed my old number transferred to the phone. They gave me another ticket number and told me I had to call back in 24 hours to have the number transferred.

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017, at 5:30pm, I called tracfone back to give the ticket number and talked another person. They said I needed my pin number from Verizon before they could transfer the old phone number. (Not one person the night before told me I needed that). So I hung up and called Verizon. Got my pin number, called tracfone back and talked to yet another person. That person said she could help me and proceeded to transfer the old number. However, with all my calls and frustration, I mistakenly gave her my mom’s tracfone number instead of my Verizon phone number. As soon as the transaction was complete, I realized my mistake and told the woman on the phone that was the wrong number! She said it was too late. I begged her to please reactivate my mom’s phone because it was the wrong number! She let out a big sigh as if she was mad and made the change. In transferring my mom’s number again to her phone, the woman took my 60 minutes again! So now, at this point, I have no more phone cards to add minutes and I am out 1410 minutes total! So she cannot activate my phone or transfer my number because I have no minutes. You have to have minutes on the phone to activate it. She said she could not transfer the minutes back even though she could see in her computer that in total, tracfone took: 1350 min on Monday and 60 min on Tuesday. I asked to speak to her manager and she said she is a supervisor. I said again: I would still like to speak to "your" manager. She said the manager was not available. I asked to speak to someone in the United States because obviously we were not communicating well. She would not speak to me anymore after that. I said: Hello? She didn’t speak. I could hear typing in the background. I said: Hellooooo? She didn’t speak. I said: Are you still there? She didn’t speak. I said: Are you serious right now?! She didn’t speak. I said: This is unbelievable! Are you not going to speak to me?! She didn’t speak. I stayed on the phone for 10 minutes without her speaking so I hung up. I called right back, the phone picked up and the person who answered hung up immediately. I called back and talked to another person, told him my name and phone number, he asked me to hold, and hung up on me. Then I called back and talked another person. I said: Ok, I am having a lot of problems trying to communicate what I need. Would you like to know the story? He said: No. I said: Um, ok, can I speak to someone in the United States? He said: No. I asked: Why not? He said: Because there is no one. I said: You have no one in the United States? He said: Miami Florida. I said: Ok, can you transfer me to them? He said: No. I asked: Why not? He said: Because they’re not there. I asked: Where are you? He said: Honduras Central America. So I proceeded to tell him that I needed my Verizon phone number transferred to my new tracfone phone and tracfone people took all my minutes so I need him to transfer my minutes back to my phone and activate my new tracfone phone. He said that he could not find my Verizon number in the computer or my Verizon account number and the serial number associated with my tracfone belonged to my mom’s phone. I explained that is not her serial number and gave him her serial number to her tracfone. He said he could not help me but gave me a ticket number and said to call back in 12 hours and the case would be reset and someone would help me.

On Wednesday, July 26, 2017, I spoke to someone at tracfone and they gave me the Corporate Escalation phone number to call because they could not understand what I needed or could not help me even after I gave them the ticket number. So I called Corporate Escalations, the person I spoke to was able to transfer my old Verizon number to the new phone but could not transfer the minutes back. They said to call back the next day to check on the status of the transfer.

On Thursday, July 27, 2017, I spoke with one guy at Corporate Escalation and he said I had to call Home Shopping Network, where my mom purchased the phone, to find the pin number for the original minutes before he could transfer the minutes back to my phone. I called back to tracfone without calling the Home Shopping Network, spoke with Maria, and she manually added 1410 minutes and transferred my number to the new tracfone. She gave me a case number and said someone would call me within 24-48 hours to confirm that my minutes were added. As of right now, my number is working and I now have minutes, but no one ever contacted to me again.

This experience has been the absolute worst experience I have ever encountered with customer service in my life. I will never recommend tracfone to another person and will continue to discourage anyone I speak to who is thinking of switching to tracfone to not use tracfone. Even though my issue was resolved, Corporate Escalations even made it difficult. I cannot believe the amount of unprofessionalism overall. My experience was beyond absurd and if I could think of another word to describe it, I would. I am appalled and still frustrated. I hope I never have an issue with this phone as I do not want to ever have to contact tracfone again. It took 5 days and at least 12 people to resolve my issue!

Purchased cell phone from hsn, it came with 1200 free minutes and triple minutes for life. Activated the phone on 7/31/17, 1200 minutes were there, next day, 8/1/17, minutes are gone! The phone has never been used! They just stole the minutes overnight! Trying to reach the chat line, they are receiving a high volume of calls, it isn't any wonder! There was never anything provided from either hsn or tracfone that advised that minutes expire, especially minutes that a consumer has had for less than one day! This is outrageous!

I have had many problems with my phone but the worst is no customer service. They are rude, they lie and they never seem to get anything fixed. They love to tell you they're going to put you on told for a couple of minutes. Then an hour later they are checking to see if you're still there! Or you mysteriously get disconnected. And the problems go on and on. I have had my latest problem since they did an update (Or that is what I was told). And some how my voice mail was deleted! Three months later I still done have voice mail. I'm on the phone for hours, just today I was on hold from 1:00pm -6:00pm! I was told someone would call me back in an hour or so if they didn't then I should call back. And so I did! And waited on the phone for a senior manager from 9:00 - until midnight. No one ever got on the phone so now i've got to call back tomorrow. And start all over again. This sucks and so does there customer service!

I first tried to change my credit card information in June of this year when I got my new card in the mail. It showed as being changed in the system but then I got a cancellation notice on approximately the 5th of July. I called the service center on either the 5th or 6th of this month where the representative asked me the same questions 3-4 times. The representative kept telling me that she needed the information. After the 4th time I requested to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor manually entered my new credit card information. I then got another notice on the 10th and when I called today the same thing happened. It is under ticket number [protected] because the representative states they are unable to make the corrections.

A few years ago I ordered a tracfone with triple minutes, ported the number from my previous provider and the tracfone did not work. I was sent a new phone but in this process could no longer use my former number. Last week before I ordered a new phone I did an online chat with 2 different reps, told them what had happened last time. Asked them to check my zip code and also 2 others, and was assured that the phone I was interested in would work in those zip codes. I was told my minutes would roll to new phone. I asked both reps if I could buy a minimum plan, make sure the phone works and THEN port my tracfone number to the new phone. I was assured by both reps that I could do that, NO PROBLEM. I received the new phone, it did not work. Did another online chat, and was told" Service is never guaranteed." I purchased a phone at a local store, and it worked. Did an online chat to port the number and was told this was not an option. I told the rep that 2 other reps told me that it was. They offered to cancel the phone but I would forfeit any minutes used. By this time I was angry and frustrated. I said I would keep the phone, but wanted to speak to someone about the situation. I was given a number that was VM jail and could not speak to anyone. When I called to ask about my return, I was told to send it back at my expense. I asked if I would be reimbursed, the answer was no. I said " You sent me phone that does not work and I have to pay for the return?" She answered " Yes." Unbelievable. I think they tell you what they want to in order to get you as a customer and then they don't care.

During the first quarter of 2017, we lost cell phone minutes on 3 phones my family owns. We have used Tracfone for 4 years and this is the first time this has happened. Each phone lost about 1, 000 minutes (we bought the one year card with 1200 or 1300 tripled minutes for $100 each). That is close to $300 lost! Tracfone's customer service people were very polite but they do not seem to be authorized to do anything to resolve the issue. Instead they have to transfer me to their Fraud Department. I have talked to different people in the Fraud Department and they do not seem to care about their customers; one of them is actually rude. I am now looking at getting regular phones for the entire family. Too bad because this works perfectly for us. Besides my family, I have also introduced Tracfone to my parents, siblings, and in-laws; they all switched to Tracfone when I told them how much we save every year. But now, I will have to warn them about the stolen minutes and recommend they find another carrier.

My husband & I both were using Tracfone for our service but he switched to Net10 as they offer 30 unlimited plans.
On his Tracfone prepaid plan he had over 3300 airtime minutes and over 900 text that were unused. He requested those minutes to be transferred over to my phone and was told it would be done,
"No problem", which in fact was nothing but problems.
I used the remaining airtime on my phone, in addition to airtime on his phone and also used time on his Aunt's phone in our attempt to transfer the unused Tracfone minutes and to activate the new Net10 Sim & 30 day plan. This endeavor took approximately two hours.
Now today I used online chat service to inquire about the transfer of unused airtime to my phone and was told it is not possible to transfer the unused balance and there is nothing that can be done about it. Totally opposite of what I had been told prior to his Net 10 set up.
Upon my request the chat associate gave me a contact number for refunds so again I borrowed a phone to call ld i had been given a wrong number, I was in contact with yet another affiliate of your company. Though I was told I had the wrong number, the associate there was quick to tell me again there was nothing that can be done. I then requested a contact number for corporate. At that point my call was disconnected.
I feel as though I have been blatantly lied to over the course of this ordeal.
Tracfone and Net 10 are affiliated according to the website and according to your associate...please tell me why all the lack of inability within the companies and frustration they place on the customers?
I have used several different providers in the past and of those, all were simple to work with and their tasks were seemingly effortless.
I am requesting the remaining balance to be transferred to my phone as I was told it would be or a refund equivalent to the unused amount issued via mail or an additional 30 day Net 10 plan added to my husband's phone.
You may reply to me via email at:
[protected]@gmail.com

Recently my tracfone, s Ringtone has been turned off. Don't know why . Is there any reason to do this in the business. if can not hear the ring how do I suppose to know who is calling and how do I call back to the any person. If don't call anybody then there no use of my minutes. No using minutes mean I don't have to buy the minute. This is how TracFone does the business. Anyway My name is Aita Thakali. My Numbers -[protected]. Hope turn back on the Ring Tone ASAP.

On 5/30/2017 I went to Speedway to purchase an At&t phone card.I drove home and attempted to load the airtime to my phone.It said it is invalid.I live in the country so I couldn't go into town until a couple of days later to return the wrong minutes.The store manager Cara called you and you said I couldn't get a refund since it has been more than 24 hours ! She also said it shows the minutes have not been used. I paid $50.00 for minutes I can't use and wasn't my fault it was rang up wrong.All I want is a refund for the $50.00 that I paid.I will be waiting for your response in at least 3 days before I contact a third party to resolve this issue. Michelle Cash 224 Possum hollow road, Chillicothe, Ohio 45601 phone # [protected]