TracFone Wireless review: Terrible customer service 1

Last week my phone got smashed (Wednesday), so I decided to go online and replace it. I ordered a new phone, and while I was at it, ordered another year of service to extend what I already had. Also paid the extra fee to have the new phone overnighted to me. Got a notification on Thursday that the phone has shipped. Friday, no phone. Saturday, no phone, but I did get a notice that I was about to be auto billed for another 3 months of service. So I got online to try and resolve this. After almost an hour of getting we're busy messages, I finally started chatting with a representative. Explained the whole story and was told that I couldn't be helped, because I couldn't get my identity validated, which can only happen by sending a code to the 'broken' phone.

A while later I tried again, only this time I was able to be validated through email. Was told the auto bill was canceled and that my credit card had been removed from the account. Sunday, no phone. Monday, phone finally came along with a notice from my bank that I got charged for another 3 months of service. Went back on-line, turns out the auto bill wasn't canceled, and the credit card is still there. instead of trying to resolve that again, I spent the next 4 hours trying to get the new phone activated. Was told to hang up and it would be activated at reboot in an hour. That didn;t work. I got caught in this endless loop of an automated system telling me it was checking the phone, found a problem that it resolved, and I should reboot and try again. Same thing.

Another few hours on-line and still no resolution... of anything. SIM card out. SIM card in. Phone off. Phone on. Repeat a few dozen times. The past week has been nothing but a complete exercise in frustration. I've had enough. At this point all I want is to do is cancel everything. The phone, the service plan, the entire account and get a refund. But it seems they can't even do that. They've said that they discontinued the auto pay, yet they can't delete my credit card from the account. Based on past experience, I'll probably start getting billed again. They also indicated that they can't provide a full refund, for somthing that I never used.

I do understand that in todays political climate that consumer protection and corporate oversight of fraud is non-existent, but this is ridiculous.