My husband and I both have had a TracFone at various times throughout the years. They are a simple little cell phone that you can buy at Wal-Mart, Dollar General, or even online at http://tracfone.com. They are an affordable way to keep in touch with family, but there are some items that you should be aware of. First of all this is a prepaid phone that anyone can get. You have to buy airtime cards to put minutes on the phone. It is fairly simple to put airtime minutes on the phone through both the website or through a toll free number.
The minutes are affordable, but you can actually get a much better deal through an actual cellular carrier such as Cellular One. After three months the minutes expire unless you add another airtime card. It is important to remember to do so, or you will lose any minutes you have left and also your phone number that you have given out to people. The airtime cards range in price from $10 to $100.
There phones are quite affordable to. Online you can purchase a phone from $10 to $50. They are starting a new promotion that will also allow you to get a free camera phone when you purchase a double airtime card online. If you become what they call a TracFone Advisor, you will get 20 bonus minutes the next time you add airtime to your phone. The TracFone Advisor is basically a person who wants to be notified of news and offers about TracFone.
There service isn’t great by any means, but it does work when you can’t afford anything else. Through my experience, you are in roam an awful lot which means that for every minute you talk, you are charged for twice as many units. Service is patchy all over the state of Oklahoma too. You will have full bars for one minute, but won’t have any the next in some areas.
Customer service is an aspect of TracFone that is very aggravating. When you do call customer service, it is fairly easy to get in touch with someone, but they are not always able to answer your questions. One experience that I had was when I was trying to add airtime on a phone that I had for a while. I called because it would not let me add my airtime online. I got through to a woman that had a strong international accent as I’ll put it. I could not understand half of what she said, and she couldn’t understand me either. She asked me for the cell phone serial number, which I replied to her with a question, is that the IEME number. She said no, I need the serial number. I became so frustrated that I hollered into the telephone that I did not want to talk to a foreigner because of this reason.
I do not like this company because of the customer service experiences that I have encountered. This is just my soapbox, but I am an American that has been born here in the United States. I speak English. I imagine that it was frustrating for the woman I talked to on the phone, but if she can’t understand Americans than why does she have a telemarketing job? This is not the first time that I have encountered this problem.
If you have to have a cellular phone and cannot acquire one in any other way, then a TracFone is a good alternative for you. If you can get one somewhere else, do it. I suggest using Cellular One or U.S. Cellular. They have better calling areas, and you are not in Roam all the time. Through the years I have found that TracFone is not a good company because of the customer service that you receive and also because the calling areas are a jip.
