Tracfone Review by a Tracfone Owner
Bad news folks, Tracfone is not taking any more referrals until further notice. I just found out today, 9/29/06. I will be checking back frequently to see when the system is back up and running. According to their website they are "making improvements to the program." I will update this page when the program has resumed. Otherwise, please read on for my experience with Tracfone.
Why I chose Tracfone – because they don’t have their own network, they use everybody else’s network, so you have the best coverage of any individual cell phone carrier. The only problem arises when you are moving between your "home" area and "roaming". In your home area you are charged 1 unit for each minute on the phone (anything over 15 seconds is rounded up to the next minute), roaming you are charged 2 units per minute. I happen to be serviced by Cingular, so my "home" is large. My parent’s phone is being serviced by US Cellular, and their home area is small. I suppose you could play with this a little by fudging where you live and get a larger area of home roaming, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your friends would probably have to call long distance. If you decide to use the voice mail you might have to call long distance. If you use your phone a lot then don’t use Tracfone, go with a traditional carrier. I bought this phone specifically for emergencies. I like the peace of mind that having one allows. I used to have Cingular and paid $16 per month (I signed up a long time ago), and that didn’t include any minutes. This is a much better deal, if you buy a year card you can get 150 minutes for as low as $95. You don’t have to call anyone to cancel, you just don’t buy any more minutes.
My experience with Tracfone – I have the Motorola v60i. I signed up on the Internet, as I’m sure most of you will do. I live in the Chicagoland area and ended up getting a 312 area code, which is specific to Chicago. I was really unhappy about this, and called Tracfone to try to get an 847 number, which is my home area code. The customer service people were very nice and told me that there were no 847 numbers available, but as people come and go that one may become available in the future. They told me to call back as often as I wanted, and they would check for me. I tried calling back several days in a row and there never were any available. I think they do this to get us off their backs. I don’t think they ever have any 847 numbers, I’m sure the local carriers keep the best numbers for themselves. So be prepared to get some weird area code if you live in a metropolitan area. Customer service said that if I called my voice mail and it was long distance then they could somehow miraculously get me an 847 number. I don’t use voice mail, so this wasn’t an issue for me.
The Internet activation process is fairly easy, although you will end up typing in 3 sets of VERY long numbers. You go under the main menu – prepaid – code entry mode to type in the numbers. After I was done it gave me my new phone number. It also showed up in main menu - prepaid - my tel. number. I was able to call out immediately on my phone, but calling from my land line to my new phone didn’t work. So I waited, as the Internet says that it could take up to 48 hours. After 48 hours I still couldn’t call my phone. So I called customer service and they told me that the number I thought was mine wasn’t my phone number, that’s just an internal number. I was pretty mad at this point and one of the reps hung up on me. I can’t blame them, but how stupid is that? I kept saying, "How can I change the number that’s displayed if that isn’t my number?". I was being lazy and didn’t want to memorize my number, (I’ve had my phone for several years now and I still don’t know it by heart). So one of the reps I called recommended I put my actual number in the "Name" field and so that’s what I did and that is the text that I see when I pull up my telephone number. So that worked fine. Just to let you know, you can also see what your actual number is by looking under the menu option: setting – phone status – my tel. number. This one is the actual number and would have saved me a lot of frustration right off the bat if I’d known about it.
Adding airtime seems to be easier, since you only have to input one VERY long set of numbers. You should see your units go up and also your expiration date change to a later date. I do not use voice mail, so I can’t really give you any tips on that. I was lucky to have a new number that when someone calls they can’t actually leave a message because the voice mail prompter says that the voice mail hasn’t been set up and then hangs up on the caller. Of course when I was setting my parent’s phone up the phone number was obviously reused, because when you called it allowed you to leave a message. I spent many a precious minute on the phone and sending emails trying to resolve this issue. No one could help me, and now my Mom says she’s fine with having voice mail, so I ‘m resigned to the fact that the first time my Mom has a message I’m sure she’ll be calling me to help her. Don’t call your voice mail from your cell phone unless you have to. Tracfone has all of their information about voice mail seem like you have to, but you can call from your land line.
This has been my experience so far. Their customer service is very polite, but can be hard to understand. I don’t like how their phone menu system is set up, and their Internet customer service just sends you back an email to tell you to call customer service. I’ve never been able to get any help online. So don’t bother, just call. Their main customer service line is 1-800-867-7183. They have another customer service number for "executive resolutions" and they tend to speak better English and seem to know a little more. Their number is 1-800-339-9345. I tried calling this once about a refer a friend issue and they just passed me on to another department. I used them for another issue and found them very efficient and friendly.
Other notes:
Ascertaining who your local carrier is:
After your phone service is active you can check who your carrier is by typing in
"611". You should get a recorded message letting you know who your carrier
is.
Ringtones:
I haven't actually downloaded tones, but found this information online.
From what I understand, you can buy ringtones and have them sent to an email specific to
your phone. You will need to know who your carrier is, please see above. Once you have
this info then you can use the following:
Cingular: AreaCodeYOURCELLNUMBER@mobile.cingular.net
Verizon: AreaCodeYOURCELLNUMBER@vtext.com
AT&T: AreaCodeYOURCELLNUMBER@mobile.att.net
CellularOne West: AreaCodeYOURCELLNUMBER@mycellone.com
Look up the specifics for other carriers online. I have no idea whether this costs
anything. My first instinct is yes. You will probably get charged for the incoming
ringtone. Who knows how much. I have seen that there are free ringtones all over the
internet. I'm not sure if they are generic and work on all phones, or if you need to use
ringtones designed specifically for your phone. Please email me with any info you get
regarding this feature so that I can update my website.
Text messaging:
I've actually tried using this once, to enter a television contest, and I
couldn't get it to work. I typed in the promotional 6 digit number, I was charged 1/2 unit
to send, then I instantly got a message back, which cost me an additional 1/2 unit to
read. My message said that I needed to use a complete mobile number. So obviously these
television promotions are designed for carriers other than Tracfone.
My particular phone, the Motorola V60, is able to use text
messaging, and it costs 1/2 unit to send and receive messages. I can send messages up to
160 characters, and they didn't say whether the incoming messages have a similar limit.
When I was using the messaging menu I noticed that I had a lot of text messages in my
"Inbox". I looked at the list, and knowing that none were important to me I
deleted all of them, thus saving myself 1/2 unit to read each. So someone, either my local
carrier, or Tracfone, is sending out spam text messages. In order to not have a ton of
these things piling up I highlighted "Inbox", then hit menu, went to "Inbox
Setup", and under "Cleanup" I changed my schedule to "1 days",
which was the shortest time span I could use. I also went down to "SMS Alert"
and turned it off. I normally don't have my phone on, but one time I did, and my phone
started ringing to let me know I had a text message. I don't use this feature, so I wanted
to turn the notification off.
You can get specific information about how to send and receive messages for your
make and model at the following link after you have your phone. Just enter your ESN
(serial number of your phone) at:
http://www.tracfone.com/text_msg.jsp?nextPage=text_msg.jsp&task=text_msg
Tracfone general information, including info about rates for services:
http://www.tracfone.com/content/terms_conditions.jsp
I hope this helps and happy tracfoning.
Kim
Yes, I want to get organized. |
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