TracFone Wireless Digital Prepaid Plan

Average customer rating: 2.5

Tracfone Prepaid Wireless

Ok for occasional users--horrible customer service

This should be easier

customer service clueless

A Pretty Good Deal

TracFone Wireless Digital Prepaid Plan

Manufacturer:
Product Group: Wireless
Binding: Wireless Plan
ASIN: B00005U1RB

Related Categories:

Emergency Use: Under 100 min
| Service Plans | Cell Phones & Service

Amazon.com Product Description

Calling Range: national (roaming not included)

This cell phone service plan lets you call throughout TracFone's nationwide network, with no additional fees for long distance service.

Included Minutes: Units good for 10 local or 5 roaming

This plan includes 10 airtime units; good for 10 minutes worth of local calling (billed at one unit per minute) or 5 minutes of roaming (billed at two units per minute), or any combination of local and roaming totaling 10 airtime units.

Mobile-to-Mobile minutes: no

This plan offers no reduced fee for calls made between two TracFone cell phone plan subscribers.

Services and products included at no additional fee

A Nokia 5165 cell phone and access to the TracFone nationwide long distance network is available at no additional cost to the by-minute rate (see Services Available, below) when you purchase individual phone cards. You'll also get voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, and text messaging. There is no monthly fee, deposit, or credit check with this program. For more information, see the "prepaid faq" on the left column of this page.

Services Available for an additional, per-use fee

Calls cost between $0.10 and $0.50 per minute depending on the type of pre-paid phone card you use. Cards are purchased separately.

Upgrade Highlights: n/a

No upgrades are available for this plan.

Plan Duration: n/a

Calls are paid for with prepaid phone cards, sold separately and refillable by TracFone and most cell phone retail outlets.

Customer Reviews:

Tracfone Prepaid Wireless.......2004-05-15

My wife and I wanted a cell phone to keep in the car when we travel. We don't use it much. It is just for emergencies and to let friends know where we are. We have two Tracfones. One has worked like a charm since we bought it. The second has never worked and we have been unable to resolve the issue with Tracfone.

Be advised, Tracfone customer service is terrible. Hold times are long, the company is reluctant to replace defective merchandise, and getting a refund is ... well, I don't know - I finally had to go to my credit card company and dispute the charge.

On the plus side, the phone displays how much air time is left and when it expires. If you register the phone, you can get telephone and e-mail reminders to add air time. Also, the service and connections have been pretty good on our working phone.

One star because customer service is so poor it overshadows an otherwise good prepaid service.

Ok for occasional users--horrible customer service.......2003-11-01

2005 UPDATE--DO NOT GET THIS SERVICE--For a comparable price you can get much better services elsewhere. I use Virgin, and they don't make you go thru the gyrations Tracfone does when re-upping your minutes. Tracfone's horrible system almost guarantees that you will be frustrated!

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I bought a Tracfone for my wife and another for my mother-in-law. WARNING--if you buy this as a Christmas gift, open the box beforehand and activate the phone before Christmas. If you wait until after Christmas and have problems, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET CUSTOMER SERVICE. I ended up getting up at 3 AM to get a CS rep and get my wife's phone activated.

I could have avoided the Customer Service headaches if the web activation service had worked correctly. Be very careful when you are going thru the laborious activation process, I think this is where I went wrong the first time. The slightest goof up with all the numbers you have to enter and I think you're out of luck. I was more careful with my mother-in-law's phone and didn't have a problem.

If you intend to use your phone every day, this is not the plan for you. Tracfone is banking on you using up your minutes very quickly and having to buy airtime cards to stay active. I bought the one-year service for $100 and my wife only uses the phone for emergencies, so she still has lots of time left on it. For multiple phones in one family I'm sure there are better deals out there.

Overall the Tracfone is a decent idea. I'm curious to know if anyone has tried to use the new law to switch to or from Tracfone and keep their existing cell phone number. Given TF's lack of ability at anything out of the ordinary this is probably a masochistic exercise. With their pre-programmed phones is this even technically feasible?

This should be easier.......2003-07-28

I bought a pair of Tracfones and so far, without exception I have run into some sort of problem trying to activate or add minutes to them. One would think the process would be smoother. The first time, we had some sort of problem with an "invalid code" when trying to activate one of the phones, after about an hour of fussing around with this including long times on hold with the technical support they eventually did credit us an extra 60 units for our troubles and got the phone to activate. Then the next time I tried to add some units using the web site, no units got added, but my credit card got charged, so I had to call them to get this fixed.
There are also some features on the phone (text messaging and e-mailing) that appear to be available, but when you try to use them, the result is that you waste your units and the phone tells you there was an error. I asked technical support about this, and they said that it was stated on their website that these services didn't work so there would be no refund of the 3 units that I requested. So I wrote an e-mail to them about this, which has remained unanswered after a week.

And today, I can't add any units to my phone because the web site is down... (I'm unwilling to waste time on hold with technical support)

But the phones do work when they have units on them...

customer service clueless.......2003-06-24

The customer service is horrible. I went online to order a phone, but the website does not allow you to enter separate billing and shipping addresses. My area has only post office box delivery, and they will not deliver to a post office box; so the credit card wouldn't authorize over the phone. I called customer service, which took about 5 minutes, who transferred me to a department that was closed -- I got a mesage to call back and a dial tone. The next day I called customer service again and was on hold for 18 minutes waiting for a person (because they didn't give me the number the first time). I explained the problem and was given a phone number to a department who could take my order over the phone. I called that number and was on hold for 7 minutes waiting for a person. When I finally got a rep I was told there is no way to place my order, because they also use the internet to place the orders and there is no way for me to place the order when I have different shipping and billing addresses. You would think Tracfone's customer service reps should know that I can't order thir phone if I don't have home delivery at the post office, and not waste my time on hold. I am not pleased with the waste of an hour of my life.

A Pretty Good Deal.......2002-08-18

There are some drawbacks to TracFone service: 1) you do waste units when you check your voicemail (which you can get around by checking your messages on a land line). 2) customer service both via phone and internet are about as helpful as rubber crutches. 3) the phones they offer are not the latest technology with all the cool bells and whistles.

However, if your needs are for a basic means of communication, and you want to avoid those sticky contracts.....it works quite well. I get fairly decent reception pretty much everywhere in the SF bay area (I used to have the analog, and got BETTER reception with it in remote areas--go figure).

And hey, if you want it to be a "cool phone"....buy a cheap faceplate and move on :)

Electronics:

Electronics

Electronics