TracFone Prepaid Airtime Card, 1 year/150 Minutes for Tracfone Phones

Rating:
Summary: Best Deal There IS!
Review: This is the way to go....One Year breaks down to less than $8 a month. There is frequently a promotional code to get 100 additional minutes free with this card. I will e-mail it to you if you like... [e-mail] . if you are activating a new tracfone you can also get 100 referal minutes + about 30 more for registering on-line. You can end up with about 380 minutes, one year of service and no monthly bill. E-mail me any time [e-mail].

Rating:
Summary: Tracfone can be a disaster
Review: Tracfone is a good concept compared to Sprint, for example, if you only want a phone to stick in the glove compartment. That's why I got one. But trying to activate the phone and receive the promotions that are offered is virtually impossible. When I tried to activate online and receive bonus minutes, the system keeps creating "errors". So I call to activate and get an automated line that failed to issue me the phone number for my tracfone. Friends referral? Good luck deciphering the process. Cut and paste and send emails to people to prove you got the email from a friend . . . what is this anyway?? Also, my phone only recognizes roaming mode. Terriffic, cut those minutes in half. Customer service is every bit as pathetic as other critiques suggest. I keep getting told the "system isn't up" so problems can't be solved. "Call back next week", etc. doesn't solve problems. When you browse their site to purchase a phone, you may get a popup window that says "take 10% off today on your order, we'll calculate it at checkout". (...) No discount happens. They even add sales tax to your order. If I'm lucky enough to 1. Get a phone number 2. Get my phone to recognize local calling zones and get off of Roam Mode 3. Get the promotional minutes I was promised . . . well then tracfone would be fine.

Rating:
Summary: high per minute rates & bad customer service
Review: tracfone, as an emergency phone, may be a good deal, but other than that they have a hard time ranking.

first off, they don't seem to respond to online queries, and their reps on the 1-800 # are kind of fond of playing games (although at least they answer the phone). second, their per minute charges are basically outrageous in this day & age (at least relative to what can be bought here in idaho).

regarding per minute rates, to be fair note that you can buy a one year tracfone card & then use 60 day cards (for less money) while that 1 year card is active (& those 60 day cards last as long as the phone is active) - yet even considering that, & their special web deals, their per minute charges are rather absurd for anything but emergency use only.

also note that tracfone's gsm phone (which decreases roaming costs) also seriously limits your roaming area (like *all* gsm-only phones). gsm may be a big deal to some people, but until multi-mode phones with gsm exist which don't limit roaming, imho they're of limited usefulness.

comparatively, in idaho, t-mobile's rates are far & away the cheapest (almost as low as 3 cents, with long distance & a really decent free phone). t-mobile's roaming is extremely limited, but for just long distance usage (at home for example) it beats walmart's long distance 5 cents at&t phone card. another goodie in idaho is u.s. cellular with rates just under 5 cents, but no *decent* free phone.

wrt roaming, verizon (& not at&t) seems to be the big enchilada us-wide, but actually in the idaho region, us cellular seems to beat even them. whereas at&t, sprint & others are kind of a joke.

Rating:
Summary: Just don't lose the phone
Review: You lose the phone, you can't get any time or units you have left transfered to a new phone. Even with proof of what you have left. Plus they have the worst customer service I have ever seen. I made 3 phone calls to them, spoke to a different person each time and got different info each time. I actually might have been able to transfer my time but the customer service guy I spoke to the second call gave me wrong info so that when I called back the third time my old account had been wiped out and no one could access the info. The first time they couldn't even find my name or phone number in their database. I had to have the serial number to get any assistance (that would be the serial number which is on the back of the phone!). When I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was told there wasn't one on duty at the time. I work in a call center; there's no way there wasn't a supervisor on duty. Plus between the heavily-accented English each person spoke and the feedback from the phone line, it was almost impossible to understand anything they were saying to me. So good luck if you choose to go with Tracfone.