Tracfone Review

I have a cell phone for emergencies and for the basic niceties of life (Honey, I'm stuck in traffic and will be late or do I need to stop at the store on my way home and get milk). I'm not one of those people who, as soon as the announcement on the plane says you can turn your cell phone on, has it out, flipped open and is giving the poor person on the other end of the line the play by play of the plane taxiing to the gate.

I chose a prepaid plan because it was $100 a year for 150 minutes. I used maybe 100 of those the first year. They've been giving me double minutes every year since when I renew so I had like 800 minutes last year. I've managed to whittle that down to 450 this year but I'll probably get double minutes again this year and end up with 800 minutes again.

The big ding against Tracfone is the customer service. My first two phones (refurbished ones that they provided free for buying a year card) had problems and had to be sent back to the factory because the screens went black after 3 weeks. I had some problems with them trying to tell me I must have used more minutes than I had because when they got the phones back they couldn't make them work and see the display of minutes and apparently they don't track how many minutes you've used. They have to get the info from your phone and if it's not working, they can't. If you stand your ground and talk to the supervisors and jump through the hoops, you can get them to see things your way.

I have coverage pretty much any place anyone else does because Tracfone works by leasing coverage from other providers so if someone else has coverage, you probably will too. I've never experienced a dropped call and as long as I had charged my phone, it worked anywhere I wanted it to.

When they finally added a camera phone (only like 320 pixels wide so not real good quality), my husband got it for me for our anniversary and I spent hours on the phone trying to get my minutes and my service date (I had just renewed) transferred to the new phone because the department that handles that was busy when I called on a Friday. I was told to call back on Saturday only to find out that the needed department doesn't work on the weekends. When I called on Monday and could reach the needed department, it was taken care of lickety split. But because of the fiasco, when my husband lost his phone 3 weeks prior to his renewal date, he opted for a new pre-paid plan (I believe from Verizon). He so far has not had any problem with it either.

The nice thing about the pre-paid phones is we weren't at all worried about my husband's phone being lost. They got 40 minutes of airtime and 3 weeks of service. The only number programmed into it was my cell phone.

 I think Tracfone is a good option for someone who just wants to have a phone for emergency purposes and to check in with home. You just need to be prepared to stick it out with customer service if you are getting jerked around.