Complaint Review: TracFone

Summary of reason for this report: TracFone uses a program called "Triple Minutes For Life" as a promotion to sell their product, which is pay-as-you-go cellular phone service. I purchased an LG-840G phone from them in 2012, and have maintained the service by purchasing annual or quarterly "Airtime Cards" ever since. This program is supposed to give you three times the "minutes" shown on the card. For example, a 60 Minute/90 Day card should give me 180 minutes of airtime, and 90 days of service. For the first couple of years, that's what I was getting.

Then, about 18 months ago, I enrolled in "Automatic Updates". This program automatically charges my credit card once every 90 days, and updates the phone with the number of service days and minutes that was signed up for, in my case, a 90 day/60 minute plan. However, because the phone itself is a "Triple Minutes for Life" phone, I am supposed to be getting 180 minutes for every 60 minute card I purchase. This has never worked properly, from the very first quarterly update. I get the 90 days of service I am supposed to get, but only 60 minutes, not the 180 minutes I am supposed to get with the "Triple Minutes for Life" guaranty that was part of the original purchase of the phone.

The rest of this report is a transcript from this morning (February 3, 2017), of my attempt to resolve Tracfone's error in pushing the wrong number of minutes to my LG-840g phone. This is on Tracfone's Facebook chat system:

You are now chatting with Ashley. Thank you for using our chat support.

[ASHLEY] - My name is Ashley. How can I help you?

[ME] - I have Automatic Refill on my LG840G TracFone service, the 90-day/60minute plan. The most recent update came two days ago, and the 90 days service has updated, but the Airtime minutes did not update correctly. I only received 60 minutes, and this should be 180 minutes with my Triple Minutes For Life. The phone should now have 4356.02 minutes, but is showing only 4236.02 minutes.
Please correct this and push the proper 180 minutes to my phone today. You have charged my credit card, so I expect this correction as soon as possible.
The phone number is [redacted] and the device I.D. number is [redacted].

[ASHLEY] - We're sorry for the trouble. Let me check your account. Please turn the phone off and on.

[ME] - Okay, I have re-booted the phone, it is powering up now.

[ASHLEY] - Please go to Menu > Prepaid > Code Entry Mode > Press *#0 > Press OK. Provide us the number below Parameter 00.

[ME] - the number is "[redacted]"

[ASHLEY] - Please go to Menu > Prepaid > Code Entry Mode > Press *#30 > Press OK. Provide us the number below Parameter 30.

[ME] - The number is [redacted]

[ASHLEY] - I have verified that you have the correct minutes on your phone.

[ME] - The phone Home screen is still showing only 4236.02, not the 4356.02 that it is supposed to have.

[ASHLEY] -  That's correct. Our system show you have 4236.02 minutes on your phone.

[ME] - I have Triple Minutes For Life on this phone. The last Airtime purchase was a 60 minute card. With Triple Minutes For Life, that is 180 minutes. The phone only received 60 minutes. It should have received 180 minutes. The Home Screen should now be showing 4356.02 minutes, NOT 4236.02

[ASHLEY] - Yes, you're correct. You the have the Triple Minute Plan on your phone.

[ME] - Yes, I do. So a 60 minute Airtime Card is supposed to push 180 minutes to the phone. So, my phone should now be showing 4356.02 minutes. It is only showing 4236.02.

[ASHLEY] - Allow me a moment. I'll contact another department to verify your minutes.

(At this point, this session has passed the 30 minute mark, and my patience with Ashley's obtuseness is wearing very thin.)

[ASHLEY] - Please turn the phone off and on.

[ME] - Okay, phone has re-booted. The Home screen is still showing 4236.02

[ASHLEY] - I was informed that our system is still verifying your minutes. Please contact us after 48 hours so that we can confirm that 120 minutes were erased on your phone.

[END OF CHAT, TracFone disconnected me a few seconds after this]

That's evidently the end of this "Customer Service" session. It has lasted 37 minutes. I have tried to be very patient and courteous, when my urge to scream at "Ashley", especially after the half-way point, was raising my blood pressure to near-fatal levels. Call back after 48 hours? Really? It takes 48 hours for someone to type a few keystrokes on a computer keyboard? And the last thing that was said: "...so that we can confirm that 120 minutes were erased on your phone", sounds bad, real bad, like I am going to be paying them from now on to actually DELETE minutes from my phone, not add them.

Looking back at this exchange, I have to wonder, was "Ashley" even reading what I wrote? Or are her English Language and Math skills so poor that she was completely overwhelmed by what I wrote? I had no idea that my High School English classes, 40 years ago, had raised my level of English proficiency to such dizzying heights. Or is it that TracFone has abandoned any pretense of complying with their contractural obligations, and is hell-bent on not honoring the Triple Minutes For Life program any more?

The real issue here is that this is the 4th or 5th Quarterly Airtime purchase I have made on this phone, and I have had to contact Tracfone Customer Service about this error every time. Previously, it only took one or two simple emails to [TF.CorpResolutionTeam@tracfone.com] to get this corrected and get my 180 minutes pushed to the phone. This time, I have sent 3 emails: the first one was ignored, TracFone's response to the second one was to tell me to use the Facebook Chat system, and the third email has so far been ignored. I have just about had it with this company, and I am starting to wonder if this is their goal: to suck people into building up excess minutes, then piss them off so much that they simply abandon the phone and move on to another carrier, leaving TracFone with hundreds or thousands of minutes that they can then sell to some other poor chump who can't afford a 2-year contract from one of the mainstream cell phone companies?

I would not ever recommend TracFone or Net10 to a friend again. Their abominable customer service, and the apparent stupidity, or maybe it's just lack of training, in the people they are hiring to do Customer Service, makes this far too frustrating an experience. And it's not like this is the only time this has happened! I have been fighting with them about this glitch in the Triple Minutes for Life program FOR 18 MONTHS!