Complaint Review: TRACFONE

 I have been a Safelink customer, also known as Tracfone, (they are both the same company), for a couple years now. I decided to upgrade my phone, and purchased one of there refurbished, LG840G phones on there website.

After using the phone for a while, I noticed that I was going through my minutes extremely fast, compared to my previous usage. So I started paying attention to my actual usage, and compared that, to the minutes I was being charged. I was being charged two and three times my actual usage, with this new refurbished phone. Also I was not receiving all my calls, and messages correctly. I was getting my messages two to four days late, and my outgoing messages were not being delivered for two to four days after sending them. Then the display started flashing on and off during use. This phone turned out to be a piece of junk.

I placed many calls to Tracfone, and or Safelink's customer service. What a nightmare. The customer service people could barely speak English, and they were extremely hard to understand, and could care less about solving my problems with this new, refurbished phone I purchased.

I spent at least 4 hours total, on hold, being transferer from one employee to another, only to be told, that i had to call them from a phone other than the defective cell phone, so they could trouble shoot it. I would have to drive 100 miles round trip to be able to do that, (I live in the country, and don't know any of the neighbors yet as I just moved here), and kept telling them that they could troubleshoot the phone while I was using it if they wanted to. Anyways I got nothing but the runaround from them, and the phone was ripping me off all the while. Tracfone didn't care......

On my last call to Tracfone, they told me they had software that could trouble shoot this phone, and determine how many minuted I had lost. But I had to call them from a different phone. I asked them to troubleshoot the phone while I wasn't using it, then call me back after they did that. They refused that option, with no explanation. I then reactivated my old phone. Tracfone done everything they could to make that process as troublesome as they could. Then I called them back to troubleshoot the defective phone, and I got nothing but lies from each and every person I was transfered to. I was told they could trouble shoot the phone with there software, then I was told there software wasn't working, and got transfered, again and again, until finally a "Manager" got on the phone. The manager didn't bother with the software routine that could trouble shoot the phone, she, after listening to my fifth explanation of my problems, just decided to send me a replacement phone. Maybe my comment that I was going to get my credit card company involved changed there mind.

If they were a reputable company, they would not have made me go through all the hassle, to fix / replace the defective phone they sold me. I simply had to go through to many lies, and to many of there employees, that could care less about the problems I was having. None of them, up until the "Manager", offered me any solutions to my problems. I am sure most people would have given up, and wrote it off as a loss, before going through all the mess I had to go through, which I'm sure, is exactly what Tracfone / Safelink was hoping for.

I strongly reccomend staying away from these phone providers.