Ever since teaming up with Wal-Mart Inc., Tracfone Wireless has hit the big time and mainstream in Prepaid Wireless Phones. Grabbing a huge chunk of the market solely by placement in the biggest and lowest priced store nationwide.
I bought into it, thinking that it was a great way to get into a phone and have the kids see how many minutes they have etc. Service, coverage, and quality was comparable to other name brands in my experience. Where Tracfone takes a dive into the armpit of wireless is their customer service. The technicians are extreeeemely polite, almost to the point of nausea, but it is when you have a problem with the phone that it all gets really ugly.
My phone was deducting two minutes per minute of use since I got it, using up my time twice as fast obviously is not my idea of frugal. I called Tracfone and after an hour of the technical babble, they decided that I needed to send the phone to them and they would either repair it or send me a new one, and reimburse my lost minutes. "Hey, that's fair enough and good business!" I thought to my naive self. I shipped the phone to them with the promise from them that they would also reimburse me for the $8 in shipping that I paid by giving me additional minutes. I shipped the phone off to them...
