TracFone
Created: Sometime in 1999

Part One: The Inconvenience Store.

Like most bohemian types, I've managed to completely trash my credit over the years, so short of selling my soul for a deposit, prepaid cellular looked like it was my only option. I checked around, and found that there were basically four choices for prepaid cellular service where I live: GTE Wireless Prepaid and Bakersfield Cellular PrePaid (both of these would work on my existing cell phone, a Motorola brick phone), and TracPhone and Pacific Bell PCS prepaid (these requiring me to purchase a new phone to use with their services).

While I'm making this decision, I happen to go to 7-11 for a slurpee. Stapled to the side of the building is a huge banner... "Prepaid Cell Phone and airtime, $99.99." After verifying that I would have enough to pay the rent, I withdrew a hundie from the ATM in the store and walked up to the counter to buy one of these cell phones. Then the fun began.*

The clerk didn't have the faintest idea what I was talking about. "I don't know anything about that," he stated. "But you have the sign right here," I replied, pointing to a display RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM that had a plastic mock-up of the phone and the $99.99 price tag on it. "I don't know anything about that," he parroted again. "There's a huge sign, stapled to the front of the store! You mean you never noticed it? I drive by this store every day, and I saw it." This much was true: in fact, it may have been the subliminal effects of the sign's presence on this building that urged me to look for prepaid cellular in the first place.

Mr. Clerk just shrugged his shoulders. Now, what I find interesting is that you would think that they probably have a stack of these boxes behind the counter or in the back stockroom that say "cell phone" all over them. A simple visual inspection of these areas would have probably yielded the prize that I sought, and I could have been merrily on my way. No such luck. This employee only seemed to care about his little world he was in, and screw trying to help me out of the $100 cash I had in my pocket. And they'll wonder why in this store they don't sell a lot of these phones.

So much for the concept of a "convenience store."

I had to go to three other stores * before I found a store that not only had the phones, but knew what I was talking about. In fact, the clerk behind the counter here was practically bursting at the seams to sell me the phone (I highly suspect that he was the franchise owner or manager, and probably was going to get a spiff for the sale). He lightened my wallet of US$107.26 (the cost of the phone and sales tax), and I walked out of that store a happy man.

The problems I had finding the phone, however, should have told me of what was to come when I went to use the phone.

Part Two: Reaming.. err, Roaming

Other than some little coverage glitches (which I expect), the service worked perfectly in Bakersfield, my home town. They use GTE Cellular's network up here, which by all accounts is a servicable wireless carrier. I then started to head to Los Angeles for the weekend, and headed south on SR-99.

I had reasonable coverage all the way, past the I-5/SR-99 junction, to Frazier Park, and the Kern County line. Once I got over Tejon Pass, I anticipated the moment when I'd see the little yellow "ROAM" indicator light on the phone, announcing my arrival to the Los Angeles Cellular Service Area.

About 20 miles later, just outside Castaic, I had good enough service that I felt confident I could make a call. I dialed my parents phone number (my eventual destination in Orange County), and waited to hear the familar sound of my parents' answering machine. Instead, I was greeted with a recording, the exact contents of which I do not recall. But to paraphrase, it stated that I had no "Fraud Force" code in my phone (or should that be... Phraud Ph0rce) and that I'd need to assign one.

Before I describe what happened next, perhaps i should state how TracFone works. TracFone sells you a specially programmed cellular phone that has a timer in it. This timer deducts one unit for each minute you are on the phone in your local service area, and two units if you are roaming. The recharge costs seem to vary slightly, but the average is around $1 per unit of usage. You add time to your phone by entering a sequence of digits into the phone, which are given to you by their customer service center when you purchase additional airtime. I won't detail exactly how all this works here, but I'll be posting more information on my webpage when I have the time to write it up.

Now the phone, being just a stupid little conventional cellular phone, has no AMA-style accounting information available to it: that is to say that it has no idea whether the called party has answered to start deducting minutes. So, they've devised a little scheme. After twenty seconds of airtime, it starts billing you. What this means is that any call under 20 seconds is free, if the call is 21 seconds, you are billed for 1 minute of airtime. Regardless of whether or not the called number even answers, or even exists for that matter.

So, when I started to hear the recording, I figured that something was not programmed right in the phone (or the network), and I did not want to get dinged for some of that expensive airtime, so I pressed -END- once I started hearing the recording. I shrugged my shoulders, and figured that I'd have to call TracFone's customer service center and have them straighten it out. In addition, while there was some indication that a GTE Wireless representative would be on the line if I held, I was left with the impression (after reading the documentation TracFone provided) that GTE would not be able to help me anyway.

After having a nice dinner with my mom, and generally having a lousy time, I retired to a friend's house, and called TracFone customer service. After waiting another 15 minutes on hold, I spoke to somebody who had me type a few digits into the phone, and they told me that in a couple of hours (?) things would be working. I typed the codes into the phone, and retired for the evening.

Sure enough, at 10:00AM the next morning, the phone didn't work. So, I picked up the phone, and called the customer service number. Like clockwork, fifteen minutes later, I spoke with another CSR. I explained the situation to her, and she asked me to hold for a technical support rep, and put me on hold.

I sat on hold for an additional 30 minutes before I figured I had been placed in perma-hold.

What follows is a blow-by-blow, from the notes I started taking at this point. When I got placed on perma-hold, I figured that, at minimum, a complaint letter would need to be drafted after this was resolved.

10:45: Called in again. Phone answered by Chris, a CSR. I explained the story to him so far.

10:55: Chris said he would have to talk to either a technical support person, or his supervisor, as he does not know what the situation is.

11:10: Chris comes back from speaking to his supervisor. At this time, he states that his supervisor is claiming that I cannot use my TracFone anywhere in the Los Angeles Service Area because of the quantity of fraud there. I explain to him that this is not acceptable, as the Los Angeles service area represents not only a great portion of my roaming area, but also close to 1/3 the state of California. He stated he understood, and that it would be like not being able to use the phone in Miami for him. My response was, it was more like not being able to use it from Miami to Key West, really. I also stated that GTE Wireless (the carrier they are using) has prepaid cellular service, and that roaming into Los Angeles on their prepaid plan was not a problem.

11:20: At this point, Chris states that all his technical people who know anything have left for lunch. He suggests that I call back in about an hour when somebody will be in. Chris also opens a "ticket" for this incident, so all the information will at least be there for the tech support people when I call. * I thank him for his time, and hang up.

12:15: Dialed customer service number again.

12:20: Dee, a CSR, answered the line. I asked for Chris by extension, and she stated that nobody was answering that line. I explained the story so far to her, and gave her the ticket number that Chris gave me.

12:25: I was told that I will need to wait for the operator to come on to set my PIN number. I explained that doing this will consume precious units, and that I was hesitant to do this for this reason. I also stated that I thought this was insult to injury: their roaming airtime rate is somewhere around US$2 per minute. If I sat on hold waiting for an operator to answer for five minutes, and only made one call, that one roaming phone call would cost me $12.

12:30: She tells me to try adding the last four digits of my SSN to the phone number when I dial. I begrudgingly try it, and it dosen't work. On hold again.

12:35: Dee tells me that I indeed need to wait on hold to have a PIN number assigned by the GTE operator that will answer. She also stated, after questioning by me, that GTE would "take care of" any lost units. I challenged her on this, stating that I somehow didn't think that this sounded right. "I find it hard to believe that GTE is going to issue me credit on your service when they don't know who I am from raw fish." She assured me that this would indeed be the case, on the authority of somebody named Yaida Gomez in their "carrier group". I relented, and hung up with Dee.

12:38: I called a random phone number and pressed SEND. I waited on the line for an operator. The operator indeed had no clue what I was talking about when I stated that I was losing units, and that she was supposed to reimburse me. She did state that it was supposed to be a free call for GTE customers. She then asked me for some billing information (see later) and transferred me to an automated system, which assigned me a PIN.

12:44: [[ for the record, at this point, I have now lost 14 units, or nearly half of the units recieved with the phone, and I hadn't made one legitimate call on the phone. ]]

12:45: Now that I had a PIN, I called TracFone's customer service center (again), wanting to inquire about my lost units that GTE did not reimburse me for.

12:50: Explained situation to Nicole, the CSR who answered this time around. She needed to consult a supervisor. Hold, again.

1:00: Operator comes back, and provides me with a code to give me back the units I was shorted.

Part Three: Epilouge

First off, I'd like to take a moment and talk about the intelligence of assigning me a PIN code over the very technology we don't trust enough to use without a PIN. Now, am I stupid, or would assigning a PIN using the phone in question seem counterproductive? So now some bozon with scanner has not only my phone's ESN, but my PIN and the billing information the phone is registered under. Real smart.

Also, why did it take literally four hours worth of phone calls to get this problem resolved? Why all the misinformation? I had been told everything from "there's no problem" to "you can't use your phone there." Somebody needs to understand that the first rule of customer service is "know your product" and the second is "if you don't know your product, admit it."

What really "bugs" me about this whole thing is that this really is a product that has an application. Lots of people want cell service and can't get it for no other reason than credit issues. Plus, it is real nice to have some kind of communication when driving around, if for no other reason if you get in a 100-car pileup in the fog on I-5, it would be nice to yell for help.

And another thing. Since I've had the phone for a while, I can tell you that this Fraud Force thing is a real pain in the ass. Now, every time I drive down to the LA area, I need to press -SEND-, wait for the recording, and dial my PIN, and hope the system got it right before I can make any calls. This is a real pain in the ass: I've already lost a couple of units having to do this just to make a call (that's the annoying part: if you could dial the number you wanted, press -SEND-, enter your PIN, and then your call went through, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But no! You have to press -END- and redial your call.)

Oh well. Another example of neat technology being done in by pointy-haired types.

Footnotes...

Comments

TrAcFoNeS sUcK.

I am 17 yrs. old and work at Hardee's. Seeing that I am 17 I talk a lot on the phone. My mom won't let me get a credit card or checks. (If she would, I would not be using a shitty tracfone.) It is $75 for 300 units. The 1st 15 secs. your on the phone it takes a unit. So really if you want to get technical I'm proably only talking for 200 mins. 100 units down the drain. It is seriously a hell of a lot cheaper to get a real cell phone plan.

i would love to get a hold of a tracfone specialist, if anyone has a different number than this one for tracfone please email me 18008677183

TRACFONES ARE THE STUPIDEST PHONES IN THE WORLD. AFTER HAVING TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE THAT DONT TALK ENGLISH AND WAITING HOURS TO GET MY MINUTES WHEN THEY SAID IM TYPING IN THE WRONG CODES. I WASNT THEY NEED TO GET A LIFE. ALSO CHECK YOU'RE HOME PHONE BILL. I CALLED MY TRACFONE TO CHECK MY VOICE MAIL AND IT CHARGED MY HOME PHONE LONG DISTANCE! TRACFONE GAVE ME A LONG DISTANCE NUMBER. SO WHEN EVER SOMEONE WOULD CALL IT THEY WOULD BE CHANGED LONG DISTANCE! I KNOW TONS OF PEOPLE THAT THIS HAPPENED TO TOO. AND GOOD LUCK TAKING THE PHONES BACK. YOU HAVE TO SAY IM NOT LEAVING TO I GET MY MOMEY BACK, FOR THEM TO EVEN CONSIDER IT. NOT FORGETTIGN WAITING HOURS FOR THE STORE TO GET A HOLD OF THE A**HOLES AT TRACFONE. DO NOT<< BUY A TRAC FONE. ITS NOT WORTH THE MINUTES AND MONEY. YOU GET MANY MORE WITH A MONTHLY SERVICE. IF YOU STILL WANT A PREPAID THERE ARE MANY OTHER PROVIDERS. TRACFONE IS HORRIBLE!

how do you make it stop roaming?

First thing is first tracfone is the stupidest and most expensive prepaid wireless service in the world it took me over 3 months to get my fone to actually work. after putting in all of those codes on the phone the afghanis tell u its just a wast of time its takes minutes away not enough or dont work. dont ever buy one go for virgin mobil a he** of a lot cheaper or the go plan theyre only 25 cents a minute while tracfone can be up to a dollar. BEST ADVICE IN THE CELL FONE WORLD: STAY AWAY FROM TRACFONE!

i think it's a really good thing to have a tracfone so stop making fun of people because it's not very nice you stupid mother fucking ass holes and learn to spell to because i see that a lot of yall can't spell

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