TracFone and the Heart Pounding Madness

Madness as in anger, that is.

Tracfone ripped me off last week. I paid a hundred dollars for a one year card. I gave the card to The Girl for her phone. She told me it worked just fine. But then a couple days later she claimed they had given her the minutes/year then taken them back. But she kept the card. That should have been the tip off. They never gave her the minutes in the first place.

When we entered the pin from the card, they kept giving us a “system unavailable” message. Totally bogus. Don’t ever believe them when they give you that kind of message more than once. I called the number on the card and tried to add the time that way. Still no go, but at least now they told me that the phone was deactivated. It shouldn’t have been. According to the phone, we still had one day coming to us.

I tried calling the same number and talking to a real person. I wish I remember the name of the person I ended up with. She was quite unhelpful and just a touch snarky. Or rather, she became snarky when I got upset.

What’s to get upset about? The minutes had been put on a different phone. She would not give me the number of the phone they’d been put on. She wouldn’t do anything for me at all. She didn’t even have the kindness to suggest that I take my receipt back to the place I’d bought the card and prove I’d bought it. Smart me, I figured that one out all on my own. At this time I’m so angry I’m shaking. Then I find out from a careful grilling of The Girl that the card had never worked even once. Egg on face for Alice.

I called WalMart, where I’d purchased it from and told them my tale of woe. The guy there, Jay, was sympathetic, but couldn’t help me right then. He told me to come in the next day at 8am. This is a bit of a hardship for me as I don’t typically get to bed until around 3 am, but for a hundred dollars I’m willing to do it.

So I got my self out of bed at what I consider a barely-Godly hour only to have him go through exactly the same routine I did, and then tell me that as far as TracFone is concerned, he is no more significant than anyone else. It didn’t matter to them one wit that I had the proof of purchase in my hand, or that they KNEW the number the card had been put on. Without the serial number from the phone that stole my money, they wouldn’t budge.

I think it’s an act of God that I lost the stupid phone card on the way home. I checked everywhere, but it’s gone. I think it dropped out of my pocket at the gas station. That pretty much put the end to my plans to take them to small claims court.

Mr. Al took the receipt down and talked to management at Walmart, but again – no help.

The thing is, the card wasn’t out of our possession at all until it dropped out of my pocket at the end. The only think I can think is that it was scanned by one of those illegal while still in the store. It wouldn’t be hard for them to do it.

Moral of the story – DON’T BUY PHONE CARDS FROM WALMART! DON’T TRUST TRACFONE!!!!!

So, obviously I’m in the market for a new phone company. What do you suggest?