MOTOROLA V170 PREPAID TRACPHONE CELL PHONE
I would rate tracfone with negative stars, but I can't
I purchased a tracfone for my son's birthday and activated the phone on 11-12-05.  My son lives in a different zip code than I do.  Before I purchase the phone I did extensive research on their website to ensure that my son would be able to use the phone since he lives in a small town.  Their webiste had nothing that said some technology does not work in certain zip codes.  When I typed in the zip code, it showed that they provided service in that area. <br />  <br />When we activated the phone on 11-12, the zip code did not work, so we activated using my zip code.  He tried to call TracFone several times but never got through.  I contacted tracfone on 11-25 when my son was in town with his phone.  At this point he had barely used the phone since it was long distance to use in his zip code.  He had 60 minutes on the phone.  I was told a new phone would be sent out overnight on Monday to be received on Tuesday. They removed all minutes from his phone in the meantime.  <br />  <br />A week later, he still had not received the phone. I called customer service again and was told that my original request was not \\"expedited\\" and was put on hold an extremely long time while one of the reps spoke to their supervisor to \\"expedite\\" my request. I was then told it would be 3-4 days before he received a new phone.  I expressed my displeasure because we had already waited, but in the end agreed to the 3-4 days.   <br />  <br />He waited until December 14th (two weeks) and still no phone. At that point I filed a complaint through their website. I received an auto reply and nothing more. The next day, December 15th, my son finally received his phone. Never did I receive contact from the customer service center in response to my email. <br />  <br />My son came back to visit on December 26th.  By December 28th his phone broke. The LCD outside and inside the phone do not function at all. At this time, my son mentioned that a note had come with the phone stating it was reconditioned.He had not previously told me that. He brought the box with him, and it did indeed say reconditioned. I could not believe that they sent my son a reconditioned phone to replace his new phone after they told me twice they were sending a new phone. <br />  <br />I tried to reach the company via phone several times, but the message always said that there was too long of a wait and to try my call later.  On December 31 I got tired of waiting and I filed another complaint on their website, this time telling them I would file a complaint with the BBB if they could not assist me.  The phone that I bought him was sent back to them on January 2 via the DHL package they sent with the reconditioned phone.  As of today, January 5th, I still have received no response from their website outside of the auto reply from when I first sent the email. <br />  <br />I called the customer service tonight and was on hold 15 minutes before I spoke to someone.  I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told that I could not.  I told them I needed to speak to a supervisor because no one else had been able to respond to my needs, and the gentleman responded that he was the supervisor.  I told him I needed to speak to his supervisor because I know he was not being truthful, and he then stated his supervisor was busy.  I explained the situation again.  He wanted the original case number, and I no longer had that because my son had received a phone (what I thought was a brand new phone, that is).  He wanted to know the serial number, but I could not give that to him because my son cannot view the number on his phone due to the lcd display not working.  I gave him the phone number.  They kept telling me that they couldn't look it up from the phone number.  On their website, it gives the option of either a phone number or the serial number.  I explained this and told them they should be able to look it up by the phone number because otherwise their website would require a serial number. <br />  <br/>I finally again asked for a supervisor.  I told them I needed this problem resolved immediately.  The rep put the supervisor on the phone finally who could not seem to assist me either.  I gave him both the phone number my son had with the first phone and the phone number my son had with the second phone.  He kept saying that the database was too large to lookup the account with the phone number.  I explained again the entire situation and told the supervisor that we couldn't look up the serial number because the phone display did not work.  He said he couldn't look it up without it and that I needed to help them to help myself. <br />  <br />My son cannot use his phone.  He has no idea what number he's dialing, he doesn't know how many minutes he has left.  The minutes expire after 60 days, and I don't know if they have included all the time they wasted by not sending the phone into that 60 days.  I have had no response from their website.  Their customer service is nearly impossible to reach via phone and when I do reach them they do not help.  Then they send a reconditioned phone to replace a brand new phone and the reconditioned phone breaks.  I have now filed a complaint with the BBB and await response.