MOTOROLA V170 PREPAID TRACPHONE CELL PHONE
So you want a low cost cell phone service?
***** Updated Review ******************************  I have just renewed our service for one year on this phone. The principal user is my wife. She used the phone when she took a trip to Chicago, but generally she only uses it locally here in Philly, like to call me for a ride home from work. I have used the phone from the Philly airport to the Pocono mountains while on vacation and we are both very pleased. I can not remember ever failing to find service and it is very cheap for such light use.     The Tracfone website is still quirky (see my initial review below, from when we first got the phone last year); when I tried to search for local stores to buy our first new airtime card the website asked for a 5 digit zipcode but the page would only take two digits. I renewed on-line and that seemed to work smoothly (as far as I know, since I just finished).    They have a promotion for the rest of the month (Feb 2007) if you buy a year of service with 250 minutes for $99.99 (plus local sales tax), you are suposed get a bonus 250 minutes, but when I used the promo code on the website (58234) instead of the one on a postcard we recently recieved on the same offer, both the website and the airtime display on our phone showed an additional 750 minutes! Since we have only used about 200 minutes in the past year that should be more than sufficient.     A year of cell phone service for a light user for a hundred bucks is such a good deal I am thinking of getting a second phone. You can get a reconditioned V170 phone with 450 minutes and a year of service for $99.99, but I would probably pay a little more for a new phone.     We are also thinking of dropping our AT+T long distance calling plan which costs about $50 every 3 months and just using the Tracfone.    ***** Original Review *****************************  First, I hate cellphones. I'm no tech-phobe, I have worked with computers since the 1970s. Maybe it is the years I was tethered to a pager doing 24 by 7 remote tech support. Probably it is the fact that the call quality is too often much lower and the cost much higher than land line phones. Regardless, my wife WANTED a cell phone, so on 12/17/2005 after a bit of research I picked up a Motorola V170 and Tracfone Yearly (Double Minutes) prepaid card.    The phone is small and works fine.  At least my second one does.    The first phone would not activate via the Tracfone website, so after triple checking the serial numbers, etc. I called them. Their voice response system is good, has only a couple of levels and is clearly set up. They were giving out a message about delays due to high call volume (one week before Chrismas), but in the 10 calls I've made to them I never had to wait more than 4-5 minutes, usually much less. Their tech was thorough and professional, with a slight Hispanic accent. As I expected, we had to re-do all the serial number checking/activation process. Eventually they determined that the problem was due to the wrong phone model being entered in their database. They asked me to call back on Monday PM to see if it was corrected. So far, so good. On Monday I got a tech who was either less skilled or maybe didn't care(?). The problem was NOT corrected, and I had to go through all the activation drill again (partly my bad, I did not get a problem number). They kept asking me to repeat stuff and said they could not hear me due to their phone connection (Internet phones?). Eventually they told me they could not fix the problem and offered to send me a phone. The other option, to take my phone back to the store a couple days before Christmas was unappealing since they could not guarantee that all the store's batch were not mis-defined in the database. I was reluctant to have them send me a replacement because I feared they might replace my brand new phone with a reconditioned (i.e. warranty) replacement. So I ordered a second phone from their website on 12/18/2005 with free 3 day Fed-Ex shipping. Cool, my wife's Christmas is saved. Except they did not SHIP the phone until 12/22/2005, which meant the non-activated original went under the tree. When I called to check on the shipment after 4 days (the 21st) I was given a tracking number which the UPS site said was invalid, so I called back and was given the same number. All the people I spoke to were very polite, but due to issues like security, no doubt, could not correct any complex problems like the database issue. I also could not get any help with activating the original phone on their website - which told me to activate the phone first!  :-)    One more item. The phone came with a card filled with free minutes promotional codes which I could not get either the website or the phone registration to accept but at the end of   the transaction the extra 100 minutes WERE credited to my account (they have lowered their rates for 2006).    I have tested the phone all over my part of Philly and at the airport, including some places that are reputed to be dead spots and have not found any place where I could not get service. The phone works well. All in all I am very happy with the phone and even the customer service, but if you get one, just don't expect customer service on the level of Dell or LL Bean (more like LL Bean from 1985!).    One other caution about using pre-paid: you have to type in a lot of 11 to 15 digit numbers, both for initial phone activation and for adding prepaid minutes. Maybe this is not a good choice for folks with low vision (or poor attention spans), unless they have help available.