Tracfone Customer Service

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Tracfone Customer Service Number

You can reach Tracfone Customer Service in the U.S. at this number:

1-800-867-7183

Read my Customer Service story below during my attempt at . . .

Transferring a Tracfone Number

So here's my story on transferring a Tracfone number by calling up Tracfone Customer Service on the day that my minutes were scheduled to expire.

On my last drive up to visit my parents, I realized that the microphone on my old Tracfone had stopped working. I could make a call and hear the person on the other end just fine, but they couldn't hear me. To top it off, this was the weekend after some terrible flooding in the Northeast, and though the rain had stopped, the news sites said the waters had not yet crested.

Needless to say, my phone calls were not exactly reassuring because no one could hear me.

By the way, one thing I did confirm during this 10-hour drive was that Tracfone's coverage is pretty good. I went through some pretty (in both senses of the word) rural areas in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland (though there's quite a lot of building going on), and there were usually at least two or three of the little blips on phone's screen indicating signal strength.

Anyway, I made it safely there and back. Once I got home, I got back to work and doing my errands, and let the phone sit there. I didn't miss it much as I frankly didn't need to use a cell phone all that often. I could still use it for text messages, so that capability was still there. And also, I felt a little lazy and a little apprehensive about calling Tracfone customer service.

I checked that the Tracfone display said I had 100 minutes, which expired at the end of the month. I had to decide what to do. I finally called up Tracfone and the person there said to get a new phone and call them back and they would take care of it.

So, of course, I kept putting it off, as I knew it would probably be a pain, and then, on the day the minutes were to expire, I finally went down to the local drugstore (a CVS in my case) and bought a $20 Tracfone. I came home and hooked up the charger and waited about an hour.

First, we started with the old phone. I had to give the rep the phones IMEI number so that she could look it up and verify the usual info. Now according to her records, I should have 60 minutes on the phone, which was the number of minutes I last purchased. But I actually had 30 additional minutes from before (rollover minutes). She took a while to confirm this, then said OK. The procedure would be such:

Calling Tracfone Customer Service

Then I called up Tracfone Customer Service(from a landline) and expected to wait. Instead, I was connected to a person in probably less than 20 seconds! Even the phone menu was not too bad. The Tracfone customer service representative was well-trained and helpful, and her enunciation was very clear, which was important because I would have to listen to her read out many series of numbers which I would then have to enter into the various phones in their "Code Entry mode".

Tracfone Code Entry Mode

You go into code entry mode by first selecting the "Prepaid" menu option on your handset. Then just scroll down until you find the "Code entry mode" option and select it. This is where you enter the codes to set up your phone.

Transferring the Number and the Minutes

Transfer the Number

We would zero out the minutes on this old phone.
Then register the new phone with the same phone number. (This gave me 10 minutes.)

Get Tracfone Number

I checked my Tracfone number by going to the "Prepaid" on the handset and selected "My Phone Number to check that I had indeed successfully transferred the number.

Transfer the minutes

Then transfer the 60 minutes to the new phone.
Then manually add the 30 minutes.
Wait for the activation message.

How it worked out.

At each of these steps I would have to enter into the handset 4 sets of multiple digit numbers, which the Tracfone customer service rep would say out to me. Luckily for me, it worked flawlessly, though I dread to think what the experience would be like for people who have difficulty doing this. I myself was hoping to avoid the dreaded button "typo" which might lead me to having to do any of it over again.

Tip: It helps be alone when you do have to transfer a Tracfone number. Having kids horsing around or any other distractions would lead to this turning into a nightmare. Still I have nothing but praise for the Tracfone customer service representatives.

Oh, and one other thing. After getting my "welcome" text msg, I started to get these advertising messages from Tracfone. I had to reply "STOP" to unsubscribe from these. If I had known this, I would have asked the Tracfone customer service rep to turn this option off.

Still, all in all, the whole process was relatively painless and the customer service reps were a pleasure to deal with.

Of course, your experience may be different, and I do hear some complaints every now and then. Their customer service may not always come through but you can see from this video I found on Youtube that they seem like a dedicated group

Tracfone Customer service video

Pretty nice video.

Updates

Update! Small glitch

The new phone with the transferred telephone number worked great. However, after a few days I began to get email messages and even recorded telephone messages(!) telling us that my number was about to expire, and that I had x number of days to re-activate our service. All handy reminders as such, but totally incorrect.

Our service on this particular phone was valid for another two months. And the actual phone kept on working, and it displayed the correct number of units.

Clearly, their warning system is not automatic reset when you call up Tracfone customer service to transfer a number from one Tracfone device to another.

I could call Tracfone to resolve this, but as long as the physical phone keeps working, I'll let it go.

Update 12/06

I had the "opportunity" to try out Tracfone customer service for the second time last week.

My minutes had run out on my trusty old Nokia 1100, so I bought a Motorola C261 camera phone from Tracfone's website as they were offering a pretty good deal of the phone and a one-year card with 600 minutes for $129.

So the phone and airtime card arrived in the mail. I didn't activate it online as I wanted to try and retain my old number. Unfortunately I was past the expiration date of my service.

I called up my Tracfone number from my landline and confirmed that it hadn't been taken by anyone else yet.

So I called Tracfone customer service using the number provided on the website and explained my situation. The customer service rep told me that I had to get a new number because I had let my old number expire. Not believing that, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The rep put me on hold forever until I hung up.

A couple of days later, I tried again, and this time got a customer service rep who said that I could transfer the number. So I gave the serial numbers of my old and new phone and activated my airtime card, and thought I was all set.

Then I check the phone number of my new phone. It was a new number! I was quite annoyed to say the least.

I went back and checked the invoice slip for my phone and noticed that there was a different customer service number for direct sales. I called up that number and this time was connected to a person who was clearly more knowledgeable.

I explained my situation, and the Tracfone customer service rep said that I could get my old phone number back, but that they would have to send me a new SIM card to put into my phone. This would have been great, but I was going to be traveling again in two days, and didn't want to use the phone with a new number for a couple of weeks and then switch back to the old number.

So in the end I gave up the number I'd had, kept the new number and braced myself for the inevitable "wrong number" calls for whoever had the number before me, as I'm sure the person who gets my old number will be faced with the same. Such is life, as they say.

Update 01/07

I received an email alert from Tracfone telling me to add minutes now, or else I would lose my old number, the one I'd resigned myself to giving up. Oh well. It seems as though Tracfone should have set up to let me use the old SIM card in the new phone, since they were both Tracfones.

Though I'm still quite happy with Tracfone customer service (at least my phones work), it's pretty clear that their online notification system was out of sync with the actual status of the phone. I did wonder briefly if I should spend the $20 to see if I really could add minutes to my old phone.

Update 6/2009

I tried transferring a phone number online via Tracfone's site from a Motorola W175 to a Samsung T301G. It didn't work. Thus, one more call to customer service. After a few minutes of typing in sequences of numbers in code entry mode, the transfer was completed. The process took a few minutes, but the CSR was patient and clear. We didn't have to redo it. I wonder if the system on the T301g is a little different, because . . .

Update 10/2009

My next encounter with Tracfone customer service was to change the number on that same T301G to a number with a Virginia area code. We had moved, and I wanted a local cell phone number. I called customer service and we did what we had to do to change the number over, but it didn't take. I called back and they sent a new SIM card. After receiving it, I was unable to activate it online, because the system thought the phone was already active. Hence another call to customer service. Another fairly pleasant encounter, and I now have a Tracfone with a local number.

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