I have been fight this phone thing for over a month. My phone died. Got a new one from Tracfone. Got it activated but couldn’t make any calls. The message said ‘No service available. Emergency calls only.’ I was on the phone with them one night for over 3 hours! Rude!!!! The Tracfone ‘customer not-so-service’ person tells me that I need to roam up and down the street trying to get bars. I’ve always had a Tracfone and never had a problem with ‘bars’ before. ‘Well mam, we can’t give you bars.’ Oh my heavens! So I decided to try service through AT&T. The rep I spoke with told me that my purchase of service made me eligible for $200 toward a tablet. Told him I have an iPad and didn’t need/want it. He told me he would be sending me an email confirming my purchase and to think about it and that I didn’t have to make any decisions right then…to think about it. Told me that I wouldn’t be able to use my present phone number and told me my new one would be: 402-4697 and I was given an account number. So I don’t get anything and I don’t get anything…so I kept searching on the website for something/anything. When I referenced my phone number I got a message that they didn’t recognize it. I finally, and I have no idea how, my order on their website. And it said that my order was pending my acceptance of the terms and conditions but there was no option for me to ‘accept’ them. You would have thought there would have been something within that screen or some other screen to do that. So, I called customer service. The guy I spoke with to me that the ‘number’ was not my phone number but the number of MY TABLET. What tablet???? And that it was the pending was referring to my acceptance of the terms and conditions of the tablet. I explained that I didn’t WANT a tablet. That I was told I was eligible for $200 TOWARDS a tablet. I explained that I had been waiting and waiting for an email with all the info in it per my original contact with AT&T. In the conversation we discovered that the email address the sales person took down had no resemblance to my email. This second rep’s name was Juan. Can’t remember the first one’s name. Juan advised me that if I didn’t accept the terms and conditions of the tablet that I would have to start all over again with a new order and who knew how long that would take. And that when I received the tablet and SIM card NOT to open the tablet…to just return it unopened. So, I was pretty tired of being without a cell phone and agreed. So the tablet comes and my husband OPENS the outside box and breaks it down. It turns out that I would have had to open the box anyway because that’s were the SIM card was. Inside the tablet box - not inside the outside shipping box. So, I take out the SIM card and put it in the Tracfone (an LG Destiny) but still can’t make a call. So I call AT&T and get a really nice woman on the phone and as hard as she tries I still can’t make a call because she believes that Tracfone needs to UNLOCK the phone. I call Tracfone - this is where the 3 hour phone call comes in - I was switched to so many people none of whom were located in the US and some of whom I was transferred to a number of times and who were increasingly rude. Whenever I would explain that I was told that Tracfone needed to unlock my phone I was transferred to the worst customer service person I have EVER dealt with. He told me that in order for him to unlock my phone I had to have had the phone for 365 days. HUH? I explained that my previous Tracfone died and that I still had until December 18, 2016 for my service minutes to expire….let alone that I had over a thousand minutes left. So, even if he meant that I had to purchase 365 days of service why would I do that until the whole 'being able to use my new phone’ issue was resolved. So back to AT&T. I decide that I will just go with a whole new cell phone and decided on a iPhone because all my devices are Apple. I decided to do it online because I’m so slammed with work that I am pretty close to working 24/7. Did an online chat with a wonderful rep from AT&T and she walks me thru purchasing it from them online. She watches as I do it and it looks like everything is fine. I wait for more than a week and still no phone. Now I have tons and tons of emails to go thru because of working in the rectory office. I accidentally come across an email from AT&T advising me that they cannot ‘confirm my identity’ so they have cancelled my order! Now they could confirm my identity enough to send me a tablet that I didn’t want…now they can’t confirm my identity. The message informs me that I can, however, visit an AT&T store and purchase a phone there. I was shocked. When I called AT&T I was informed that they couldn’t help me. That I would have to go to a store. I wondered if it had to do with a credit card so do another online chat and explain the whole situation to another wonderful rep. I told him that I was close to tears and if it had to do with the card I’d used I would just start again and have it taken directly from my checking account. There was over $3,000 in the account. We decide to start fresh as if I hadn’t aready received an account number. Everything goes along fine. A day or so later, I see that it is deducted or pending deduction from the checking account but I still don’t get the phone. I look again and again and still no phone. Check the checking account and the transaction has disappeared. I go through my emails and lo and behold another email saying they were unable to verify my identity and had canceled my order! But that I could visit an AT&T store and buy one there. In the meantime, I get some mail about my account for the Tablet explaining my service. What service? It’s is referring to the tablet. Seems like they can confirm my identity for THAT. Again I’m close to tears. I almost was going to start all over again with Verizon but thought about it and now it’s the principle of the thing. (Or is it ‘principal?) So I call Tracfone and decide to give them another try because at least I HAVE a phone from them. I get in an online chat with Tracfone and ‘chat’ with a rep who proceeds to tell me that he basically doesn’t have time to listen to my problem because they have lots of calls coming in and have to handle as many as possible as quickly as possible. I asked me if it didn’t matter whether they ever actually ‘solved’ a problem just how many they could ‘handle?’ Finally he tells me that they will express ship a new SIM card to me because when he finally listened to me he realizes that I have an AT&T Sim card in the phone because I can no longer locate the one that came with the phone originally over a month previous). The minute I looked at it, I knew there was a problem. It was too large. So I call and get the correct size SIM card, which I put in. Would you believe I called again today and after speaking with Theona from who knows where (at least she is pleasant) she thinks I’m not getting any bars because of my zip code…doesn’t matter that I got bars from when I first became a Tracfone customer years and years ago. So now they are going to ‘express’ ship a new SIM card. While I was speaking with her I was at least able to send a text message even though I couldn’t make a phone call. And, oh by the way, as I’m setting up the phone there are instructions that I need to set up a Google account…I have 2 already but give it a try with each of them separately and am instructed that I need to verify my phone number. I select VERIFY and get a message that an SMS would be sent to me which would contain a Verification Code. I receive at least 4 email messages none of which contain a Verification Code. I’m ready to scream.
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