Tess M.

I had a Tracfone cell phone for quite awhile, but they could never keep my voice mail settings in place. I would set up voice mail and make a test call, which verified it was working. Then the next day, someone would call me and hear a recording that said they couldn't leave a message because my voice mail had not been set up yet. This happened over and over, despite my spending an hour and a half on the phone with tech support.

Dissatisfied, I let the account expire, but then I found out that Tracfone was legally required to unlock your phone for use on another network. I called them and they said that if I reactivated the phone, they would be happy to unlock it.

I really liked the phone and wanted to avoid the cost and hassle of getting a new phone, so I paid for 30 days of service to reactivate Tracfone.

When I called to have them unlock the phone, they said that while my phone now qualified to be unlocked, they were incapable of doing that because of some sort of "technical problem." However, if I mailed the phone back to them, they would be happy to credit me $5 toward a new Tracfone.

Seriously? Are all companies this manipulative and dishonest, or is it just Tracfone?

Lessons learned: Buy only unlocked phones. Do not trust a company to ever unlock a phone for you. And most importantly, NEVER TRUST TRACFONE.