Life as Crisis Management: The Tracfone Kiada, the Threequel

Over my sixty-nine years of life I have dealt with a lot of craptatasic crapitalist craperations. None of these, whether Target, Blue Cross Blue Shield, or Amazon, however, has been more craptastic than the King, Queen, Duke, and Marquis of the land of crapitalist crap, Trafone. Tracfone stands alone atop the pile of crapitaiist shite.

I don't recall when I first signed up with Tracfone. Perhaps sometime in 2019. I did it because I needed a phone, something I did not have at the time because, generally speaking, I detest telephones thanks to years of experience with them in that dark age after the breakup of Ma Bell by the US government, the golden age of telephones in my book. I prefer, and still do, communication via email, something that, in my experience, is much better than communicating via telephones because in the latter case you have to deal with a labyrinth of incompetent telephone companies let loose by the moronic American government decision to break up Ma Bell because it was a monopoly. Of course, all this has given Americans in the long run is a cartel of incompetent craperations instead of the competent Ma Bell. What I do know, though I don't know the precise dates, is that I have had problems with Tracfone since they sent me a 4G replacement phone (or should I say fone) for my 2G or 3G phone around 2020 or 2021. 

That somewhat imprecise date of 2020 or 2021 is important because in one of those years the Tracfone craperation sent me a "smart phone" I will concede that the phone they sent me is a a phone. I will not concede that it is "smart", however. In fact, I think "smart phones" have made the masses more moronic and dumber than they already are and made those of us who are not addicted to "smart phones" and don't carry them around with us as though they are attached at our hips have to not only drive even more defensively than we already do but have to also walk defensively given the fact that those who are addicted to "smart phones" walk without looking mesmerised as they are by the dumb and dumber cell phones they carry around with them as though they were new borns. But back to my tale: Before I received the new phone my minutes, the time I had before I needed to refill my phone minutes, was noted on my phone. When Tracfone sent me their latest technological marvel, however, I could no longer ascertain how many minutes I had on my phone. 

So--you know these craperations love to make out lives more complex and full of crisis than they need to be--I was forced to create an account on the Tracfone web page in 2020 or 2021--something I did not want to do given what I knew and had experienced about the craptastic craperation of these account pages--and guess what? Though I accurately put in all the pertinent information the craptastic Tracfone account page asked for  including my phone number, my minutes were nowhere to be seen. So I contacted them and though they did the typical new digital age phone call runaround and finally got me, after much time had passed, to someone who was supposed to know how to fix account pages, he could not. So I contacted the New York Attorney General's office and they called Tracfone and a Tracfone rep was able to, after a week or so of merry-go-round communication, post my minutes, as they are required to, on my account page.

The "honeymoon"--which it never really was, of course, given the craptasticness of Tracfone--did not last long. In October of 2023 I closed my Google email account--Google clearly does only harm--and set up an alternative email account. I tried to change my email on my Tracfone account page but was prohibited from doing so. So, I called Tracfone again, this time to change my email address. And lo and behold the customer service operator was able to change my email address but unfortunately she changed it incorrectly. So I had to call yet again in order to try to change my email address to the correct one. Initially I was unable to do this because not only does Tracfone have my PIN wrong--something I wrote down in a document at the time I created it and so know what I have is accurate--but they also had the phone numbers I called or received recently wrong despite me giving them to them in full something I can't do while talking on my dumb "smart phone" since I can't do this and talk to a customer service clerk at the same time given that this is technological impossible and I have arthritis. I am shocked, shocked. Only after utilising Facebook was I able to get my email address corrected.

Cut to late November early December 2023. Tracfone, of course--they are the very essence of incompetence--is still sending crap to my old and no longer used email account on Gmail. I tried to go into my online account but can't change anything in that account. I got one of those standard operating crapcedures to call the craperation but I am not going to do because I have already called this incompetent craperation far too many times already. I tried to contact Tracfone via Facebook but all I got when I tried to do this is one of those canned bot messages that are the weapon of the brave new digital craperation. So, I contacted the New York AG once again. I have asked them to mandate that Tracfone return the monies I paid for an unlimited use account in October because I have no interest in remaining with the craperation. I will go with Consumer Cellular instead, a company I have heard good things about. I have had it with the craptasitic crapitalistic craperation Tracfone, a craperation that is so craptastic that they aren't even allowing me to unsubscribe my dead email account. They want me to call them in order to do this. And that fact alone should tell you how craptastic Tracfone, the, shout out to Jefferson Airplane, father and mother of crapitalist craptatic anti-lovers--truly is.