Friday, February 08, 2008

Tracfone Mayhem! New website, new cards, new promos, new loopholes and new phone numbers!

Wow...there's so much news I'm going to have to break it into several posts.

1, Check out the Tracfone Promo Codes link to your right. Lots of good promotional codes there, along with notes on which ones are active and which aren't. Generally a good resource for getting the most out of your Tracfone. Thanks Turk for keeping this database-in-a-post up!

2. Tracfone now has a new website. Things are, in my opinion, harder to navigate, but it is more task-oriented, guiding customers through either buying a phone or adding airtime to it, answering questions that they might have along the way. Fair enough.

3. Traqcfone now has, online, a 450-minute airtime card. Seems like they can't leave the $79.99 price point alone for too long. This means that, even with sales tax, you'll still come in under 20 cents per minute when you buy the card, no matter what phone you have, and under 10 cents per minute if you have double minutes on your phone. So yes, it is the best Tracfone deal yet outright, without having to fool with Twofer deals, which by the way haven't changed very recently to my knowledge. Hopefully these cards will become available at other online retailers so you can get them without tax, lowering the per-minute Tracfone price minimum to just under 17.8 cents per minute, or a little under 8.9 cents per minute with double minute. Text at that point is a cool 2.7-ish cents per message, always a plus.

4. Speaking of twofers, if you're a smart little bugger and want to try your luck, and eventually plug the hole that makes this possible (remember that a person who blacklisted his whole zipcode from Tracfone is speaking here...I think it's still blacklisted from online purchases), you can actually buy a twofer deal online with the pink Motorola c139s. Looks like they're new right now. Then go to your nearest GSM-Tracfone Wal-Mart and return the little guys. You'll get $15 back, as a Wal-Mart gift card, for each one. Or maybe $12.88. But regardless, you'll end up with two 60-minute cards costing you, in net, around $6 when you include tax. If you put them on a double-minute phone with a promo code or two, sub-25-cent-per-minute, sub-penny-per-text rates are very possible, turning your Tracfone into a contract-class wonder. Until the loophole is closed, that is. Enjoy while you can.

5. Last but not least, if you're switching from an old phone to a new phone, it may be easier for Tracfone to just give you 200 minutes of airtime than to endure the system strain that is required to get your phone number moved from one phone to another. That's saying something about Tracfone's system (sort of the same thing that losing my dad's phone number in a ort from Tracfone to Net10 said) but hey, if you're wanting a new phone, this may well be an option for you. Just go to Activate\Reactivate on Tracfone's website and ask to transfer your airtime from another phone.

That's all the Tracfone news, and in my opinion every piece is darned awesome. But there's still more news to go, from Net10, Verizon, Virgin Mobile and T-Mobile. All of which is pretty cool.

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