Reply With QuoteOn the second one, did you get a prompt, Tracfone wants to install esim, or something like that, or did it self install.Originally Posted by IsLand_BoY
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Post Machine
The first eSIM arrived sometime overnight, so it took a while. Then the second one came later, which is the one that actually had active service attached to it.
Castrol EDGE 0W-20 is my drug of choice.
Primary: iPhone 14 Pro Max (T-Mobile & Verizon); Galaxy S21+ (Verizon)
Mobile Broadband: Franklin T10 LTE hotspot (5GB for $8.50) / iPad mini 6 5G (unlimited 5G data)
Radiation is good
On the second one, did you get a prompt, Tracfone wants to install esim, or something like that, or did it self install.
Post Machine
My iPhone prompted me that there was a new eSIM to download/activate, so it was really seamless. I still don't like not having a physical SIM slot but at least all the carriers I'd want to use have eSIM anyway.
Radiation is good
There’s a time frame to install/activate the eSim,
Same thing happened to me, i was in the imei section, and when i went back to settings page, is when i saw the prompt, but was to late, called to get it resent.
As a data point, watch the settings page.
Post Machine
My eSIM ready to install prompt stayed on my screen, but you'd probably be able to hit the 'add eSIM' option from the settings too. My family plan on T-Mobile sends a QR code to install the eSIM, pushing it out is definitely much more convenient but you have to have a data connection. Mine is the only line on an eSIM though, every other line and my iPad/hotspot are using physical SIMs.
Phone Collector
Here is my experience: I went through hell with Tracfone for the last six days!
What I tried to achieve:
- Starting with an iPhone with balances greater than 10000 for each of the three buckets (minutes, texts, data (MB)) using a physical Tracfone AT&T SIM card.
- Bought an eBay tracfone phone (Tracfone Verizon) with preloaded service
- Activating the eBay Tracfone phone with the transfer of my iPhone number and combining the existing balances with the preloaded one
- Transferring everything back to my iPhone with an eSIM and combined balances
What happened:
- I tried the activation and transfer on Tracfone's website first but this led to an error. I moved to Tracfone chat.
- The eBay Tracfone phone activated okay with the transfer of my phone number but only with the preloaded balances. All of my significant original balances were lost in the transfer from AT&T to Verizon service.
- It took two days to restore my balances due to a daily 10000 limit.
- The activation of the eSIM was a much bigger problem. Multiple agents tried without success. I never received a push notification for an eSIM. One of the agents wipe-out all of my balances in the process.
- The porting department was involved multiple times but their error message was always that my phone (IMEI) was still active with another service which was not the case. Tickets were filed to the offline department which was also supposed to call me back which never happened.
- Eventually the offline department was contacted during one of my calls and finally was able to fix whatever they needed to fix and I was able to activate an eSIM on my iPhone. Of course all of my balances were at 0.
- It took several more calls over the course of multiple days to finally get all of my balances restored.
Learnings:
- I called exclusively the corporate office. Their agents all call themselves managers (to avoid any further escalation I assume). They have slightly more freedom what they can do with their tools. However they are only slightly more competent than their regular support agents which does not say much. Overall the incompetence was staggering. I have interacted with Tracfone support, including their corporate branch, for many years. It seems to me their corporate support has gotten worse over the years.
- Agents always claim it takes 30 mins, 4 hours, 24 hours (pick your time frame) until the balances are updated. My experience has been, if it's not happening within 15 minutes, it will never happen.
- Scheduled call-backs only happen half of the time and when they do they might or might not connect to an agent.
- The same agent I talked to NEVER calls you back even if they claim to. Their call-backs always lead to a random agent.
- Agents lie to you either maliciously or out of ignorance, I cannot tell.
- Sometimes agents just hang up on you if they are fed up.
- If the line disconnects, you are out of luck and have to start from the beginning with a new agent.
- I asked every agent to document the history, specifically the balances and the already preformed troubleshooting steps and every agent assured me they did. However, none of the subsequent agent was ever able to find the documented history.
- Every time I called every agent had to start from scratch even after I told all the history of my specific problem.
- The moment the call ends, the agent stops working on your problem. Nothing will happen if you don't stay on the phone.
- Tickets filed to a mysterious offline department for really difficult problems might not be resolved. I had to stay on the line and beg the agent to work with the offline department during our call.
- Don't call during the weekend with difficult problems. Agents are (even) less competent and other offline support is not available.
Overall I was in 3 chats with a total of 90 minutes, in 17 calls with a staggering total of 10 hours on the phone, during six days including the weekend!
It could not have gone worse except if my phone had spontaneously combusted.
Why yes, that is a bag phone
You had a bad overall experience, but nothing stated is wrong nor anything really unusual.
The couple minor suggestions I have should not be construed as victim blaming, might be helpful to others but of course things could still go wrong. Main idea being to increase the odds, by reducing the complexity.
Do not let such large bucket balances accumulate in the first place.
Get your phone + service bundles from HSN / QVC rather than eBay.
Leave the line working on the new phone hardware, tested stable for at least a few business days before trying to transfer the line back to the inactive phone
Never involve eSIM related changes with any other transaction types, stick with pSIM only, until everything has been completed and working tested stable for at least a week, then work on switching to eSIM separately.
At least you got the desired result?
Most users would likely have just given up.
I believe that is the basic design principle behind their horrible support systems, and largely intentional.
Phone Collector
I appreciate your comments. I wholeheartedly agree to reduce the complexity. Maybe the best advice is not to change anything if it works especially with Tracfone.
Unfortunately spreading the whole process out would not have made any difference. The problems were inherently there. They need to be solved and Tracfone's support processes are thoroughly broken to do this efficiently or at all. As you said this is probably by design.
I might reconsider Tracfone once the service runs out or Verizon makes it even more unattractive. It's hard to beat $2 per month 5G cell service, though.
I've climbed a cellphone tower
OMG PinkBow, just wanted to express my solidarity!
Phone Collector
Another data point, this time a positive one. This time with a different iPhone 13 I wanted to transfer service from a Tracfone (Verizon) 5G service with a physical SIM card to an eSIM. I initiated everything online with Activate, BYOD, keep phone number and transfer to eSIM. It took about 1 minutes until the iPhone prompt appeared and it took another 3 to 4 minutes until the activation went through. LTE service worked first and after a reboot and another maybe 10 minutes 5G also worked.
For a change this worked as it supposed to.
Radiation is good
To see what bands your on, ( LTE-5g )
Dial,
*3001#12345#*
Mobile Pro
i transferred my iphone xr with a physical esim to an iphone 14 pro esim. Tracfone only transfers to the imei2 as far as i know. I did it with the online chat during the week and didn't have a problem. However prior to the transfer when i spoke to the online chat on the weekend or called the customer service number i was told transferring from a physical sim to a esim is not possible. So transferring to an esim is possible just frustrating when dealing with tracfone.
I've got more phones than fingers
I have a 12 mini. You would think that counts as '12 or better' but apparently not. The site won't accept its IMEI2 as valid for ESIM. So another waste of time with TracFone.
If I could find the physical SIM that went along with this device originally I suppose I could reactivate it (I got it when it was $349 and used $300 in TF Rewards, its now unlocked using a TF TMO SIM, but I could use any foreign sim too)
Converting physical SIM card to esim on iPhone with ATT Prepaid
Transfer existing U/L Data to iPhone
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