Tracfone – Changing phones changes your plan

I’ve been using Tracfone for a number of years now with my trusty Nokia 1100. I was looking to renew my service recently, and I didn’t want to commit to X months of service only to have my Nokia 1100 die on me. For some reason, I thought my unused service would die with my phone. Before you know it, I had ordered a new phone… a Motorola w376. It’s a pretty nice looking flip-phone with long battery life, good signal reception, and all the standard stuff.

I called Tracfone and had them transfer my service to the new phone, which was fairly painless. Why I didn’t think I could do this if my Nokia died, I’m not sure. But anyway, everything converted over quickly and easily.

Except for one small nagging thing…

I now get charged .3 units to READ incoming text messages. This never happened before. I only got charged to send. This probably only amounts to like $1-2 per year, but it bugs me. Why should the service change just because the physical phone changed?

So I sent them a support question about it to see what they say. I don’t expect good things.