TracFone Bring Your Own Phone SIM Activation Kit – Retail Packaging

TracFone Bring Your Own Phone SIM Activation Kit - Retail Packaging - Tracfone has really stepped up its customer service and resolution services. A much different company from a couple of years ago when my wife decided it was time to leave Virgin Mobile behind after its USA operations were purchased by Sprint. Tracfone's change may be from its relationship with WalMart also providing in-store assistance with activations. The kit was complete with three different cards to fit probably any smartphone. It is probably best to call if you are new to Tracfone. Be sure to have your Phone Number, Password and Account Number. Companies like Virgin MobileUSA don't let the customer know there is a separate account number so they can route to customer retention. As it is, Virgin MobileUSA has asked if switching is the reason on the four phones we have transferred. (BTW - Tracfone and Straight Talk are same company.) The price is resonable and may be less on Tracfone site. However, it may be less but also have a requirement that lower price is only with purchase of card that may not fit your needs. I have bought two for two Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phones February 2015. Service was changed to new phones in under three hours on both, with 4G LTE data service. Our daughter finally decided to leave Virgin also and her phone was transferred in under 30 minutes Sunday afternoon 07/31/2016.Card blocks Internet Sharing function. (Tracfone will direct you to Straight Talk Wi-Fi hotspot device and need to purchace data only.) It does allow you to use a mobile device with VPN application. (Using Bluetooth with an encryted VPN [Vitual Private Network] to connect Internet with laptop, tablet, etc.) Many apps to choose from.Tracfone also has great specials that are not in stores or displayed on site. You do have to call to get these. Did you know you can buy a pack of 1000 messages for $5 +tax, or data for Windows Phones (only Android Phones in stores) for $10 +tax per 1 GB or less? Did not ask about larger GB or message packages because of low demand. These do not multiply as with cards but are an alternative based on personal usage. Tracfone bring your phone is a great value for us, even when compared to discounts from AARP perferred Consumer Cellular (only a 5% discount for AARP members).So far I have not found anything this SIM card does not allow, except aforementioned Internet sharing. I run accounts for Hotmail, Oultlook, Outlook Exchange (Business Account - May require use of Workplace function verification before adding in on email function), OneDrive, OneDrive Business, Drop Box, Personal Cloud File Server, Office Remote, Wells Fargo app, and others.

I had my choice of 3 main carrier towers in my area AT&T, Verizon (this kit) or the T-Mobile kit. As others have stated there are 2 Sims for each of the two carrier towers that comes in the kit and one is a nano and the second is a standard that can be broken down to a micro size. Thus 3 sizes for each of 2 carriers per kit. I chose the AT&T GSM 4G LTE Sim broken down to a micro for my unlocked Moto G4 Play.The first try at activation was on New Years eve, but the website responded with a call customer service error - I tried a few times. Calling the number ended with a we're closed today in the 4th level of the automated menu tree, because I think it was New Years day where the customer support center is located - India I'm guessing based on accents. The next day I tried again and it disabled my old phone, brought the old phones number over to the new phone, but all I had was a fast busy signal. A call to customer service and they asked me to wait 4-24 hours, so I went a day without any phone service since they disabled my transferring phone. I kind of expected that, since they are a discount sub carrier and don't have a brick and mortar presence. If you can't handle that you can always pay for the extra service you get with the main carriers and go to their store and have them do the work. Again, remember it was a holiday.The next day I called and they forwarded me to a technical service rep and he immediately saw the problem and had it working in about 15 minutes. I ended the technical service call after the phone was both dialing and receiving calls and texts. All seemed well until I noticed my attachments would not send from the messenger (text) though they did work in the Email application. For awhile I thought well I can live with that but then I remembered a message from Tracfone in the pile of messages that had come in the day prior when trying to self activate over the web. It told me I had to make sure my APN contained a specific line. I had the line less four characters at the location specified, so edited my APN, which I had never done before added the 4 missing characters in the middle of the line and then my attachments started working after a reboot.Okay it wasn't perfect or fast, but it worked and the service is great now. Think of it as a couple extra hoops with less customer hand holding for the same, but lower cost service. I have no problem giving 5 stars for both the product and the service it represents.

OK, so I ordered one of these and was able to activate my daughter's iPhone 6 with it. Seemed great. My other daughter also acquired an iPhone 6 (same model, just more memory), and I couldn't get the data to work. Voice & text worked fine, but data would not activate. After much haggling with Tracfone, they recommended I take the phone to Apple and see what was wrong with it. I did, and Apple assured me there was nothing wrong with it.I bought a third one, thinking maybe the SIM card was bad. Tried to get that one programmed and got the same results. Voice & SMS worked, but not data. I then took the first SIM card, the one that worked in my first daughter's iPhone, and put it into the second iPhone. Worked like a champ. Put the third card in the first iPhone, and bam, voice & sms, but no data. So, looked to be either a programming issue on the tracfone side or another bad SIM card.Went to a big box retailer today and bought a SIM card there. Activated it on that second daughter's iPhone without issue. Only had to delete the tracfone profile and install it again, and it worked. Had tried that many times under tracfone's direction with the second and third SIM cards, but just frustrating failure after failure. It's good to note that the packaging I see here in Amazon reflects what I received from Amazon. The package in the big box retailer was different. I suspect outdated SIMs are being sold here in this listing, but have no way to verify that.So, save yourself the headache and low odds of success (1 out of 3 in my experience) and go get one somewhere else. Trying to save a buck cost way to many hours and blood pressure points.

What I need and worked fine