I have decided to turn the saga of when I’ll get a refund from TracFone into a blog contest!  How to enter…simply leave a comment with the date that you think I will get my money back. Please include year, because who knows how long this will go on.
When I do get my refund, I will take a screenshot of the transaction on PayPal and post it. The person who comes closest to guessing the correct date (either before or after) will win a Nifty Prize Package.

In the event of a tie, I will contact those who are in the tie, and ask for guesses as to how much money I got back. Closest either way wins. If it should still be tied after that, I will “marinate” slips of paper with names on them in catnip overnight, and let Mitty the Kitty pick a winner.

This contest will remain open indefinitely…as in, until I get my money back. Could be years, for all I know. Check back regularly for updates.

Said Nifty Prize consists of two DVDs…The Break-Up, starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, and Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg. Both are widescreen editions, new and still in the cellophane wrapping. Because the DVDs are in NTSC format, I will ship only to the U.S. and Canada. They won’t work in other countries’ formats, sorry.

For those of you who don’t know the story…rather than linking back to previous blog posts, here’s the deal. I had been using TracFone for my pre-paid cell phone service, and had been happy with it. I had a basic phone, but I decided that I wanted a camera phone, so I ordered one from their website.

The two shipping choices offered to me were Federal Express and USPS. I opted to have my phone shipped via USPS to our P.O. box. I have reasons for that. I even paid more for that…it was a dollar more than FedEx Ground.

The stupid assholes at TracFone OVERNIGHTED my phone, via FedEx, to the P.O. box. Of course, once it landed in the FedEx place in Wilmington, MA, it was promptly sent back to the shipper. FedEx does NOT deliver to P.O. boxes. I knew that, which is why I asked for, and paid for USPS shipping. It is not MY fault that they shipped it that way, but they are trying to make it look like it is. That is what the asshat call center people keep telling me.

Of course, none of them speak English very well, so that is probably part of the problem. In any case, they not only made NO effort to contact me when they got my package back, but also made NO effort to refund my money. When I’ve called them, all they want to do is get another address from me so they can re-ship the phone…AFTER I told them I no longer wanted it…I just wanted my damned money back. And they refuse to give it to me.

They basically intended to not re-ship the phone, AND keep my money. Crooks.

I hate these people so much, and I want the whole damned world to know how much they suck. They are liars and thieves who could not care less about their customers. They deserve to go out of business, and I hope they do.

By having this contest, I hope to not only have a little fun with a bad situation, but to help spread the word about this most evil of companies. If you wish to blog about this, and link back to this post, that would be wicked cool, but it’s not required to enter. I’m just hoping for search engines to pick it up, so that more people know of the evility of TracFone.

Nobody tries to rip me off, and gets away with it. I WILL get my money back. But when?

Go ahead and guess!