Safelink Wireless They thoroughly messed my account up so bad that I had to end my service to get service else where! Miami Florida

Safelink Wireless is a cellular phone company claiming to serve customers who are eligible for Lifeline service.  I applied, I was approved, and my phone was sent to me.  I received my phone.  According to Safelink, you can upgrade to a better phone as long as it is a tracfone and as long it is not a smart phone.  My fingers are so clumsy I am unable to text easily on the basic phones.  I need a basic phone with a qwerty keypad.  I am not picky--I don't have to have a smartphone to be happy just a basic phone with a qwerty keypad.  I found one at kmart and paid for it.  Please note that when I got the tracfone, my safelink phone had not yet arrived.  I wanted to do changes the minute that my safelink phone arrived so I purcahsed my tracfone while I was waiting for my safelink phone to come in.  When my safelink phone came in, I was all ready to go with the tracfone I wanted to upgrade to.

Well, I tried to get them to upgrade me and port my existing number over to safelink at the same time.  What a mess.  I had to first put my tracfone on my safelink service, they said.  Ok.  I understand.  My upgraded tracfone needed to be attached to my account.  But intstead of putting my upgraded tracfone on my account, they sent me a new phone!  Huh??? So when I got that I called them back and told them all over again what I was trying to do.  After about six tries, I finally talked to someone that got the phone I actually wanted on to my account.  Then I tried to port my phone number over.  So, they sent me a new sim card with my ported phone nubmer.  When I got the sim, I called them to activate the sim and put it in my phone.  But, in the process they took my minutes away and when I told them they took my minutes they said no we didn't take your minutes.  you used them up.  Huh?? I had only used 30 minutes, plus I was supposed to have new minutes for the new month we had just come in to.

They were confusing me so bad that I finally started  porting my number out to a different cell phone company.  Even their porting process was horrible. They did not tell me what my actual account number was until I forced it out of them and then they are breaking FCC law by not giving customers a pin number for their accounts.  

Customer service is horrible.  You don't ever talk to the same person twice.  They don't want play by the rules or make life easy for you.  They actually acted like they were glad that I was porting away.  Oh, and, they placed a black mark against my name in USAC database, saying that I had NLAD issues.  They refused to tell me what those NLAD issues were about.  I assume that it is because I did not return my USAC worksheet, but in my defense, why should I return a worksheet to them when I was ending my service with them anyway?

I cannot actually afford the carrier I now have, but because my new carrier fought tooth and toenail for me to get my phone number away from Safelink port it over to my new carrier, I am going to stay with them a few months.  I am paying $15 a month that I cannot really afford because Safelink screwed me over.  I am hoping that they didn't make it impossible for me to try a different lifeline company in the future.  According to the USAC I am able to go to any other lifeline company I choose.  I hope that is the case.

At the very least, I would like Safelink to pay for my phone bill until I am able to find a lifeline carrier with better customer service.  And advice to folks out there--run away from Safelink. They are run by Tracfone, and I think that is where all of their problems are!