Tricky TracPhone

So for my birthday, my BFF gave me a tracphone. It's like a bastard child of a phonecard and a cell phone. You pay for minutes ahead of time, then they try to find ways to waste your minutes. That I expected; it's the way of the world, the Satanic Marketing of now. What I didn't expect was for them to appear to turn off my service so I'd have to contact them and they'd want to know everything but my blood type.

This went on for 4 days; I was recharging my phone at first, when the adaptor plug fell outta the wall. Next morning I see this, replug it and let it charge. Day 2, I unplug it but my tracphone is now dead. Black screen, no power. So I email them (already had had to do that, they had my email addy) and they say I have to call. I don't use menus anymore. I wait til the schpiel is over, then see if a human appears. At tracphone you can't do that. You can't talk to anyone unless you have a touchtone phone and you use the menu. So now I email them again. Day 3, they say I should give them a number they can reach me at and what hour to call. Which I kind of go sideways with- but I do it. My BFF tells me she had the same thing happen but they told her she'd shut her phone off. They told her to take the battery out and then put it back in & it should work. Which she did, and it did. They had called her and left a message for me on her machine that morning. She'd bought the phone, and used plastic, so they already knew an affiliated number. I get suspicious. Day 4, my aide, also a TracPhone user, is bitching about hers when I bring this up & tell her all of the above, and she says, yeah, it's a scam to get info on who's got what number and all your pertinent info. She asks if I've taken my battery out, I say no, so she does, and puts it back.. And like a miracle, it's working like normal. What a coincidence. I called my sis-in-law in Jersey, no problem. Later, the landline rings...it's "Maria" and she's calling to fix my Tracphone. She says I must call her to reactivate my phone. I don't pick up the call.

Cheesy line:"I've got their number".

Creeps.