7 On Your Side helps woman get back minutes for TracFone

As technology advances, the transition for some can be both difficult and needlessly costly. 7 On Your Side helped one South Bay woman get what she purchased.

There's nothing like having a piece of technology that's suddenly rendered useless. That's what happened to a Sunnyvale woman and she contacted 7 On Your Side for help.

Sunnyvale resident Judy Burnaman isn't interested in all the bells and whistles on her cellphone. She's had an old Motorola phone for almost 13 years. It's the first one TracFone ever sold.

"Well it worked," Burnamans said. You won't find her waiting in line in advance of the latest hot new smartphone. "I'm not into smartphones and all these fancy ones. I just wanted a phone that worked."

TracFone is a pay-as-you-go plan. You purchase minutes and when the minutes run out, you purchase more. That's exactly what Burnaman has been doing for nearly 13 years. She bought another batch of minutes in July, but the next day, she heard from her granddaughter who told her phone was out of service.

"I said I just bought minutes. I spent $41 and I bought you know, I have about 400 minutes," Burnaman said.

So she called TracFone to find out why her phone suddenly stopped working. She was told her phone had been disconnected because it wasn't calculating her minutes properly. She ended up buying a new TracFone, but when she tried to transfer her minutes, TracFone refused. Minutes were not transferable.

"I said you know what? You took my money and if you take my money, you have to give me what I paid for," Burnaman said.

She went round and round with the company for two months. She said it wasn't about the $41. It was about the principle. Her biggest complaint is that no one ever warned her that her phone would be disconnected.

"There was no sign of anything wrong when I made the purchase. I received no email. I received no call that my phone was defective, but you know, but you've taken my $41," Burnaman said.

She contacted 7 On Your Side for help and we called TracFone. Four days later, she said TracFone called to say she could use her new minutes. TracFone told us, "We have resolved the issue with the customer and her service is once again active. We apologized to her for any inconvenience it may have caused."

"Well I was practically in disbelief. I said, 'Well, this is amazing,'" Burnaman said.