If I am NOT using Autopay, why must I keep a credit card on file?

[Anonymous]

You might want to contact customer service and ask that question. 

[Edmfw1]

Customer service is useless.

[Edmfw1]

Customer service is useless 

[Edmfw1]

I did not find Customer Service helpful. The persons that I talked to were well intentioned, but they could not answer this question.

[Anonymous]

Did you get a live agent? I ask because you chat with a robot at first. Type agent or live agent to actually speak to a human.

[Edmfw1 · Accepted solution]

Yes, I talked to two live agents.

I wanted to verify that my credit card information would be deleted if I cancelled my service.

On my first attempt, after suffering through a loop with the chat robot, I eventually got into queue for a live agent, and then got to chat with him. He could not answer the question - it is just a company policy built into their software. If you have only one payment method attached to your account, you cannot delete it. For a prepaid service, that policy makes no sense. I must concede that TracFone has the same policy. However, the prepaid services at Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T do not have this policy. At those carriers, I only need a payment method on file if I am using Autopay or some other subscription service. The first agent told me that I could cancel my service and then log back into the account to verify that the credit card information had been removed. I did not believe him, but there was no point in continuing the chat.

Next, I tried to cancel my service. The instructions in the Help system to cancel the service did not work. So, I contacted customer service a second time.

On my second contact, I was stuck in a loop with the chat bot even longer than on my previous attempt. Eventually, I got frustrated and started typing in obscenities to the inane questions the chat bot kept repeating. That action did not help. I started typing in "none of these" and the chat bot put me into the queue for a live agent. This agent was able to cancel my service for me. However, as I suspected, my account still included my credit card even though my service was cancelled.

I decided to wait overnight to allow for processing delays. The next morning, I was able to log in, but I was informed that my account had been "Terminated". As I suspected earlier, the first agent was wrong. I could not verify that my credit card information was deleted.