How Do I Reactivate My Tracfone?

Reactivating your Tracfone service is usually as quick as buying a plan for your phone but there are occasional exceptions. Switching to a new phone may require calling Tracfone or visiting a Tracfone retailer. Keeping your phone on and checking that your payment was successful also helps in catching issues with your reactivation before they start.

Adam Goldkamp is the editor / author responsible for this content.
Mar 23, 2020

In this day of overpriced cell phone plans, there's a budget-friendly alternative called Tracfone. Even then, there are times that getting phone minutes gets put on the back burner and your phone gets deactivated. Luckily, Tracfone makes reactivation as easy as buying minutes.

Steps for Reactivation

For your previous phone, you will need to have your phone's serial number.

  1. Go to tracfone.com and sign-in to your account.
  2. Inactive devices are listed below any active ones. Select the phone you'd like to activate and click on the activate button.
  3. Next, you'll be asked if you want to keep your number. Clicking No will prompt the system to ask you for the zip code where you'll be using your phone the most. Clicking Yes will allow you to keep your number.
  4. Next, you'll be asked to pick a plan, either pay as you go or smart phone only. You'll also be asked if you want to put your plan on autopay, which is not mandatory to buy your plan. Signing up will give you a small discount of about 75 cents.
  5. Entering your payment information means you're almost done with the process. You'll have the option of using what's on file or adding a new card to complete your purchase. Pretty cut and dry, right?

Extra tips

  1. Tracfone recommends that you keep your phone on so that it can receive the minutes.
  2. One way of verifying your payment was successful is by checking the payment history tab, a charge of zero means the purchase was unsuccessful and you'll need to try again.
  3. If you had triple minutes the last time your phone was active and you reactivate the same phone, then adding a plan will reactivate the triple minute benefit.

New phone only

  1. If you upgraded to a new phone which meant the SIM card was moved from your old phone to your new one, then you won't be able to activate the old phone. You would need to contact Tracfone to assist you.
  2. You can do a minutes transfer from your previous device to a new one, but it would need to be from smart phone to smart phone or non-smart phone to smart phone.

Further questions?

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Adam has been tirelessly trying to help customers find the best tips and tricks to get through phone trees and writing many guides for prickly customer service problems. He's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Inside Edition and Bloomberg.

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