Tracfone Blues

I bought a tracfone, for emergencies, like when my car broke down.

I bought it at Walmart. The phone plus minutes cost me quite a lot but I thought I was set, for a good six months.

Until, that is, I tried to activate it.

I tried online, registering the phone and the minutes card. It wouldn't work afterwards. That night, I tried to get back on their website. It was down. Even their customer service number was down "due to circumstances beyond our control" the message said.

Tracfone hell has continued with numerous exceedingly lengthy calls to their customer service. Some of them I cannot understand due to heavy accents. I'll finally get somebody who thinks they understand the problem, only to be put on never ending hold. One guy gave me several very very lengthy codes to type into the phone, which I did. He then said "give it an hour, leaving the phone on, and all will be fine." All wasn't fine. While my minutes display and the end date of my service, which is ticking away, the phone isn't activated. The minutes displayed are 40 short of those I bought, too.

The next time I called, the man finally told me it was the wrong SIM card for the registered phone and briefly accused me of switching them out, when I didn't even know what a SIM card was. I do now. Then he said he'd send a new SIM card, arriving at the very latest, yesterday. But he assured me most likely I'd have it by last Wednesday. It's not arrived.

I don't know what to do at this point. I can't throw that money down the drain and their customer service sucks, to be honest. Ideas?