How To Get FREE TracFone Airtime

NOTE:

AS OF OCTOBER 15, 2006, TRACFONE HAS DISCONTINUED THE REFER-A-FRIEND PROGRAM.  THEREFORE, THE INFORMATION ON THE REST OF THIS PAGE IS NO LONGER CURRENT.  I'M LEAVING THE PAGE UP JUST IN CASE SOMEONE GETS HERE FROM AN OLD LINK SOMEHOW.

The best time get some free TracFone minutes is when you are activating your new or reconditioned TracFone. There are a couple of ways to go about it.

First, one nice little feature is that you get 10 free airtime minutes just for activating the phone, and then you get another 10 free minutes on top of that for activating on the internet instead of calling their 800 number.

That's a quick and easy 20 minutes of airtime to get you started, so be sure to activate your new phone on their website!

If you really want to rack up the free TracFone minutes when you activate your phone, then take advantage of TracFone's refer-a-friend program.  When you follow the instructions that come in the refer-a-friend email to activate your phone, you and your friend both get 100 FREE airtime minutes. All for about 2 minutes of extra work. Not bad!  Keep reading to learn how it all works.

If you are ready to buy a phone now, you can click here to see the current deals at the TracFone Online store.

It doesn't seem to matter when you buy the phone, it just matters when you activate your phone. So even if you have already bought a phone, you can still use the refer-a-friend as long as you have not activated it yet.

IMPORTANT! Do not activate your phone before receiving the refer-a-friend email from TracFone, or else it won't work!

You do, however, need to activate your phone before the ending date in the email (which is 30 days from when the email is sent). But even if you don't for some reason, there nothing stopping your friend from sending you a new email.

Remember, though, that you have to follow the link in the refer-a-friend email to activate your phone in order to get the free TracFone minutes. Especially the "click here" link that will be under step 3.

If you are buying two phones (maybe one for you and one for your spouse), activate one of them first, and then send yourself a refer-a-friend email to use to activate the 2nd phone.

That way you will get extra free minutes for both phones. What a deal! The only gotcha there is that you have to use different email addresses for the referrer and the referree when sending yourself the referral.

After completing step 3 in the referral process, you and the person who referred you will each receive an email from TracFone with an airtime code for the free TracFone minutes. It takes a day or two for the email to arrive, and you redeem the airtime just the same as you would a normal airtime code from the back of an airtime card you buy in a store.

These referral minutes will also extend your activation due date 60 days like normal, but they don't seem to qualify for any of the special promotions such as the double-minute plan.

Also, the emails always seem to come during the night, so if it's not there first thing in the morning, you don't have to keep checking your email all day long!

If you already have your phone, and you are in a big big hurry and absolutely have to have the referral ASAP, then the fastest way to get a referral is to request it on the following TracFone Yahoo group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Tracfone_Users/

You can either join the group and post a message requesting a referral, or you can simply email your request to tracfone_users@yahoogroups.com. 

You will have to tell them an email address to send the referral to, because Yahoo will mask your email address in the header of the email.  It will also mask the email address you put in the body of the email, but the group members can click on the masked email address to see the full email address. 

Doing it that way lets the group members see the email address but protects it from being harvested by spambots.  If you're extra worried about spam, just create a new Yahoo account to have a a temporary email address to which the referral can be sent.

The above Yahoo group is pretty active and frequented by some knowledgeable TracFone users.  They definitely watch the message postings like hawks when it comes to referral requests (they want those free minutes!), so you should have someone sending you a referral within an hour or two after posting.

(Note:  The above info is only for new TracFone owners who want to be referred but don't know anyone who owns a TracFone.  If you already own a TracFone and want to refer a friend, then go to www.tracfone.com)

Once you are ready to buy the phone, it's really a no-brainer: you have to activate your phone anyway, so you might as well get some free TracFone minutes while doing it!

Click here to see the current deals at the TracFone Online store