TracPhone, DirecTV

My dad has a TracPhone. He keeps it in its black vinyl case sitting on the kitchen counter. Occasionally you’ll hear an odd noise coming from that area. Eventually you’ll figure out that the phone is making a noise. Usually it’s because it needs to be charged.

My dad said he went to Walmart to buy more minutes for the phone but Walmart had stopped selling that. He asked them where he could buy minutes and they told him Target. He went to Target, but they didn’t sell them. He went home and called around for an hour and finally found out that Walgreens sells them. Of course, he could have called me or someone in the family with Internet knowledge and we could have bought them online for him. But he rarely asks for help, unless it’s for my mom to hold something.

So, he went to Walgreens and looked all around for a card rack with a TracPhone minutes card. Finally, he asked someone and found it.

He was telling me this on the phone. Then he started complaining about the high cost of his DirecTV bill. He was going to call them and cancel his service, but I persuaded him to let me call and see what I could do. We’ve been around and around with this before. He thinks he can get an antenna and receive all the TV channels he needs.

They need TV. It keeps them connected to the outside world. My sister rarely watches TV, doesn’t have satellite TV, and doesn’t know anything about various TV receivers these days. Antennas have changed a lot in the last 20 or so years and my parents watch a lot of TV. Calling DirecTV and getting relevant information can be difficult and hard to understand even for me.

I called DirecTV and got a representative with an odd accent. I’m surprised to report that I actually passed myself off as living in my parents’ home to the DirecTV rep. My parents already had the cheapest programming package, but I got the “protection plan” removed from their monthly bill, saving them $8 a month and keeping their TV service intact.