Can I Keep My Tracfone Triple Minutes When I Switch to a BYOP iPhone?

A reader Lauren wants to know if she will keep triple minutes if she switches from her Tracfone 3x Minutes phone to a Bring Your Own Phone smartphone. She asks..

I bought my Samsung TracFone from HSN and it has 3X the minutes for life. I’m planning on buying a iPhone 6 that is unlocked but before I do, I would like to know, if I move my plan to the iPhone will I still have my 3X the minutes for life plan?

Hi Lauren,
I don’t know exactly what is going to happen with your minutes and future purchases when you transfer your number and service balance from your current HSN Samsung Tracfone phone to an iPhone or other Bring Your Own Phone (BYOP). But here is what I can share.

For a number of years, Tracfone offered Triple (3X) minutes for life but they currently seem to be moving away from that offer now. The way that triple minutes worked if was that you would get three times the number of talk, text, and data minutes stated on the face of the refill card. So a 365 day card with 1500 minutes for talk, text, and data would triple to 4500 minutes for talk, text, and data. The 3X offer for life is associated with the phone.

For a long time, tracfone offered the 3X deal when you brought your own phone to Tracfone. The BYOP SIM kits they sold were labeled 3X minutes for life, however now the newer kits are sold for use with the smartphone-only plans. So if you were to activate a new line using the BYOP kit with tracfone you would not get 3X minutes.

Now in your case, you want to transfer your current number and service to a BYOP iPhone. There are two things to understand here. First, what happens to your existing balance of minutes. From what I can tell, all your existing minutes should transfer over. Next, is what happens when you add future refills. The question is when you try to buy airtime will you still have the option to add 3X minutes, or either the pay-as-you-go minutes, or only the smartphone only plans. I don’t know the answer.

I currently have access to three different Tracfone smartphone accounts but they were activated with the 3X SIM kit and I can still add triple minute plans. But I have not activated one of the newer SIMs nor have I transferred service from a 3X minutes phone to one of the new smartphone BYOP SIMs so I can’t say.

You could consider a few options to work around this.

First, buy one of the older 3X minutes for life SIM Kits from eBay and transfer your current service to that.

Second, if your current phone is using Tracfone’s ATT towers your existing SIM might work in work in your iPhone.

That approach would require a little more effort to do as your SIM might not be the correct size to use in an iPhone. The third option, is you could load up on triple minutes before switching over.

I’m posting this on smartphonematters.com and YouTube to see what my other readers and viewers can share about this. I know its this doesn’t answer your question but I hope it helps.

I bought my Samsung TracFone from HSN and it has 3X the minutes for life. I’m planning on buying a iPhone 6 that is unlocked but before I do, I would like to know, if I move my plan to the iPhone will I still have my 3X the minutes for life plan?

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