Setting up Tracfone Voicemail

On the Phone or Online

Table of Contents

1 - Activate Voicemail Online

2 - Video Demo and Q&A

It’s pretty simple to setup your Tracfone voicemail on the phone or online. Below you can see the written instructions. On the video on the next page is the easiest way to set it up from the phone (a Samsung T105g in this case).

First activate your phone

First make sure you have activated your Tracfone and can make calls.

Find your IMEI number

To get the voicemail instruction for your particular phone you have to enter your phone's Serial number and the phone number itself.

To find that select the “Prepaid” menu on your phone and scroll down and select Serial Number.

Follow the Tracfone voicemail setup instructions

Once you've entered those numbers, click "Continue", and you will be given the specific set of instructions for your particular phone. These naturally vary slightly for different handsets.

Record a greeting

Whatever the individual instructions, you will normally call  voicemail via your Tracfone handset, so you will use up a few minutes or airtime to get your voice mail completely set up. You have to record your greeting. Actually, you have to record your "answer" greeting, your "busy" greeting as well as your name.

Really, you should not be charged airtime for setting up the phone. After all, you're not actually making a call or even checking messages at this point.

On the other hand, you do get about 10 minutes free airtime with every Tracfone you buy, so you can view that airtime as being for testing and setup.

Once you activate your phone, you can spend a couple of minutes testing whether you can make calls. Then, use the rest of the time to setup your voicemail.

Not so fast

The interactive voice menu can be quite slow; eating up valuable airtime as it slowly explains your options.

One problem. Even if you already know which buttons to press to retrieve, replay or delete your voicemail, you cannot press the buttons while a message is playing or the interactive voice menu is telling you your options. So, if someone leave a message by mistake that was not intended for you, you have to listen to the whole message before you can delete it. In fact, this is one of my prepaid cell phone pet peeves.

So, when setting up your voicemail,

Identify yourself clearly and specifically and be very clear in your greeting.

Make sure to delete your old messages when you're done, so you don't have to waste airtime listening to them again.

Update (11/13/2007)

The voicemail system seems to have been streamlined: you no longer have to go through multiple prompts. I am able to check in and listen to a short message all in less than 40 seconds, so it only costs one unit of airtime.

Next - Video Demo and Q&A