FWP: Adding and buying cell phone airtime

My mother and I both have cell phones. (Mobile phones, if you prefer.) We use them on a pretty regular basis. To continue being able to use them, we purchase those phone cards that add minutes and days to the service.

Both are Alcatel phones using the TracFone service. Mine is older, with hers having been purchased this year. For some reason, someone decided to increase the difficulty in both checking and adding airtime. To compare:

Checking airtime
Mine:

1. Open phone.
2. Look at screen. You can read it there.

Done.

Hers:

1. Open phone. Despite having plenty of screen real estate where it could go, the information is not there.
2. Press OK to open menu.
3. Press right to go to Contacts, or down to go to Messages. Press OK.
4. Press OK, since Alcatel is the first contact in the list for the foreseeable future, or since they're probably the last people I texted or received a text from.
5. Enter 225 in the message box. Since this counts as a text, this requires pressing 2 four times, pausing to let it register that I mean "2" rather than missing the letter I wanted, pressing 2 four times again, then pressing 5 four times.
6. Press the left shoulder button to Send.
7. Receive three text messages: The first tells me they're gathering the data, the second says I can go to bit.ly to check it, and the third tells me the information.
8. Go to the message.
9. Read the message, mentally adding spaces as needed, because they needed to do it as a text message.

Adding
Mine:

1. Open phone.
2. Open the menu.
3. Press OK, because Add Airtime is the first option on the menu.
4. Enter the 15-digit PIN. Because it's its own thing, this only necessitates pressing each number key once for every time it comes up in the PIN, at the appropriate time.
5. Press OK.
6. Press the left shoulder button and enter the promo code, or press the right shoulder button to skip entering a promo code.
7. Wait for confirmation that they received the PIN, in the form of it telling me how many minutes, how many bonus minutes, and how many days I received.

Hers:

1. Open phone.
2. Press OK to open menu.
3. Press right to go to Contacts, or down to go to Messages. Press OK.
4. Press OK, since Alcatel is the first contact in the list for the foreseeable future, or since they're probably the last people I texted or received a text from.
5. Enter ADD in the message box. Since this counts as a text, this requires pressing 2 once, 3 once, pausing to let it register that I mean "D" rather than some other letter or actually "3".
6. Press the left shoulder button to Send.
7. Receive a text message telling me to reply "1" (5 presses of the 1 button) if I want to add to this phone (I pretty much always do, because...), or "2" (4 presses of the 2 button) if I want to add to another phone (...why would I go through this rigmarole instead of the simpler method if I don't have to?).
8. Press 1 five times and the left shoulder button once.
9. Receive a text message telling me to enter the PIN.
10. Enter the, again, 15-digit PIN. Since this counts as a text, this requires, for every digit, pressing the number button four or even five times (depending on the number) to get to the actual number. That comes to 60-75 presses on the PIN alone. Insert pauses between digits that are the same numbers, for the reason already explored. (No promo code thingy, so that part isn't there.)
11. Receive text confirming that they received the PIN, but no information as to what I got.

I don't know, somebody had to make that decision. Is there some sort of benefit to this difficulty spike?