Several months ago, I moved from Sprint to T-Mobile and traded in my paid-off, fully functional and cosmetically near-perfect iPhone XR during a promotional offer to “Get an iPhone 12 on Us” with any Apple trade-in in good condition.
I had a solid, grandfathered in price at Sprint, but after reviewing all of the conditions of the promotion, I realized that I could potentially be saving money with a new phone if I met all of the promotional requirements.
So, I went in to a T-Mobile store and spoke with a representative who, after inspecting my phone, determined that I was eligible for the full promotional value of the phone, and we began the process of switching my line from Sprint to T-Mobile. This process required ‘’porting” the number from Sprint to T-Mobile. It usually only takes a few minutes, however, my porting was significantly delayed. I waited in the store for about 45 minutes, before the representative told me I should likely come back several hours later before store close to finalize the process, as they believed the port would have finished by then.
When I returned, the port was not complete and the store representative told me I would have to come back in the morning to finalize the process and finish my trade-in. When I spoke to the representative, I asked if this would effect my promotional credit, as it was the ONLY reason I had any desire to switch from Sprint to T-Mobile. The representative, who I believe was a sales manager, assured me it would not effect the value of my trade-in promotional credit whatsoever. They informed me they would leave a note on my account, affirming the value of the trade-in even in the unlikely event that the promotion expired the next day (which they did not believe to be the case) as I had started the process the day prior and the process was delayed due to T-Mobile’s devices.
I came back the following morning to finish the trade-in process, and the sales representative who had helped me the day before was not working, nor did the store signage reflect the same promotion it had the evening before. I spoke to the available representative who had no knowledge of the creation of my account in the first place, so the process had to be started over completely.
As this happened, I spoke with him about the promotion I had received the day before and mentioned the name of the sales associate who had helped me and guaranteed my promotional offer. I asked him to guarantee the promotional offer as well before finishing the process, because if it was no longer valid I could not afford the change in phone plans. He gave me all assurances that he understood the situation and would ensure the credit was applied, then completed the process.
While going through all final documents after the process was complete, I saw that the credit applied for my trade-in was listed as “$7.39/billing cycle” - $33 LESS than the promotional credit I was supposed to receive. As soon as I saw this, I called T-Mobile customer service and informed them of the situation and the error. They then assured me that it would take up to two billing cycles for the change to appear, but that they had applied the promotional trade-in value to my phone.
After one billing cycle, I did not see the credit applied to my account or any documentation of the correction, so I reached out to customer service to verify that it was on record. Once again, I was told there was no record of the correction, and was quickly promised that they would personally ensure the correct price was given to me and immediately applied to my account.
After two more billing cycles, the proper trade in credit still did not appear, and I have reached out to T-Mobile every month since and have gotten essentially the same reply from all customer service agents - with absolutely no action on my account despite all assurances.
At this point, I am exhausted and extremely, extremely frustrated. I feel that my money is being stolen, as I never would have made the switch to T-Mobile were it not for the promotion I was promised. I made the switch and signed the contract under the believe, as was told to me by T-Mobile, that I was getting a significant promotional offer. I am now paying over $40 more a month than my original Sprint plan, a price which I did not budget for nor did I consent to, and am locked into a contract at that price. I have had to make other adjustments in my monthly bills because I can get NO assistance from T-Mobile despite this wrong doing being entirely their responsibility.
HELP!
