1 Message
AT&T never gave me trade-in credit
This whole program is insane. "Mail in your phone and we will give you $1000 credit in three months." What an effing scam!
I mailed my phone in back in september 2023. It is now april 28, 2024. After multiple calls and hours on the line, I finally got a guy to confirm what I already knew: AT&T received my phone in August. I said "Yeah, I have the postal tracking number that says that." After being transferred around to multiple departments, I was finally lucky enough to talk to a lady who fessed up and said that the phone was received but no ticket was assigned. She gave me the ticket number and said it would be resolved by march 16. I call on march 20, because - you guessed it - no credit had been applied to my account. Call again. And again. The people can't tell me anything other than to wait some more. Apparently, the issue will just resolve itself by magic.
This seriously should be illegal - AT&T should be required to process credits for trade-ins upon receipt of the device. Or at least in a prompt fashion. No more of this "we will credit your account in a few months or whenever we feel like getting around to it."
I call and call and call and nobody can give me a straight answer. I know the poor employees I am speaking to have been instructed not to tell me anything. I know they can hear the frustration in my voice and feel bad. But like I said, they are instructed to follow they script.
Do not ever trust this process. Seriously, I don't know if employees just steal the phones as soon as they come in. Or if it is all a big scam. Or if AT&T is just so backlogged and struggling to find staff to process the claims. Whatever it is, the system is clearly not working. Whether it is negligence or malice on the part of AT&T, I don't know, but this whole thing is so messed up.
If I thought it would do anything I would file an $1000 claim in small claims court or something. Obviously, nothing would come of that. So apparently I have no other choice but to continue paying off my new phone and then sever all ties with AT&T immediately afterward. And then convince everyone I know to leave AT&T as well.
JefferMC
ACE - Expert
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35.5K Messages
19 days ago
A lot of people do post in these forums with issues with getting their trade in credits. Some are due to not following the terms. Some are due to shipping issues, including apparently people tampering with packages in transit. Some are just mistakes.
Statistically, considering the millions of phones that AT&T sells under this trade in plans each year... there are actually very few reports of it not working. Let's limit it to 10 million. Let's say there's a 0.1 percent (or 1 in 1,000) failure rate, which which be 10,000 failures a year. Let's say that only 1 in 10 of the people affected feel compelled to post here, so we'd expect then to see 1,000 posts here each year. And we don't see that many complaints. So the failure rate must be lower than that. And AT&T sells a lot more than 10 million phones in a year.
So, when it affects you, it affects you 100% and the fact that it's rare doesn't help your situation a lot. However, I'd suggest that, if you've exhausted the support process, you file either a BBB or FCC complaint and see if the Office of the President is able to help.
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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117.5K Messages
18 days ago
You wrote the AT&T has received your phone...
If AT&T indeed has received your phone it means you use the wrong label, the label that is for returned merchandise, that would have been for the new phone if you did not want it.
Phones do not go to the service provider. They go to a third party, Assurant mobile in lavergne Tennessee
Do you have the tracking information? Did it go to Tennessee or Texas?
If you sent your phone with the return label back to Texas, the people are in Texas are wondering why you returned an old phone instead of a brand new one.
As for processing the credits upon receipt the device, unless you turned in your phone at an AT&T store, in which case you would get a paper receipt for that, AT&T would never see the phone and is waiting for that third party, Assurant, to indicate the phone has been received and is as expected, qualified for the promotion.
You of course have to meet all of the other qualifications for the promotion including having a qualified unlimited data plan, the phone has to be paid for with installments. And the phone had to be qualified for the deal
(edited)
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Lockdowncraziness
Former Employee
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2.6K Messages
18 days ago
Not sure how they received your phone in August when you didn’t send it in until September. 🤔
I mailed my phone in back in september 2023. It is now april 28, 2024. After multiple calls and hours on the line, I finally got a guy to confirm what I already knew: AT&T received my phone in August.
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