30$ Upgrade Fee

But you are still charged once you put in your 'existing' ATT sim into the new phone.

Not necessarily. It depends on whether you buy on ATT’s payment plan or not. I bought my last 3 iPhones directly from Apple and not on payment plans, no upgrade fee. 

The upgrade fee is not charged on BYOD (bring your own device).   I buy anywhere else, other than the service provider if I can. 

But you are still charged once you put in your 'existing' ATT sim into the new phone.

If this was true, you’d be charged an upgrade fee if you put your SIM in an old flip phone because you broke your phone.

I just bought my new iPhone13 from the apple store, cash, and they still charged me $30 for the upgrade fee!@#@$%. for BYOD, ATT will still charge you, that is what I was told at the ATT center. So whoever says you're not charged $30, I hope you guys have experienced it. I was told you may need to tell a lie that your phone was stolen, but they will still charge your for the new SIM. What a daylight robbery - I own my phone, paid Apple in cash, and yet ATT still calls an upgrade fee. I used to be an employee at ATT, 30+ years customer,  and not happy with this one.

@andyv2

If you had purchased the Sim free version of iPhone you would not be paying a $30 upgrade fee.  🤦🏼‍♀️

 If you purchased a phone from Apple and got an AT&T SIM card in it - yes - you are going to pay the $30 upgrade fee because you upgraded through Apple.    That's NOT BYOD, that is upgrading with a third party. 

Instead it seems you have purchased an AT&T version, which only means that it's locked a t & t and you have to request it be unlocked (after 14 days as an existing customer) 

You are wrong. It is unlock, sim free. ATT charged me to xfer my esim - that is, once you activate the esim or start using your phone with a dim card. I calked ATT about it and they said i will be charged. 

@andyv2 If you really bought the SIM card free version and not on an ATT installment plan, you should not get charged. I have purchased my last 3 iPhones that way and did not get charged an upgrade fee. So no, we’re not wrong. Something went wrong if you got charged.

Editing your replies after the fact? 

Tsk, Tsk 

Your first post indicated that you purchased your phone from Apple with an AT&T SIM card.   Now you have edited that part out. 

Your second post indicates that you had your sim transferred to from physical to an esim.  You edited that one before I saw what it said. 

So yeah you got charged the upgrade fee.

Is it locked to AT&T?  Just because you paid in full to Apple oh, does not mean the phone is unlocked. You might want to check it here.

https://www.iphonelife.com/content/how-to-know-if-your-iphone-unlocked-what-means

Let's see the screen shot... 

I am on the phone with AT&T right now about this charge. I noticed the one-time fee on both of our phones. There was no way we could have avoided this fee unless we kept the old phones. We had already stopped stopped in at the AT&T store and were told that we could ONLY do payments (no, we wanted to buy phones due to work reimbursements). We spent a total of 30 minutes at the store and gave them all of our information. We felt not-great about the whole ordeal when we left for the Apple store. Where we ended up buying unlocked SIM phones (as previously discussed in this thread).

While on the call I let them know that we purchased the phones through Apple and did not do so through AT&T - The upgrade did not have anything to do with AT&T at all and the charges were in error. The representative said she would do her best and then put me on hold. She then came back a couple of minutes later and stated that the refund would be reflected on my next autopay bill.

** AT&T Stated they will refund the charge, noting that the call was recorded on May 22 at ~9:10 am EST**