The ONLY Way to Solve your Trade-In Issues

Really glad this post is here. Same issue... Trade in Scam. I have been with AT&T for 20 years, probably spent in the neighborhood of over $30,000 over the years on cellular service. In August of '22, I traded in my old iphone for a credit on a new one and received an email stating "Trade Completed and Payment Sent/Promotion Applied". Then actually received the appropriate credits for 6 months!  After receiving 6/36 credits they stopped suddenly in March of '23. I barely noticed the change in the bill... which is what I think they are hoping for. No notification of the credit stopping, or explanation from AT&T. Called C/S and spent 45 minutes with the least helpful representative. She seemed distracted, bothered by my call....not helpful or concerned at all. After looking in my notes for awhile... she stated the phone was not unlocked, and I would not receive any credits... (The phone was updated, and  completely re-set per instructions.)  I asked for the phone back, and of course they can not send it back, or let me verify their claim. 

Filed a FCC complaint today, hoping for resolution.

Honestly it is not that much money, a first-world problem for sure, but very strange customer service for a company I have been with for 20 years. Cheap, considering my credit was only @ $9 per month.

So glad I found this thread! I traded in three iPhone 11’s as part of the $800 promotion towards the purchase of three new iPhone 14’s in early Dec 2022… 2/3 trade ins were successfully processed. 1 was not. I was told after multiple calls in late January of this year that I had to wait until March 21, three billing cycles later, for them to do a manual override to apply the reimbursement, and I had to call back. In late January the customer service rep also told me the other department could’ve easily done it that day but they refused. He was very frustrated for me, but did help me understand the issue at least. AT&T erroneously did not associate my trade in phone’s IMEI towards my phone number at the time of purchase so when I activated my new phone with my phone number the trade in became “lost”. Fortunately, the customer service rep spent two hours locating it in a warehouse after some digging. At first, he insisted that the issue was due to my error and that I mailed back my trade-in with the wrong box or label somehow. Thankfully, I was able to point out that I mailed three trade-ins at the same time in individual boxes provided by AT&T so how did two of the three make it fine and yet one didn’t? It was a complete mess. Fast forward to March 21… I called and thankfully all of the notes were associated to my ticket and I was told that my reimbursement should be applied quickly by the other department… or so I thought. After about an hour, I was told that the problem was so “widespread” that yet another team was authorized to solve my problem so they could “get to the root of the larger issue” and they would be in touch with me within a few days and there was nothing more the rep could do. I tried my best to reason with him, but his hands were tied. He said the other team told them they “could not touch it”, referring to providing me a manual override. However, he did give me a one-time $66 credit on top of the pending $800 trade-in credit to at least cover the three billing cycles so far. I filed an FCC complaint on Friday and received an email today (Monday) that it was sent over to AT&T. Tomorrow is 3/28, one week after the rep promised the other department would quickly be in touch to manually apply the $800 credit and as you might have guessed, I have not heard anything from AT&T. Thank goodness for the FCC complaint form and this thread! I’ll write back and update as soon as I hear from AT&T, hopefully. It’s a darn shame that they treat their customers like this. I’ve had multiple lines and have been a customer for over 15 years. I will definitely switch carriers the next time I upgrade phones.

Update: One day after the FCC filed my complaint, "Rebecca", from the Executive office at AT&T called and issued me the $800 credit. Overall, she was patient, courteous, a good listener, and we had a good conversation for nearly 20 minutes.

The last rep I spoke with, "Vic", granted me a $66 one-time credit for the hassle I'd been through, which his supervisor approved, because I was caught between two departments, customer service (who said everything was in order to process my $800 credit) and the "other" department who facilitates credit overrides in the system (who told Vic they "couldn't touch this" because it was a "larger, widespread issue").  Rebecca initially tried to deduct the $66 from the $800 trade-in credit arguing that it was actually my first 3 month credit, but I stood my ground and explained no, that was a one-time credit given to me due to the substantial hoops I had to jump through, having spent hours and hours on many frustrating calls across the 3 months with countless call-back promises broken and no resolution. I explained that I had to sleuth and put pieces together for AT&T because they acted like my issue was an anomaly.... and she quickly relented. I then took 15 minutes to explain my full experience to her in hopes that someone at her level could empathize and actually do something about this. I first highlighted THIS very thread as well as others on reddit, and pointed out that this in fact is a well documented issue that's been affecting customers for over 3 years. I explained how frustrating it is that ALL the customer service reps I engaged with from AT&T were ill prepared and trained to properly address this issue and set reasonable expectations and their good cop, bad cop sister department scapegoat tactic is absurd. At first, I was told this was very much an isolated issue and actually caused by my error, then it became something that was "known, but a recent problem", and finally graduated to a "larger, widespread issue" that AT&T is standing up a dedicated team to get to the bottom of... vastly different acknowledgements of issue severity being provided by the same custom service department and mostly lies. She admitted they are poorly trained and likely just making things up to try to satisfy the customer in the moment. She acknowledged this is a huge paint point for customers - and AT&T - and they are slow to fix the problem. I spent a minute talking about the negative brand perception that is growing around this trade-in program... the fact that so many people will not be advocating for AT&T to their friends and family, which is referred to as NPS (net promoter score) which is a vital marketing method for any business (the willingness for customers to promote a product or service to their friends and family) and that negative NPS will catch up to them. I stated the perception is that AT&T is allowing this to happen and is intentionally slow to fix the issue because they profit regardless, and worse, their frontline customer service reps lack training and are improvising, even lying to customers about this issue and that AT&T is standing up a new team, or will quickly solve their problem, or will call back soon, etc, which doesn't happen.

I challenged her to escalate 3 issues:

1. Solve the return label ambiguity - AT&T includes a remorse return label with new phones, which is meant for customers to return the new phone if they're unhappy with it. This is super confusing because they send numerous emails on top of the the new phone order tracking emails to return your trade-in within 30 days of activation of new phones via the provided label and box. This creates a sense of urgency so customers act fast to ensure they get their trade-in reimbursement. In my case, the ONLY return labels I was given were the ones within each of the new phone boxes, so I assumed I was to use those. I had purchased 3 new phones on ATT's website through their trade-in program, so it made sense based on their messaging that I was supposed to use THOSE return labels to send back my phone. Turns out, I was supposed to use separate labels which were never provided. The simple stopgap fix is to update the label of the remorse return slip to clearly state this they are intended for new phones only and NOT for trade-ins. A little context goes a long way.

2. Investigate why specific trade-in return labels weren't provided in my case. Was this isolated? Is this a larger issue for the entire website?

3. Train customer service on this issue. Being the frontline of their business, they are woefully inconsistent when dealing with this issue. They act as if this is isolated/new. They try to blame the customer. They play good cop, bad cop with sister departments. Customers get hung up on and transferred. Worse, they set false expectations that they've escalated the issue and that another, higher level department is going to swoop in and fix the issue, which never happens.

She told me she was going to review my phone calls and try to escalate my feedback to leadership, but I doubt that will happen.

Lastly, I am thankful for everyone before me documenting their issue so others like me could find a quick resolution. The FCC form absolutely works. AT&T knows this is an issue and its not a priority.

Thank you for posting the information here. I am in the same situation. I upgraded 2 iPhone 12 Pro Max phones to the iPhone 14 since the cost would be ~$100 per phone (after the $1,000 rebate in the form of 36 monthly credits). I noticed that the $27.78 monthly credit was reduced to $9.73 in March and called ATT yesterday asking about this. The rep mentioned something about not deactivating my phone which was odd as I followed the same steps on both phones, yet I continue to receive the full $27.78 credit for 1 phone and the other was reduced to $9.73. This is such BULLS&*T! I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told they would call back later in the day.....which of course never happened. I will file an FCC complaint as I am not sure what else to do here. I have been a ATT customer since 2009 and have a total of 6 phones on my account (soon to be 7 when I get a line for daughter). I will definitely move to Verizon or another provider as this is flat out a scam.

Thank you all for sharing your experiences. I am just about to switch from T-Mobile to ATT with 4 lines. I am also lured in by the $800 trade in credit toward new phone. I have learned so much from this thread, I’m thinking of getting a commitment from the store manager to guarantee my trade in credit or I won’t make the switch. Hopefully I can make this work. I will keep everyone updated. Please continue to share as this is a blatant robbery by ATT if they don’t give the credit they promise. 

Update: I followed the instructions mentioned in this thread and I wanted to detail my experience for everyone:

• 4/14/2023: Called ATT as bill credits for 1 of the 2 phones I traded in reduced from $27.78 down to $9.72 as they mentioned that I forgot to remove the device lock on that device. I only noticed this after reviewing my bill and saw that this happened in February. ATT mentioned they sent me an email about this, but I never got it on the day they mentioned it was sent....needless to say, I was livid as I followed the same steps on both phones, yet 1 somehow was still locked.
• 4/14/2023: I read this post and contacted the FCC and submitted a complaint
• 4/17/2023: I received a call from the ATT Exec Office. I am glad my phone recognized the number as it looked like spam to me. The number that appeared on my caller ID was (972-396-2346) and I am listing it here so that anyone reading this is aware of this, not that anyone should call them directly (as I am sure it will get routed somewhere else). I spoke to the rep and explained what happened. They asked me for information about who I spoke to at ATT and other items which I was surprised they didn't already know. I would have expected ATT to have a robust CRM solution to track email/phone calls to customers with detailed notes on what was discussed, but apparently ATT doesn't have this. The rep mentioned they would research this and get back to me.
• 4/19/2023: The ATT Exec office called me again and reviewed the notes and gave me 2 options. They would either apply the remaining bill credits ($888 in my case) towards my bill immediately or remove the remaining installments all together where I pay what is due ($917) and get the $888 as a credit so I pay $27, but don't have any more credits. I took the second option as this breaks the installment plan and I can upgrade my iPhone 14 whenever I want to without losing the remaining bill credits. 

This thread was EXTREMELY helpful so thank you QDad for sharing how to handle this situation. I hope many others are able to follow these steps to resolve their ATT trade in issue.

@ATTTimCS

Thank you for your comment on this thread.

My question is why would you not simply train and give authority to your CS representatives to handle these issues when customers call-in? At this point you must know that the system is not working.

Why do you allow Hyla to dead-end your customers with a non-existent "escalation" process?

Why do you prevent your CS team; even the managers, escalations , and even retention department; from being able to address the trade-in issues?

The fact that this thread was created by me and has subsequently had so many other customers find their way here after not receiving a solution from AT&T tells me that you still have not trained your CS reps how to handle Trade-In issues. Why is that?

LOL, @ATTTimCS ! As folks' comments here detail: most (maybe all) of us here kept great documentation and spent many many hours being tossed around back and forth from AT&T support before trying this remarkably efficient hack. In my case, I spent 26 hours with AT&T support over phone, in person, and online, documented *everything* and it still was not resolved. So you'll excuse us if we pass Go and collect the proverbial $200 (but realistically more like $800) thanks to the intervention of the FCC. AT&T's systemic issues is more than your tips here can make a dent in.

I am so glad I found this thread. I have a mix up with my trade in where the store employee put down a wrong phone number for my trade in. So I'm getting emails from AT&T asking me to send in my trade in even though I already did by leaving it with the AT&T store (thank god I have the receipt!).

I've spend hours on the phone talking to the CS, Trade In Department, and customer loyalty reps. I even went back to the store who made the mistake but everyone is telling me to just wait 3 billing cycles and the trade in credits will start. I highly doubt this will happen because the trade in was sent in by the store with a wrong number attached to it. I don't believe the AT&T system is sophisticated enough to figure out my trade in actually belongs to the phone number I upgraded. I don't want to wait 3 months and then find out they won't give me the $700 credit because they didn't receive my trade in.

So I filed a FCC complaint today, May 30th. I will report back here with the result. 

This thread says it all.

I got my issue resolved within 1 business day.

So I'm just BIG +1 that the FCC complaint process works swiftly. And HUGE thanks to all that contributed your details.

Also, glad that the FCC must have some teeth here, otherwise ATT would gladly ignore them as well.