Trade in Mix-Up

My husband and I came to AT&T earlier this year freshly after getting married, we went to our local AT&T kiosk in our Sam’s Club with a representative who gave us a really good deal on a trade-in for my fully unlocked iPhone 12 and offered my husband a trade in for his old Samsung. So we set up an account and traded in both devices to which I had no problems with mine when it arrived and I upgraded to the iPhone 14 meanwhile, my husband upgraded to the S22.

     Well the S22 that was given to us originally was faulty, the battery life was not sufficient, and it almost seemed like the battery was corrupted because it wouldn’t hold a charge. We went back to the kiosk where the representative there was very understanding and got a hold of the AT&T back office for us. After spending over 45 minutes on the phone with the back office, we were explicitly told that we were NOT to send back the phone and that we were supposed to keep it because it was faulty and that the original trade on of my husband original phone counted towards the S23 he was going to get instead. The representative as well as my husband and I were very confused and went to confirm with the agent over the phone multiple times that they wanted us to keep the phone, to which they agreed and confirmed back to us multiple times and even said they were NOT going to send us any form of box or label to send it back because they wanted us to keep it.

      Fast forward to a couple months ago, AT&T sends us our bill and we are being charged over $1000 for an S22 we no longer have because after holding onto it for six months my husband and I decided to sell it because we did not need the extra phone. Now my husband and I called and got a hold of an agent who tells us that we have to go back to the kiosk and get a written statement of the events that occurred because they are a “third party vendor” and so they have “no control over what happens at the kiosks”. So my husband and I return to the kiosk which we have not been to since we opened this account, and lo and behold, that the representative there is not the representative that we originally talked to, and refuses to give us a written statement because “they were not there when it happened.” Now my husband and I tried to call AT&T to get this fixed which ends up getting us nowhere because they refused to pick up the phone or we get transferred to four different departments and all four departments tell us they can’t help us.

      Now we are two months into this issue with no solution and my husband and I went back to the Sam’s Club two days ago and found out that the kiosk that was there is no longer there anymore and they no longer have an AT&T kiosk in any stores around us so we have no way to get the “proof” they need to fix this issue.

We are both personally fed up with AT&T and are willing to take this to court because we are being unlawfully billed for a device that we no longer own and were told we could “do what we want with” but yet suddenly now we’re not allowed to keep it, and are being forced to pay for this device that we again no longer have, on top of being given no sort of explanation on how to fix this or how to work out some sort of payment plan because we cannot afford a $1200 phone bill.

We thought you were better than this AT&T