AT&T - Con Artist that don't honor BOGO iPhone 7 deals

The jouney that I've gone through regarding this BOGO deal spans five months.

When I first called in to AT&T, I was going to cancel my service and swith to Sprint. I had already gone to the Sprint store and they offered me some good deals that I did not want to pass up. However, being a reasonable person, I decided that I needed to weigh my options and check which service was actually cheaper for myself and my family. Ultimately, Sprint was a better deal. On July 28th, 2017, I called AT&T to cancel my service and spoke with a kind lady. She told me about the BOGO iPhone 7 deal that was going on at the time. I had to upgrade one line (buy one), and open up a new line under my account (get one) and also had to have DIRECTV. I told her that my AT&T account billing was at my parents' house because all my bills go there and a friend who was renting a room at our house is paying for DIRECTV. She explained that is fine, as long as I change my AT&T billing address to the same address as the address that has DIRECTV. Ok, cool. I had to thinkn about it so I told her that I would call back a few days later to think about the options that I had in front of me. After the call, I received a post-call email:

Thank you for allowing me to assist you today. As discussed you will receive a $25 refund for the update fee on the line and a waived activate fee if you add. We also are offering $100 off the upgrades phone the free iphone would be the added line. Free priority shipping and a free case with each device and you now have 20GB of data for the cost of the 15GB plan. Just update your address to match the address on the Directv account to get the free phone and can be viewed on your phone at http://www.att.com/myattapp.

It was a pretty sweet deal, so I called AT&T Loyalty department back to move forward. I asked the new rep about the DIRECTV account being under my roommate's name and not mine and if I would still receive the credits if the addresses match. He assured me that I would after 2-3 billing cycles and I shouldn't have any problems at all and if I did, call them back. After about an hour, the rep placed my orders for the two phones and the free cases. There were shipping issues because I wanted the phones shipped to my old billing address (I had switch my billing to my actual home address at this point), but that's besides the point I'm trying to make.

My father and sister are under my account as well and they also wanted new phones. I called Loyalty department back and placed the same orders. They also offered free cases, so I went along with it. Same procedure here - reaffirmed that given the DirecTV and AT&T account are under different names, same billing address, I would still get the credit. Rep again offers reassurance that the credits will kick in after 2-3 billing cycles. Shipping issues again, but all that is later resolved.

When the 3rd billing cycle came, I saw that the credits were not there. I called and the rep filed a claim for me. When I called the Loyalty department the next week to check the status of it, they told me that the rep who filed the claim filed it under the wrong department, so the claim was denied. (AT&T has a real bad habit of not informing their customers of the progress of anything. Thanks for keeping me in the dark...) Speaking with the Loyalty rep, she sees that I have one eligible installment that should be credited monthly. Wrong! I placed two orders under the BOGO promotion. I paid off one of the buy one lines a month after I had placed it. My account was screwed up at this point. The rep couldn't even correlate which line is old and which line is new. It's in my bill -- apparently they have another system that tracks this stuff and me paying off one of my buy one installments called their system to fail integrity. After speaking with the rep, she told me she would pass the information onto her supervisor and the supervisor would contact me if they had any questions. They never did, so I assumed things went smoothly.

Boy was I wrong to trust that they pushed the case forward. I waited until the next billing cycle (today) and noticed that I'm still being charged for the installment plans for the two "get one" lines. I call Loyalty department again and this time, it's a different story. A straight shutdown in my case. They flipped the script and told me that I'm not eligible and that my case is invalid. The rep got all my information down, I explained to her what happened. She told me after our pleasant conversation that she would bring all this information to her supervisor and he would file an ICU case for me. She gets back to me and tells me that since the account holders for the DIRECTV and AT&T services are different, the case would be invalid and they can't push the case to ICU. At least push it to them and have them take a deep dive before telling me no, firewalling me from getting my case through.

To recap: The Loyalty department offered me this **bleep** deal to retain me as a customer. Several reps have told me that I will be elegible. I take the bait - twice. After 3-4 months, no credits. I call the Loyalty department again and they turn around and tell me that the deal they were hardselling to me is now invalid. Don't offer a deal if you can't honor it.

Buyers beware - if you want to cancel your service, cancel your service. Don't allow this department to lie to you. You'll end up like me and have to pay a high price for it.

[Edited due to word filter avoidance.]