Trade-in credit of $800 was not honored - instead we were given only $130 and then later charged $670

I have been a faithful AT&T customer for several years now.  But this is about to push me to change cellphone providers.  I see T-Mobile with pay up to $650 per line to switch people over.  Depending upon how this situation is handled, I may be giving them my business from now on...

Last year I was in our local Target store and was approached by the AT&T representative saying he would like to see if he could save us money on our monthly bill and possibly even get us new free phones in the process.  It was at that moment that I made the decision that I would regret for months to come.

I went ahead and gave him my info and he pulled up our plan and told me he could get us all new phones and save us a few bucks each month on our phone bill.  We were not under any contract with our existing Apple iphone 10S phones.  he asked if we would like to all have new Apple iphone 13 phones.  I thought for a minute and agreed to his proposal.  He said we would need to trade in our existing phones and we would receive $800 credits on all 6 lines.  I checked with the others on my plan to see if they wanted to do that and everyone agreed.

So after going thru all of the regamarole giving numbers and agreeing to whatever on their system 6 new phones were on their way out to us.  The deal was that once we got the phones they would need to be activated and then we would have 30 days to mail in our old phones using prepaid packages from AT&T.

The phones arrived and were activated (we did end up having problems getting one activated, but after a few long calls with AT&T got that one figured out finally).  A couple of our phones needed to have new screens put on so we had those done and I called the AT&T promotions number and asked when we needed to have these phones mailed in by because I WANTED TO MAKE SURE WE GOT THE FULL $800 CREDIT.  They told me the date and I made sure to drop them in the mail with plenty of time for them to arrive at AT&T by the date they told me over the phone.  Two of the phones were mailed in from my Niece and her husband and the other four, I dropped into the mailbox at the post office.  I dropped all four of our phones into that mailbox, one right after another.

A week or so went by and I contacted a representative at the promotions phone number again and asked them to verify that we got the $800 credit on all 6 of our phones that were sent in.  They assured me that we got the full $800 on each of the 6 lines.  So I was relieved and never gave it another thought...

Until about 3 months ago when I was looking at my monthly statement and noticed that we were only getting a monthly credit on 5 of the 6 lines on our account.  That made me wonder what was going on.  It seemed to me that we weren't being credited what we should have.  So I called AT&T and asked them about this.  They said they would create a ticket and look into this for me.

I never heard anything back from anyone and the next monthly statement came and showed that instead of owing our usual $232 for that month for the 6 unlimited lines, the bill was for over $900.  I thought, there's got to be some sort of mistake here.  So I called AT&T again and asked what was going on.  They informed me that the extra $670 was an equipment fee and it was on the bill because they had issued me a $130 credit some months ago and never charged us for the rest of the phone - their reason was because they didn't receive one of the phones back in time to give the full $800 credit.  So I had been talking with one of the customer service representatives named Alexis S Hampton and explained to her all of this history going back to when I mailed the phones in and she told me that she would handle it.  She submitted a request for a one-time credit of $670 to our account.  She then sent me an email with all of this and the explanation of our conversation in it.  I figured - ok, finally this is all figured out now.

Nope - the next bill came and it again was over $900.  The credit she promised me had not been applied to our bill.  So back on the phone with AT&T support (each time I call, I get to explain the entire story over and over and the duration of my calls are never less than 2 hours per time).  They told me that Alexis' request for the credit was not approved because the phone was not received in time way back when.

So after dealing with multiple departments I was told that if I wanted to talk with someone I needed to speak with the promotions department and I was given the number for that area.  In the meantime, since I had been on the phone so much and for such long durations, the gentleman offered to put a $50 credit on our account.  I thought that was nice and a step in the right direction and I was told to call that other department the next day.

I actually went back in my emails and found the email from Alexis and asked her for help again because her request had not been granted.  I never heard anything back, but the next day came and I saw an automatic payment was sent to AT&T of $167 or something like that. So I thought to myself maybe that $670 credit ended up going thru somehow and everything is settled now.  So I didn't end up calling because if I didn't need to spend 2+ hours on the phone, I'd rather not.

So this month the statement arrived and once again...$900+ bill...

I am so tired of dealing with this!  If I felt that I was at fault here I wouldn't have a problem paying the $670, but I did everything that was asked of me in the trade-in process.  I made sure of the date the phones needed to be returned by, I even called to make sure we got the full credit on all of our phones.  Never once did anyone at AT&T tell me anything in the process went wrong.  And to have this popping up now...

This is problematic on so many levels:

1. I returned all phones on the same day so why did 3 of the 4 phones receive full $800 credit and one not - based on their reason of not receiving it on time...

2. I was told over the phone that we received the full $800 credit on all 6 of our lines

3. They never charged us this $670 until after I asked about the missing credit on one of our lines

4. Noone ever contacted me back after I asked about the missing credit with any explanation - this $670 charge just showed up on our bill

5. Even after one of the customer service representatives told me she would take care of this (and I still have her email to prove it), I still have the $670 bogus charge on my most recent statement

I want this charge removed from my statement IMMEDIATELY!