Don’t ship your phone to T-Mobile without reading this first

This “mix up” is happening too many times to be merely the fault of a random customer

Yearly Upgrade allows customers to upgrade annually instead of every two years. With this plan you can trade in your phone for the latest model if you’ve held it for at least six months and paid off at least 50% of the cost of the device (which would mean that you’ve made at least 12 monthly payments). When you trade in your phone, T-Mobile will pay off the remaining 50% of the installment balance allowing you to buy a new phone by creating a new installment plan.

But this year, he had to ship the iPhone being traded in to T-Mobile. That’s because the rules of the Yearly Upgrade plan call for the T-Mobile subscriber to ship the phone being traded in to T-Mobile. This guy almost did everything the right way. He made a video of himself dropping off the box containing his iPhone to UPS. But what he failed to do was show that the box he gave to UPS contained the specific phone with the unique IMEI number that T-Mobile was expecting.

Email from T-Mobile to its customer calling out his mix-up. | Image credit-Reddit

If you have to ship a phone back to your carrier, one T-Mobile customer posted his process

Others had the same issue with one T-Mobile subscriber writing that he was credited with $1 toward his current balance, which should have been wiped out by the trade in. If you do have the Yearly Upgrade program with T-Mobile, when it comes time for you to ship back your current phone, you should follow the advice of one T-Mobile subscriber who revealed his process for returning a trade in. He wrote, “I take pictures of the weight of the box, the phone then a picture of the phone in the box on the scale, it sealed and get a receipt when dropping off at USPS when they scan it in. It sucks you have to do all this, but I’ve been burned before.”

As for the reason why this is happening, another T-Mobile customer, whose shipped trade-in was also lost, had a sinister theory that could be true. “I think there is massive fraud going on with the contracting company. We had to deal with a lost phone for months while T-Mobile kept our account in the negative by $1,300.”

When returning a phone to a carrier, assume the phone will get lost and document everything you can via a photograph or video. Doing so might save you a thousand dollars or even more.

“Iconic Phones” is coming this Fall!

Good news everyone! Over the past year we’ve been working on an exciting passion project of ours and we’re thrilled to announce it will be ready to release in just a few short months.