Forum Discussion
Any way to get the $1000 iPhone 15 Pro upgrade deal without sacrificing remaining bill credits?
After talking to someone in customer service I’m pretty sure the answer is “no”, but I figured I’d ask here just in case I missed something since the fine print is really confusing:
My starting point is a Magenta Max plan with two lines and two iPhones Pro, both bought with past promos. One has the "standard" 24-month bill-credit deal with 12 months left, the other is an oddball 30-month deal from a couple years ago with 6 months left.
Normally we upgrade a phone after it's paid off ever 2 years, but because of the 30-month promo a couple of years ago I'm stuck with one that's not lined up right. I was hoping to switch to a Go5G Plus plan and take advantage of the $1000 trade-in offer.
However, the rep said that if I wanted to trade in the phone now, I’d have to pay off the full balance y sacrifice the bill credits as well.
Even if I went to the Go5G Next plan, the “every year” upgrade only applies to phones actually bought while you had Go5G Next, so that wouldn’t help this year either.
Is this indeed correct? I'd be okay paying off 6 months due if I still got the bill credits for the next six months, but I'm not so impatient I'm going to throw away $130 of past trade-in credit.
Rephrasing, is there some promo combo involving Go5G Plus, Go5G Next, or JUMP, I’ve missed that would allow me to take advantage of the current $999 iPhone Pro trade-in offer for a phone that has 6 payments left on it but wasn’t purchased with a Go5G plan that doesn’t also involve sacrificing my six remaining bill credits?
Makosuke wrote:
Thank you both, I appreciate the info, although it’s the same conflicting info I’ve now gotten from T-Mobile reps.
The rep on the phone said I'd have to pay off my balance and give up the credits, but the chat rep I talked to a few minutes ago said the opposite, that the bill credits persist after I've paid off the balance. The latter sure seems to make more sense, but I wish the messaging was more consistent.
It all depends on the offer. I wouldn't do it yet and have @HeavenM the community manager look into it.
I was going to pay of 2 of my LG’s with bill credits and was told by a tier 2 support reo that I would lose the bill credits on the second phone since it was a bogo.
ronikomichi wrote:
gramps28 wrote:
Is there any bill credits associated to the offers. If so and you pay off early you will lose the bill credits and your payoff will be more.
You don't lose the bill credits as long as you don't cancel the line. You can pay the phone off early and use that phone to enter into the next promo.
Anything bought after July 1, 2024 will lose bill credits. Before that day it depended on the wording of the deal.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/new-to-tmobile/promotional-cards-credits-and-rebates
Makosuke wrote:
Just to update, I called in again, and the phone rep was very clear that if I paid off my phone early, I would sacrifice the bill credits, so it looks like you're correct, gramps28, and the chat rep was straight-up lying to me. Bummer, but oh well. I'm not so impatient I'm going to waste $130 to upgrade ahead of time (also kind of weird, since it seems like T-Mo would come out slightly ahead by me paying in advance instead of spread out over six months).
Not a great look for T-Mobile, and it’d have been even worse if I’d just gone ahead without double-checking.
The (wrong) answer I got, in writing, after explaining exactly what I wanted to do:
You don't lose credits by paying off phone early and entering into another phone trade deal…. You'd get both credits. I've always done this
gramps28 wrote:
Is there any bill credits associated to the offers. If so and you pay off early you will lose the bill credits and your payoff will be more.
You don't lose the bill credits as long as you don't cancel the line. You can pay the phone off early and use that phone to enter into the next promo.
BillC19136 wrote:
I have the same deal and was told the same thing. Did you try and upgrade yet, and if so how did you make out?
Bills are always a bit janky for a couple months after an upgrade, but it seems to have worked out fine for me. I got the remaining 6 payments written off on the 30-month phone, $1000 worth of total trade-in value for it, and a new phone with nothing but tax and a small service fee of some sort ($20 I think) up front. I got a 256GB 15 Pro, and the extra $100 will also be spread out over two years of payments.
Monthly payments on Go5G are $10 higher than Magenta Max and all I really get for it other than this trade-in deal (and maybe future ones, although I assume we’ll get yet another pointless plan change next yer) is an extra 10GB of tethered data, but still come out well ahead.
This is the same as all past Tmo trade-in deals, but it's of course weird the way you get the credit for the trade in: About $350 "up front" for the phone, plus the remaining about $650 spread out over the next 24 months as bill credits. So instead of your 24-month device payments being $0, you are still paying maybe $15 a month because you got a chunk upfront.
What's different from the past is how that $350 was handled: Before, I'm pretty sure that showed up directly as a bill credit, so actual bills for the first few months were "free" before going back to normal. This time, that part of the trade-in value was applied to the remaining balance on my other half-paid-off phone, so instead of having 11 payments left I now only have 4. It's still showing 11 bill credits left, so it doesn't appear I got ripped off on anything, and (unless it's lying) starting in 4 months my bill will go down quite a bit for a while because one of two phones will be paid off but the old trade-in credit will still be applied for a while.
Makosuke wrote:
I turns out there fue a trick, which I only discovered poking around my account info after vaguely remembering one of the benefits from two years ago that was very poorly explained.
Perhaps this will be useful to someone else in the same situation:
When I switched to a Magenta Max plan and bought my current phone on a 30-month payment+bill credit plan, it came with a Forever Upgrade benefit, which is no longer offered but is supposed to let you trade in your phone after 2 years and get remaining payments forgiven entirely, plus guarantee “up to $800” of trade-in value (which is really vague).
It took a while to get the rep on the phone to understand that I already had that benefit rather than wanted to sign up for it, but once they did they figured out that by combining that and then switching to a Go5G Plus plan, I could get the remaining payments on the old device waived (which is actually better than and get the full $1000 trade-in value on it for a new one. That's actually a better deal than even paying off the phone and continuing to get the bill credits for it would have been.
So, on the chance that you’re in the same situation I was, check to see if you have the Forever Upgrade benefit, and if so you may be in luck.
Note that I did need to make one advance payment on the phone to get the required 24 payments to use the Forever Upgrade, I guess because we’re still in the period of the 24th month so the payment hadn’t processed yet.
I have the same deal and was told the same thing. Did you try and upgrade yet, and if so how did you make out?
I turns out there fue a trick, which I only discovered poking around my account info after vaguely remembering one of the benefits from two years ago that was very poorly explained.
Perhaps this will be useful to someone else in the same situation:
When I switched to a Magenta Max plan and bought my current phone on a 30-month payment+bill credit plan, it came with a Forever Upgrade benefit, which is no longer offered but is supposed to let you trade in your phone after 2 years and get remaining payments forgiven entirely, plus guarantee “up to $800” of trade-in value (which is really vague).
It took a while to get the rep on the phone to understand that I already had that benefit rather than wanted to sign up for it, but once they did they figured out that by combining that and then switching to a Go5G Plus plan, I could get the remaining payments on the old device waived (which is actually better than and get the full $1000 trade-in value on it for a new one. That's actually a better deal than even paying off the phone and continuing to get the bill credits for it would have been.
So, on the chance that you’re in the same situation I was, check to see if you have the Forever Upgrade benefit, and if so you may be in luck.
Note that I did need to make one advance payment on the phone to get the required 24 payments to use the Forever Upgrade, I guess because we’re still in the period of the 24th month so the payment hadn’t processed yet.
I think there's a lot of new reps so I asked using messenger on Tmobile’s Facebook page since that's where their support went to after they left this forum.
Just to update, I called in again, and the phone rep was very clear that if I paid off my phone early, I would sacrifice the bill credits, so it looks like you're correct, gramps28, and the chat rep was straight-up lying to me. Bummer, but oh well. I'm not so impatient I'm going to waste $130 to upgrade ahead of time (also kind of weird, since it seems like T-Mo would come out slightly ahead by me paying in advance instead of spread out over six months).
Not a great look for T-Mobile, and it’d have been even worse if I’d just gone ahead without double-checking.
The (wrong) answer I got, in writing, after explaining exactly what I wanted to do:
Makosuke wrote:
Thank you both, I appreciate the info, although it’s the same conflicting info I’ve now gotten from T-Mobile reps.
The rep on the phone said I'd have to pay off my balance and give up the credits, but the chat rep I talked to a few minutes ago said the opposite, that the bill credits persist after I've paid off the balance. The latter sure seems to make more sense, but I wish the messaging was more consistent.
It all depends on the offer. I wouldn't do it yet and have @HeavenM the community manager look into it.
I was going to pay of 2 of my LG’s with bill credits and was told by a tier 2 support reo that I would lose the bill credits on the second phone since it was a bogo.
Thank you both, I appreciate the info, although it’s the same conflicting info I’ve now gotten from T-Mobile reps.
The rep on the phone said I'd have to pay off my balance and give up the credits, but the chat rep I talked to a few minutes ago said the opposite, that the bill credits persist after I've paid off the balance. The latter sure seems to make more sense, but I wish the messaging was more consistent.
