Getting over charged by T-Mobile... and not getting any help!

My story is very similar to a lot of people here

 

I've been a customer for 12 years, and I'm at the end of my as a member with the way I've been treated. I'll keep this brief and concise.

 

Like most here, I lease and upgrade every year when the new phones come out, and this began when I upgraded from an S22+ to an S23+ (2022-2023)

 

I was midway thru the installments for my new S23+ when I noticed my bill had been higher than usual for several billing cycles, so I dug into my account and saw that I had been paying installments for two Samsung devices (my old S22+ & my new S23+). I was confused, so I reached out to Customer Care (611), and they discovered that I was indeed still being auto billed for the S22+ that I upgraded from.

 

This was very upsetting, because the over-payments totaled over $800!

 

Over the course of several months, I've spoken with a dozen or so Customer Care reps who have all promised and ensured me that I would get a refund, either via going back to my method of payment, pre-paid VISA gift card, or back to my ACH linked bank account. But in the end, all they did was refund the payments as a billing credit that I can't "cash out" and use for my other important obligations that they would have been used for instead. Each of the "cash out" refund options were approved during several Customer Care rep chats, then discovered to be denied when I followed up with Customer Care after seeing no refund deposited after a few days.

 

This is beyond frustrating, because, why are these funds said to be "billing credits", when they were wrongfully taken from my bank account? This hasn't helped my already rough financial situation, only made it worse (I know, say what you want about a measly $800 but times are hard, lol).

 

As a result, I desire to close my T-Mobile account, but then, it appears I'm locked in, because I can't use these funds for anything other than to pay T-Mobile

 

This is equivalent to financial slavery...