AT&T is No Longer Waiving Upgrade Fees

Oh no! $30 on a $2000+ contract! Better go complain. AT&T is rich. They owe me.

You should all be sympathetic to ATT guys, they need the money after all.
Maybe their high maintenance mansions and penthouse are just too expensive that they needed the extra millions to pay their household bills. Not to mention, their daily shark's fin meals are quite expensive since they're all shipped fresh from Japan. Let's be charitable here 🙄

Figures

Figures that the month I am finally eligible for an upgrade they decide to change the policy. I'm going to try through retention, I just won't be disappointed if I don't succeed.

worked for me 🙂. i did talk to somebody on the phone who would not do it for me but chat worked good.

rep: Hi Larry. I'm Sharon. Thanks for chatting with me today. I would be more than happy to help you with account questions.

rep: Good morning Larry. How are you this morning?

me : ok thanks sharon. i am doing good. how about yourself?

rep: I am doing great today. Especially since it is Friday. I see you have a question about your upgrade fee?

me : my wife and i just upgraded our phones and i was hoping you could help get the upgrade fees waived. we have been multi-line customers scince 2002 and don't ask for much outside of our service. the waived fees would be a great way for att to show their appreciation to a long standing customer.

rep: Larry I am checking on the upgrade fee now.

me : my 3 year old son just told me he to would like you to waive the fee so he could put it in his penny bank.

me : lol

rep: I am reviewing to see what I can do about your son's piggy bank 🙂

rep: Larry I am unable to waive the upgrade fee because it was in your agreement. I will adjust $36 from one of your other charges. Just one moment and I will give you a new balance.

rep: Larry I have credited your account for the $36. Your new balance is $162.28.

rep: Are there any other questions or concerns today that I can help you with?

rep: Larry you can text the words “account” or “easy” to 8758 to download the AT&T app to manage your account. This is a good way to manage your account right from the convenience of your phone.

me : thank you very much. my wife also upgraded but we have not been charges that fee yet. (she upgraded a few days after me) are you able to make sure that stop that fees from going though?

me : *through

rep: I apologize Larry, I have already spoken to my supervisor and I can only give you credit for one.

rep: Will there be anything else today?

rep: Larry are you there?

me : while i do very much appreciate the help with the 1st fee. i do not understnd why your supervisor would take that stance. we are going on a 12 year relation ship. i think att taking $72 "hit" to keep a long time customer happy is a small price to pay and i assure you me paying that fee will affect me alot more than it will affect att losing that fee.

me : sorry i type slow

rep: Larry these are valid charges and everyone has to pay upgrade fees. I will adjust another charge for $36 only because you are a loyal customer. Just one moment please.

rep: Larry I have adjusted your account a one courtesy of $36. I am unable to credit the $36 upgrade fee, they are valid charges. Your new balance is $119.09. I sent you a text to confirm your new balance.
rep: Will there be anything else today?

me : thank you, before this upgrade we were considered long and hard about letting our contract end and going with another carrier. your help today has futher inforced my decicion to stay with att. that is it for today. thanks

rep: You're Welcome! Tell your son to put the extra money in his piggy bank. Thank you for being a great customer today. Have a bless weekend.

In someways, I wish that AT&T would use the money they've gained by not waiving upgrading fees to educate their reps and tech supports on their English skills. Just saying.

TacticalDesire said:

Oh no! $30 on a $2000+ contract! Better go complain. AT&T is rich. They owe me.

Click to expand...

I assume that's sarcasm, but they do nothing to activate the phone, you can simply put your old sim card into your new phone and activate it yourself.

Nothing needs to be done on AT&T's side, unless you need a new sim, and that shouldn't cost $30.

iErick said:

I just learned this the other day. I have never paid an activation fee or upgrade fee on any of my 5 lines. I have always called and just asked for it to be waived and they did.

When I called the other day to have an activation fee waived, they informed me of the new policy. She also informed me of the FAN discount being the only way they can waive it. Luckily my FAN discount allowed for waived activation/upgrade fees. (University of Michigan).

Click to expand...

I have a company FAN and since we have a huge number of phones they always waive it for us, but going forward I can see all this is going to do is push people to hang on to their device longer and either buy it Unlocked. This would make the most sense, because they all tout an iPhone 5 16GB at $199.99 well it's not, it is more like $249.00 after all the BS fees. It seems what T-Mobile is doing might start a trend, then I will just hang on to each device until it completely dies, and start buying Apple Care so that my investments are protected for 2-Years.

----------

TacticalDesire said:

Oh no! $30 on a $2000+ contract! Better go complain. AT&T is rich. They owe me.

Click to expand...

Where do you get a $2000 contract from, why do you think we owe AT&T or any other carrier anything, they sell you the phone for $199 (iPhone 5 as an example) they eat the $299 bc they supposedly give Apple $500, over two years you pay whatever amount it is for Text, Data, and Voice, if you cancel they get their money back, there is nothing owed past that.

My thought is they need to build that extra $36.00 into the cost of the phone, no matter how you go around it, you may have to pay, so just add it to the phone, especially if they do away with waiving it even if you have a great FAN discount?

PhilMcCracken said:

I assume that's sarcasm, but they do nothing to activate the phone, you can simply put your old sim card into your new phone and activate it yourself.

Nothing needs to be done on AT&T's side, unless you need a new sim, and that shouldn't cost $30.

Click to expand...

It was sarcasm.

It was probably our fault lol. Excessive Mac-rumors members and guests were calling so AT&T got fed it up with. They figured they weren't making their greedy money with upgrade fees and stopped it 😛

-Kidding-

My god these carriers have us by the scrotum. We have to pay to renew our contracts, buy a new phone from the carriers, and continue giving money to the carriers.

As an at&t employee I can see we have a lot of work to do enforcing the policy. Why are you whining about the fee? You want something for nothing? We provide you a service, you pay for the service. We provide you HUNDREDS of dollars off a phone that we paid full retail price for, and to keep being able to do that we charge $36. We even have to pay it when we upgrade. It is in your contract. You know what the result will be if we kept waiving the fees? Eventually the fees would no longer exist and you would be stuck paying full retail price for your new phone. Think about your arguments, they hold no weight. Also the whole thing of calling in over and over asking for credits, there is a thing in the contract about that too. Technically if you call in asking for courtesy adjustments on a regular basis, that is against the policy and it is actually a terminatable offense. When/if it came to that, your termination fee would not be waived. Your threat of cancellation is nothing to worry about. For every person who cancels we get 3 more customers. And most of the time they understand the fees. So my advice to you is to stop whining, you are paying for what you get.

attemployee said:

As an at&t employee I can see we have a lot of work to do enforcing the policy. Why are you whining about the fee? You want something for nothing? We provide you a service, you pay for the service. We provide you HUNDREDS of dollars off a phone that we paid full retail price for, and to keep being able to do that we charge $36. We even have to pay it when we upgrade. It is in your contract. You know what the result will be if we kept waiving the fees? Eventually the fees would no longer exist and you would be stuck paying full retail price for your new phone. Think about your arguments, they hold no weight. Also the whole thing of calling in over and over asking for credits, there is a thing in the contract about that too. Technically if you call in asking for courtesy adjustments on a regular basis, that is against the policy and it is actually a terminatable offense. When/if it came to that, your termination fee would not be waived. Your threat of cancellation is nothing to worry about. For every person who cancels we get 3 more customers. And most of the time they understand the fees. So my advice to you is to stop whining, you are paying for what you get.

Click to expand...

You provide us HUNDREDS of dollars on our device, we provide you THOUSANDS of dollars for overpriced, overrated service. Luckily nowadays there are so many more competitive carriers to use iPhone on

attemployee said:

For every person who cancels we get 3 more customers. And most of the time they understand the fees. So my advice to you is to stop whining, you are paying for what you get.

Click to expand...

Bingo. Spot on. Glad to have someone who works for AT&T on here.

It's hilarious how cheap some people here are. They act like $36 will break the bank. They can stay on Sprint/T-Mobile all they want. They pay bargain basement prices for crappy service. It's as simple as that. I've been with AT&T for so long and have had no issue getting bill credits, etc for my loyalty. No way will I ever drop them to go to T-mobile/Sprint to save a few dollars.

There's a reason why people pay so much for VZW/AT&T. And it's not like they don't want to. T-Mobile is loosing customers every quarter, whereas the big 2 keep adding customers.

AutoUnion39 said:

Bingo. Spot on. Glad to have someone who works for AT&T on here.

It's hilarious how cheap some people here are. They act like $36 will break the bank. They can stay on Sprint/T-Mobile all they want. They pay bargain basement prices for crappy service. It's as simple as that. I've been with AT&T for so long and have had no issue getting bill credits, etc for my loyalty. No way will I ever drop them to go to T-mobile/Sprint to save a few dollars.

There's a reason why people pay so much for VZW/AT&T. And it's not like they don't want to. T-Mobile is loosing customers every quarter, whereas the big 2 keep adding customers.

Click to expand...

Finally someone who understands. And if we do give a credit it is for people like you who pay your bill, don't overly call asking for money, and don't abuse us the reps. You are the type of person that we like to have on our service. There have been so many times that somebody has called in to me screaming their heads off about a fee, then I realize they have only paid us 70 bucks over a 5 month period. They end up calling in, harassing our reps, and getting them to adjust. Those people I have no issues cancelling their service in the middle of the call. Unfortunately the policy states I can't do so.

Understands? LOL!

Actually those phones cost half the price you sell them to us for to make and you to get. You charge us enormous plan fee's every months, and you can't waive a little $36 activation fee? I pay you over $2500 a year. And you tell me you can't budge on $36? Sorry, but AT&T probably lost my business once my contracts are up. I don't like where they are headed. Use to be they were for the people, now instead they have become more money greedy.

I rather buy the phone and be in no contract like T-Mobile is doing now. Way smarter.

nizmoz said:

Actually those phones cost half the price you sell them to us for to make and you to get

Click to expand...

Carriers pay Apple/HTC/Motorola/Samsung, etc FULL PRICE for the phones. Carriers then go ahead and discount them because they make their profit off the service. This is where the subsidy comes into account.

Don't know why people are always on here complaining about the prices their carrier is charging for things. The fees that you would have to pay we're stated when you signed the contract.

If you didn't like the terms then there are 3 other carriers to get iPhones from. A couple of them even cheaper than AT&T. The sense of entitlement some people have is ridiculous these days. Like the carrier owes them something.

I don't know how many of you guys go on deal websites etc to see this. If you have a family plan with unlimited message with the whole family, ATT has been giving out 30 dollar a month credits in 6 month blocks. Just tell them you have been shopping around metropcs etc. I had it done back in October and the credit is going to fall off after this month.

AutoUnion39 said:

Carriers pay Apple/HTC/Motorola/Samsung, etc FULL PRICE for the phones. Carriers then go ahead and discount them because they make their profit off the service. This is where the subsidy comes into account.

Click to expand...

Hope you don't really believe that carriers that sign multimillion dollar deals with Apple pay full msrp to subsidize the phone.
I got a bridge for sale if you're interested😀

This isnt a big deal. I dont know how many times I've called for whatever reason and theyve always been super nice and credited my account 30-40 dollars. If they change the policy fine whatever. Just call em up and say you've had a lot of dropped calls or whatever other complaint(which is probably true) and they will credit you.

They should just advertise the phone prices 38.00 higher. Also it is a useless fee just like an activation fee. If I had to guess how these fees came about it would go like this: Someone in a meeting came up with a way to generate more revenue, at first they probably looked at them like they were drunk but then thinking about it everyone in that meeting just realized how genius it was. Calculate how much money they make off those fees per hour/day/week/month/year, its was more money created out of thin air. Also if you think someone with a 400-500.00 bill isn't getting those fees waived you guys are wrong. Companies have the ability to do this kind of stuff and get away with it, think about cable companies and your cable box. 15.00 a month for a HD DVR, that is just stupid.

----------

AutoUnion39 said:

Carriers pay Apple/HTC/Motorola/Samsung, etc FULL PRICE for the phones. Carriers then go ahead and discount them because they make their profit off the service. This is where the subsidy comes into account.

Click to expand...

Carriers do not pay full price. I would assume they get kickback's and volume discount. Even if it is just 40-50.00 cheaper than retail they do not pay what a consumer pays.

I got them to waive the upgrade fee in October 2012.

But couldn't get them to waive it last month (2013). They actually claimed my FAn disallowed it since end of 2011 so I was lucky to get it waived with iPhone 5 upgrade last year.

However they easily gave me a $25 courtesy credit to help offset my $36 activation fee for my new note 2 last month. I didn't even ask for it. He just offered it to me.

attemployee said:

Nobody said you have to sign a contract. You can still buy the phone outright and not extend your contract. The only reason the upgrade fee is there is because we give you a discount on the phone. It is always your choice...

But you for some reason, you I don't want on my service anyway. You should go someplace else you whiny crybaby.

Click to expand...

Really? If we bought the phone outright then how come we still have to pay the fee when you DON'T discount the phone then? My point. 🙄

Or bringing a used phone we own, and still have to pay the fee. Yeah.

Always use the chat feature. Trust me.

I love how Americans defend corporations for taking their money. Activation fees are scum. Period. Att ending unlimited plans and all other carriers following suit - the same thing. It's a monopoly of terrible service and exaggerated charges.

I live in Europe and the US, and I pay about $8 monthly for unlimited 4G Internet on my iPhone, and the carrier still makes millions in profits.

Att just likes billions instead of millions.
Endless greed.