I have had a real bear of a time with my IUP and Apple in general with this launch.
First the pre-approval process through the Apple Store app wouldn’t recognize my credit card as valid. I spent several hours on the phone today between my CC provider, Apple, and Citizens One trying to figure out the problem (and yes this was a genuine CC, not a debit/CC). Everyone kept telling me something different, and it just became clear that the Citizens Bank system simply didn’t mix well with the system for my CC provider and I couldn’t use the card. I recently canceled my other cards to simplify my finances so I was essentially shut out of the IUP this year.
But I did the math and if I traded in my current phone and ordered an Xs Max through carrier financing, I’d be paying around $100 more than if I had done the upgrade through the IUP. Not ideal but I could live with it, especially since that would now put me on Verizon’s upgrade system which doesn’t do a credit check every time I want to upgrade and doesn’t require a down payment on a credit card as it can just be billed to my existing account.
So 12:01 comes around and I go to the Apple Store app, put the phone in my bag, and go to check out. I even got a good pickup window at my local store. After I jump through every hoop, I get stuck at the payment screen with an error saying “Please put an amount on both cards. If you only need one card, you can remove the other.” The thing is, I only had one payment method to begin with. So I deleted my payment info and re-entered it. Same error. I switched to the app on my iPad, same error. By this time the pickup window was long gone and shipping times had already slipped to 1-2 weeks.
I was about to order through Apple when I decided to check and see what Verizon was offering. Well, turns out they could get me the phone I wanted on launch day, and they were offering me more for my trade in than Apple, so I was able to go a storage size up. The process was super quick and everything was billed to my account, which I’ll get credit on from the trade-in.
I will say that this has not been my typical experience with Apple, and in fact the reason I went with the IUP in the first place was because in the past Apple offered a better experience than the carriers. And it’s likely for the vast majority of people, that’s still true. But in the few years I’ve been on the IUP it’s clear that Verizon at least has made it considerably easier to upgrade through them and I will be sticking with them from now on.
Edit: I just remembered part of why I went with the IUP is because I was able to retain my grandfathered unlimited data plan with Verizon by upgrading through Apple. At the time Verizon was forcing people to switch off their unlimited plans when upgrading, but since then Verizon has reintroduced unlimited data plans that work for me so I switched to that and no longer have to go through Apple to retain my plan.
First the pre-approval process through the Apple Store app wouldn’t recognize my credit card as valid. I spent several hours on the phone today between my CC provider, Apple, and Citizens One trying to figure out the problem (and yes this was a genuine CC, not a debit/CC). Everyone kept telling me something different, and it just became clear that the Citizens Bank system simply didn’t mix well with the system for my CC provider and I couldn’t use the card. I recently canceled my other cards to simplify my finances so I was essentially shut out of the IUP this year.
But I did the math and if I traded in my current phone and ordered an Xs Max through carrier financing, I’d be paying around $100 more than if I had done the upgrade through the IUP. Not ideal but I could live with it, especially since that would now put me on Verizon’s upgrade system which doesn’t do a credit check every time I want to upgrade and doesn’t require a down payment on a credit card as it can just be billed to my existing account.
So 12:01 comes around and I go to the Apple Store app, put the phone in my bag, and go to check out. I even got a good pickup window at my local store. After I jump through every hoop, I get stuck at the payment screen with an error saying “Please put an amount on both cards. If you only need one card, you can remove the other.” The thing is, I only had one payment method to begin with. So I deleted my payment info and re-entered it. Same error. I switched to the app on my iPad, same error. By this time the pickup window was long gone and shipping times had already slipped to 1-2 weeks.
I was about to order through Apple when I decided to check and see what Verizon was offering. Well, turns out they could get me the phone I wanted on launch day, and they were offering me more for my trade in than Apple, so I was able to go a storage size up. The process was super quick and everything was billed to my account, which I’ll get credit on from the trade-in.
I will say that this has not been my typical experience with Apple, and in fact the reason I went with the IUP in the first place was because in the past Apple offered a better experience than the carriers. And it’s likely for the vast majority of people, that’s still true. But in the few years I’ve been on the IUP it’s clear that Verizon at least has made it considerably easier to upgrade through them and I will be sticking with them from now on.
Edit: I just remembered part of why I went with the IUP is because I was able to retain my grandfathered unlimited data plan with Verizon by upgrading through Apple. At the time Verizon was forcing people to switch off their unlimited plans when upgrading, but since then Verizon has reintroduced unlimited data plans that work for me so I switched to that and no longer have to go through Apple to retain my plan.
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