There is a place on the website, perhaps a PDF of your last bill or something, that shows you the remaining balance. I had to dig around to find it, but once I did, I put an ad for my phone on Craigslist and had the phone sold within an hour. As I mentioned, it appears that they can't take payment for the phone if you originally selected to trade the phone in. You will have to wait the 14 days for them to bill you. That's where the confusion is coming from and what the in-store reps don't understand. They also don't know how to direct users to find vouchers for those who do want to mail their phone in. It would be much more simple is all corporate stores could accept trade-ins or if reps could easily find and accept payment for the remaining balance.
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Carrier Have you returned your AT&T Next iphones after upgrade?
- Thread starter kendicles
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Thank you for this!! We just spent an hour in our AT&T store after three unsuccessful phone calls to customer service because neither one of us received the shipping label. The store folks were great, but they kept running into issues printing the forms. Apparently it's a new thing that they can print out the NEXT shipping labels. Once I found your post it took me no time at all!
That is one advantage to ordering from the AT&T site. The box which had my iPhone 6s had a return label and a strip of tape to seal it. It is on its way back as I write this.
I just received a text message from AT&T reminding me to return my iPhone 6 Plus by 10/21/15 or else I will be billed $332.15. I mailed it back on Tuesday using the mailing label that Apple provided from their order status page. When I track the USPS number it says the package was "picked up Shipping Agent" from my local post office and the status is now DELIVERED! I have no idea what this means since it shows it never left my hometown. Isn't the shipper the USPS? Who picked it up? When I look at the mailing label, I realize now that I have now idea where I sent it. A redacted version of my label is below. Does it indicate another shipper would be picking up the package? I really wanted to avoid this type of confusion by simply returning the phone the an AT&T store, but that was no longer possible.
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That's typical for USPS "smart post" stuff. What that means is USPS has an agreement with UPS or FedEX where they use one another for a portion of the delivery. "Picked up by shipping agent" means it went to FedEX or UPS for that part of the delivery. Not sure if "delivered" is a pass through that means it got to the destination or that it was "delivered" to UPS or FedEX though.
I'm really anxiously awaiting hearing if you guys are going to get the full credit for the balance of your NEXT payments as promised or some bogus partial credit due to some trumped-up imperfection excuse. Please post your experiences when you get your credit notification. Thanks! 
That's what our label looked like as well. Unless you have a scan gun or something, I don't think we'll ever know where the destination is. My wife has been getting texts from AT&T about returning hers as well. We sent it off with the box her new phone came in. I got a receipt and hopefully they'll have it sometime this week. I really gotta say, this whole upgrade process is a royal PITA and I don't want to do it again next year. In fact, we probably won't as we both have iPhones and they're worth much more than the payoff amount at that time.
Oh, we dropped ours off at a post office. I didn't want to do the UPS Store since they wouldn't give a receipt. I hope they get it and checked back in before the hurricane hits.
I used the same label as shown here, made a copy of it, photographed the box as it went to the mailbox but still feel like I missed two things in the process. I should have taken it to the post office and asked for a receipt and I think I was supposed to include my Next agreement in the box which I did not do. I have received a text saying I need to send my phone back and my USPS tracking shows the same delivered to agent message. A while back I did a trade in for a gift card that was similar in the way this is working that took a few weeks to complete the process and get a confirmation on delivery. It did all work out in the end but I wonder if there was not more I could have done. I started at a corporate store trying to turn it in but they would not take it.
Same here. I mailed mine on 9/26 and my last scan says "September 29, 2015 Picked Up and Processed by Agent". I got a text from AT&T this morning reminding me that they haven't received my old phone, for me to send it in. At this point who knows what's going on. The bad thing is when I went to my local post office they told me that they camt give shipping receipts anymore. So the only proof I have that I shipped it is the pictures I took.
Thanks for the heads up on getting a receipt. I just finally got a shipping label yesterday after waiting forever for the email to come from Apple with trade-in instructions (it never did, BTW). When I contacted Apple via chat to see if they could just give me the info that was supposed to come in that email (or send it to a different address), they had no idea what I was talking about. The guy asked why I wanted to return my new 6S Plus and after I thought I'd made myself clear that that wasn't what I wanted, that I just needed the trade-in instructions for my old phone, he said, "Oh, you'll have to contact AT&T." So I said, "So there's no way you can just give me the info that would have been sent via the email that was supposed to be generated by the link on my Apple orders page?" Nope, have to go to AT&T. OK, fine, whatever. So I sat with AT&T for about 10 minutes while they generated the return label and then happened to go back to my Apple orders page and discovered that the guy I'd spoken to earlier had generated a return for the 6S Plus! Sigh. More chatting with Apple to get that nonsense straightened out. Honestly, there has to be an easier way.
I have no clue. I asked for one and the mail clerk told me they stopped giving receipts about 2 months ago. She seemed pretty weirded out when I got my phone out and started taking pics of her with the package. Lol
That's really odd. I never heard of a post office not giving a receipt for sending a package. I know the one we dropped it off at gave us one. Maybe that particular PO had a budget cut. lol
Yeah, I'm pissed at myself. I found out we only owed around $160 for her Galaxy S5... I could have got more than that by selling it.
Has anyone received a text saying that AT&T has received your old phone? My wife got a text last night saying they received her galaxy S5, but I still haven't got one for my iPhone 6 plus I sent in. I mailed both last Saturday.
Did you send back any accessories (lighting cable, headphones) or just the phone?
Thanks in advance
Thanks in advance
Just the phone and AT&T Next agreement paper that I had to print and sign.
You have to track the shipment on tracking.newgistics.com. USPS apparently just notifies Newgistics and Newgistics sends someone to pick it up from the post office that you dropped it off at.
I have decided. I am sending my 6 to Gazelle. I will wait for ATT to bill me for the balance of my phone. According to my calculations, I will come out about $100 ahead this way.
I was originally going to send it back to ATT. I hope this works.
I was originally going to send it back to ATT. I hope this works.
Are you on the Next 12 plan? When I did the comparison, the amount AT&T is "forgiving me" by turning in my 6 Plus with 128GB was $10 more than Gazelle's offer. That's likely because the premium I paid for the Plus version and the extra memory is never recouped when resold. At least AT&T gives every phone the same percentage of the original cost when they give you credit for turning it in. This just proves every situation is different.
I've used Gazelle before and have a few suggestions. Ask AT&T to unlock your 6 so you can get the higher price from Gazelle for it. Last year they made me wait two week ostensibly so I couldn't return the new phone I was purchasing and get the unlock unjustly. After the two weeks is over, AT&T will unlock it and you'll have to restore it from iTunes to complete, so you'll need to wait before mailing no it off. Also, from my experience, Gazelle never gives you the Best condition price no mater how nice you think it is. Unless it's just been taken out of the box, expect to get the Good condition price.
Thank you! That site tracked the packed and shows it still it transit. This will help a lot so I can known when to expect the receipt notification.