Trade-In and Customer Service Issues
Jacob_123
Enthusiast - Level 1

Similar to many others on this forum, my wife and I recently switched to Verizon and traded in our old iPhone 8's and were not given the full trade-in value due to our screen being "unresponsive or had cracks".

At the Verizon store, the employee and store manager looked our phones over and said both phones were in good condition. They would qualify to get the trade-in promotion of $500 each. We took the supplied shipping materials and followed all of the steps for trade-in before sending the old phones out.

A few days later, we receive an email that the $500 credit we were supposed to be receiving, has been downgraded to $77. Neither of us or the Verizon employees at the store ever noticed any scratches or cracks on the screen that supposedly are there for whoever is inspecting the device.

At this point, we head to the Verizon store where we bought our new phones and asked for assistance. They insisted we call customer service as there is nothing they can do for these issues. They give us a 2nd tier customer service number that we can use versus the 1-800 number we would have to normally use. They assure that it will be an easy fix because the phone was in good condition at the store.

When my wife called the customer service line, she explained what happened and was offered a lump sum a fraction of the initial credit. After assuring us that there is no possible way that we sent in a phone in good condition, they told her that it is not possible to return our phone and that they instead would send us pictures of our device. I thought "okay, at least we will be able to see the damage and maybe we missed something small".

Instead, we had two tiny, blurry pictures sent to us that we have a multitude of problems with. First off, the pictures have no identifying features to our phones. They could literally be of any white iPhone. Two, they are so blurry that you can't even see any cracks or scratches. Then on top of that, it appears that there is a glass screen protector on the phone during the pictures and it is very possible any damage could be to the screen protector and not the phone itself. When these issues were brought up to the customer service representative, they simply shrugged them off and told us that these are the only pictures they had and there isn't really anything they can do about it.

They then went on to tell us how it shouldn't be a big deal because we had 1 device receive the full $500 credit. We insisted that they send us a full-size copy of the pictures in the mail. I know they are going to be just as poor of quality as the ones already sent to us but figured it was worth a shot.

The whole process makes me wish I would have gone with a different provider.

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Re: Trade-In and Customer Service Issues
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

@Jacob_123

 

I am terribly sorry to learn of the recent experience you had with trading-in your devices after switching to us. Please know that this is not the type of experience we want you to have, and we would never want you to regret the switch. It’s important that this trade-in concern is properly addressed. I'm glad to learn that a representative you previously spoke with is sending you a copy of the photos of the returned damaged devices. If you still have concerns after reaching the photos, I recommend reaching out to our Device Trade-In Customer Service Team directly at (Toll-Free) 800-416-8894. They are available Monday – Friday: 7:00 AM – 9:00 PM local time and Saturday – Sunday: 8:00 AM – 9:00 PM local time. They will be able to further address this concern for you.

 

AnthonyTa_VZW

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Re: Trade-In and Customer Service Issues
Tigerstep
Specialist - Level 3

Something doesn't sound right. More than 2 photos would be taken with the others being the box and the IMEI number.

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