Trading in your phone at AT&T? Watch out for this practice that leaves you with massive bills

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Trading in your phone at AT&T? Watch out for this practice that leaves you with massive bills

AT&T representatives seem to have another trick up their sleeves to make you pay hundreds of Dollars every month. One AT&T user claims that when they traded in their phone recently they ended up with two lines and a bill of over $400 instead.

What appears to have happened is that the customer wanted a new phone and the AT&T representative told them that the fastest way would be to change numbers. They said that porting in the older Mint Mobile number would delay when the new phone could be handed over.

The customer, wishing to get their hands on a new iPhone 16 as soon as possible, agreed and decided to get a new AT&T number instead. But after the first bill showed up it turned out that the poster now had two lines to pay for: one on the new AT&T number and another on the older Mint Mobile number.

The bill is charging the customer activation fees for both lines as well as for the new iPhone as if the new phone wasn’t part of the trade-in deal. It’s a nightmare scenario and it gets worse.

This all might just be human error. | Image credit — PhoneArena

Input from other AT&T customers didn’t ease the original poster’s worries. Turns out that the customer has a difficult road ahead of them if they want to deactivate the extra line. Furthermore the new line may become a permanent headache if the customer waits too long.However there are some unknowns throughout the entire story as well. Some people think that most of the charges on the bill are normal except for the extra line. In fact, some think that despite the poster’s claims the other line is only temporary.

It’s also unknown whether this whole ordeal happened because of deliberate action on the representatives’ part or whether this was just human error. The takeaway is clear however: if you’re trading in your phone at AT&T you’ve now got another thing to be wary of. Always double and triple check what you’ve signed up for before walking out of the store.

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