Carrier Help with Apple Upgrade Program with Verizon Employee Account

[fender4645]

Okay, this is kind of convoluted but I appreciate any help/insight people can provide.


My wife and I were on AT&T and we enrolled in the Apple Upgrade Program in Nov of 2016 to got her an iPhone 7 Plus. In February of 2017, we switched over to my father-in-law’s Verizon account since he’s an employee and gets a steep discount. My wife’s 7 Plus wasn’t compatible with Verizon so Apple had us bring it in to swap it for a Verizon-compatible one with the stipulation that we’d start the upgrade plan over (I was refunded what I’d already paid)


Fast forward to now and it’s time to upgrade her phone to a X. We went in the Apple Store to swap but they weren’t able to validate our Verizon account. My father-in-law called the employee services number and they confirmed that employees cannot use the Apple Upgrade Program and must use the Verizon plan. Well that’s all fine and dandy if we were trying to start a new upgrade program...no harm no foul. But what about our existing plan? The guy at the Apple Store said there’s nothing they can do. I feel like this is Verizon’s fault. Either they screwed up and shouldn’t have let us in the upgrade plan to begin with...or some policy changed in the last year and we’re getting the short end of the stick.


Any ideas on where to go from here? I really don’t want to go through the hassle of buying out the upgrade contract and trying to sell it. I’ll probably get less money than I owe and this is the whole reason why we did the upgrade program...to not have to go through this.


Thoughts? Ideas? Is it worth calling Apple?

 

[CryBloodwing]

I would contact Verizon. They sometimes have a chat you can do on computer, or you can call them. So go to Verizon first. If they say everything is okay and Apple should be able to validate it, then talk to Apple.

 

[mattguy10]

Okay, this is kind of convoluted but I appreciate any help/insight people can provide.


My wife and I were on AT&T and we enrolled in the Apple Upgrade Program in Nov of 2016 to got her an iPhone 7 Plus. In February of 2017, we switched over to my father-in-law’s Verizon account since he’s an employee and gets a steep discount. My wife’s 7 Plus wasn’t compatible with Verizon so Apple had us bring it in to swap it for a Verizon-compatible one with the stipulation that we’d start the upgrade plan over (I was refunded what I’d already paid)


Fast forward to now and it’s time to upgrade her phone to a X. We went in the Apple Store to swap but they weren’t able to validate our Verizon account. My father-in-law called the employee services number and they confirmed that employees cannot use the Apple Upgrade Program and must use the Verizon plan. Well that’s all fine and dandy if we were trying to start a new upgrade program...no harm no foul. But what about our existing plan? The guy at the Apple Store said there’s nothing they can do. I feel like this is Verizon’s fault. Either they screwed up and shouldn’t have let us in the upgrade plan to begin with...or some policy changed in the last year and we’re getting the short end of the stick.


Any ideas on where to go from here? I really don’t want to go through the hassle of buying out the upgrade contract and trying to sell it. I’ll probably get less money than I owe and this is the whole reason why we did the upgrade program...to not have to go through this.


Thoughts? Ideas? Is it worth calling Apple?

Sometimes it all comes down to who you talk to at either Apple or your carrier (in your case Verizon). When the X came out, I reserved one at my local Apple store for my sister in law. I have AT&T and she is on my plan. I offered to go pick it up for her as per my confirmation email said the primary carrier account holder is able to pick it up even though the phone wasn’t for me and I am the primary on my AT&T account. So off to the Apple store I go. I wait in line for a good half hour, finally get called and the employee who helped me tells me I can’t pick up the phone because I’m not an authorized person on my sister in laws Apple account. She told me to have my sister in law call Apple and have them make me an authorized person on her account and that I would have to get back in line and it could be up to two more hours until I get called again. I kept my cool, called my sister in law and told her to call Apple. While I was waiting for her to call me back to let me know she added me to her account, I decided I wasn’t going to spend half my day at the Apple store. So I pulled up the confirmation email that said the primary carrier account holder is allowed to pick up the phone and explained my situation to another Apple employee. He used his handheld device that all the Apple store employees carry around to check into my situation. Lo and behold, he called over another Apple employee and said to him, “he’s all set to pick up this phone,” and I was out of the store in less than 15 minutes. I have no idea why the original Apple employee I talked to thought one thing, and the 2nd employee knew something the first one didn’t, but that brings me back to my point. It’s all in who you talk to, how much knowledge they have about the situation your in, and how far they’ll go to help you out. All I can say is don’t give up and settle for what they tell you if your gut is telling you something different. While I don’t always agree with, “the customer is always right,” it seems like in your situation, Apple/Verizon is making this much more difficult than it should be. It looks like Apple is blaming Verizon and Verizon is blaming Apple and neither want to do the leg work. Don’t give up!

 

[fender4645]

Thanks for replies. Yeah, I've definitely found that you can two different answers if you talk to two different people. I did go to a Verizon store today and they offered up another solution:

1. Go to Verizon and open up a new, personal account (cheapest possible). Don't port the number and just ask for a SIM card with a new number.
2. Put that SIM card in the iPhone 7 and take it to Apple to do the upgrade
3. After the upgrade, walk back to the Verizon store and cancel the account I just created.
4. Put the original SIM (the one backed by my father-in-law's account) into the new iphone
5. Enjoy

The Verizon folks said that as long as you cancel within 3 days, everything should be refunded (including the activation fee). The only thing I'll be charged for is the pro-rated day that I had the account which shouldn't be more than a couple bucks. The downside to this is that we'll have to do this every year or as long as we stay on my father-in-law's account.

 

[mattguy10]

Thanks for replies. Yeah, I've definitely found that you can two different answers if you talk to two different people. I did go to a Verizon store today and they offered up another solution:

1. Go to Verizon and open up a new, personal account (cheapest possible). Don't port the number and just ask for a SIM card with a new number.
2. Put that SIM card in the iPhone 7 and take it to Apple to do the upgrade
3. After the upgrade, walk back to the Verizon store and cancel the account I just created.
4. Put the original SIM (the one backed by my father-in-law's account) into the new iphone
5. Enjoy

The Verizon folks said that as long as you cancel within 3 days, everything should be refunded (including the activation fee). The only thing I'll be charged for is the pro-rated day that I had the account which shouldn't be more than a couple bucks. The downside to this is that we'll have to do this every year or as long as we stay on my father-in-law's account.

What’s confusing to me is back when you needed to switch to a Verizon compatible phone to be on your father-in-laws account, Apple did this no problem according to what you said in your OP. You got the Verizon compatible phone, started the IUP over, all on your father-in-laws account. So they did it once, why can’t they do it again? My sister actually works for Verizon and she confirmed that employees can’t use the IUP. I know you aren’t the actual employee, but being on an employees account, I can understand why you as well can’t use the IUP, but that didn’t seem to matter when the Verizon 7 Plus was purchased. So it seems to me that either Verizon or Apple messed up back when you got the Verizon 7 Plus and didn’t realize it until after the fact and just let it go, or someone just isn’t being straight with you.

 

[jav6454]

Thanks for replies. Yeah, I've definitely found that you can two different answers if you talk to two different people. I did go to a Verizon store today and they offered up another solution:

1. Go to Verizon and open up a new, personal account (cheapest possible). Don't port the number and just ask for a SIM card with a new number.
2. Put that SIM card in the iPhone 7 and take it to Apple to do the upgrade
3. After the upgrade, walk back to the Verizon store and cancel the account I just created.
4. Put the original SIM (the one backed by my father-in-law's account) into the new iphone
5. Enjoy

The Verizon folks said that as long as you cancel within 3 days, everything should be refunded (including the activation fee). The only thing I'll be charged for is the pro-rated day that I had the account which shouldn't be more than a couple bucks. The downside to this is that we'll have to do this every year or as long as we stay on my father-in-law's account.

Well.... that's a handful, Verizon CS are such d**ks.

 

[naturalstar]

Glad you found a work around, but Verizon has always put stipulations on their employees. It changes from time to time, but they don’t have the same upgrade privileges as non-employees.

Once you went under your FIL’s account, Verizon’s rules went into affect and Apple’s IUP was no longer valid. Sounds like there was a mess up somewhere and the FIL’s account wasn’t validated as it should have been or you were just given wrong info.

As I read this, I’m not sure how one phone on one carrier is supposed to carry over to another phone on a different carrier with IUP. That doesn’t make sense to me when it’s two different phones, but I don’t use Apple’s IUP, so maybe it’s a perk I’m unfamiliar with.

Weird situation.