The Verizon Wireless “free iPhone 6” trade-in offer sounds great, but it’s a lot more complicated than you’d expect. In speaking with a customer service representative with Verizon on September 10, this reporter learned of the complexity of the offer.
It’s not as simple as walking into your local Verizon Wireless store, plopping down your old iPhone and walking out with a brand-spanking new iPhone 6 as news reports would make the process seem.
Yes, with the iPhone 5 trade in – or any of the iPhone models 4, 4S, 5, 5S and 5C – you’re going to get a $200 gift card for trading it in. And that trade-in offer is only good until September 30.
That’s where it gets tricky. The local store option only works if you have an upgrade available. This journalist’s next scheduled upgrade is January 7, 2015, on the iPhone 5 smartphone line. Her husband’s upgrade date looms closer, October 3rd – but he enjoys a Samsung Galaxy, not an iPhone, as his personal phone.
An “alternative upgrade” would be an option in this instance, whereby this reporter takes the next eligible upgrade in his stead, but since the $200 gift card trade-in offer is only good until September 30, the trade-in would have to be done by then – and in the interim, an old phone could be activated in order to avoid going without a phone.
As instructed, visiting Trade-in.vzw.com reflected a $200 trade-in value for an “Apple A1429 iPhone 5 16GB – Verizon” option, and mailing it in within the packaging they’d provide would potentially take about one week or so to receive the email with the $200 gift card code.
The only cost for any upgrade would be a $30 one-time fee, Verizon promised, and not any other monthly fee increases. This writer could then potentially wait until the October 3 upgrade date to use the $200 towards a new iPhone 6.
“What if the iPhone 6 phones are all sold out by then?”
“That’s the thing,” the kind Verizon Wireless customer service rep replied, stating something about backorder logs and such.
So there is a way to get a new iPhone 6 by trading in your old iPhone model, but it’s dependent upon your upgrade eligibility date, and if you’re not there yet – on whether you’re ready to go through the machinations of having an old phone activated whilst you await your new iPhone 6 beauty.
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