The yearly upgrade feature, if you happen to have added it when it was available, is a pretty cool thing to have if you like to change phones frequently. As long as you’re paying for your eligible plan and you’re halfway through your phone’s installments, you can get a trade-in for a newer model and it should come out to either be free or almost free—you get the same great deals as Go5G Next customers get.
At least that’s what should be happening.
The problem comes when changes are made on T-Mobile systems that break unique promos like this. That appears to be exactly what’s happening to a number of users right now.
Customers on the /r/tmobile subreddit have complained that when they try to initiate a trade-in for the iPhone 16 Pro on a line with yearly upgrade (which should get you $1,000 off), T-Mobile seems to be giving users up to $800 rather than the full $1,000 that’s being advertised. Looking at the comments, this doesn’t seem to be an isolated issue, either.
It appears that when T-Mobile modified their offers for discounted rate plans, which we covered early this month, it somehow impacted customers with the “Yearly Upgrade” perk. This is just a theory, of course, but it could explain why these users are suddenly seeing a reduced value (just like 55+, First Responder, and Military plans do now).
We reached out to T-Mobile over the weekend about the issue, and we got back the following answer Sunday night:
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This was a configuration issue that affected a small number of customers, and we’ve fixed it. We’ll be letting them know that the correct promotion will be added to their line.
All is not well, though. As of the time of publishing, it looks like the issue might not be fully fixed despite the above statement—trade-in values are still wonky on the website, and if you try to upgrade to the app you might not even be able to get a trade-in in the first place. We replied to T-Mobile about this, and we’ll update once we learn more.
In the meantime, if you want to get your full trade-in value, you may want to reach out to support. Some users have said even support isn’t able to help, but for now that may be the only route. Or, if you can, wait it out and hopefully the issue will be fixed soon.
The good news is that T-Mobile acknowledges the issue. It means they’re still honoring their promo, and not clawing back value after the fact.
If you’re impacted by the issue, let us know below, especially if you’ve been able to get around the issue and receive your full value. Keep an eye out here on The Mobile Report for more info when we have it.
