I switched to T-Mobile a month and a half ago; I was planning on switching at the end of the year, but with rising costs of memory due to the AI boom and being severely pissed off about yet another reported iOS issue with a website I maintained (I was going to switch to an iPhone so I can actually test the standards-incompliant webkit), I decided to see if I could switch early and have the rest of my bill paid off.
I go into my local T-Mobile store and ask - can I switch from Google Fi to T-Mobile and have my remaining balance paid off? I also brought in my 2 previous bills.
They said yes, got me my new iPhone 17 Pro, and got me set up to trade in my Android device.
After fighting with Google Fi to finally get access to my final bills (they don't make it clear or easy - and their support is awful, hence switching), I do the process online to get my payment card or whatever to pay off my bill.. 2 days later I get a call from T-Mobile, and we go through a number of things to try and get the info they need to complete it, but there are some hurdles.
My bills don't have an account # on them, nor do they say specifically "here is the remaining balance on your device". As well, my phone # transfer apparently doesn't show as an actual transfer from another carrier..
So they tell me to talk to the rep in-store to get it taken care of there.
My question is this: Am I just screwed, and is it worth it to even try? I'm guessing the rep at the store probably had no clue and wasn't paying any attention outside of "Sale make line go up" (and they were a store manager).
I owe $350 on my device, and the bill comes due Monday. I thankfully have emergency funds, but this still pisses me off to no end, and if I can't at least get some compensation there I'm going to be even more unhappy.
There's not a lot of good options in my region for carriers, so it's not like I can just switch to another; They all pretty much suck in different ways.
Oh, and aside: T-Mobile's offer redemption website is broken in Firefox; I was able to get it to function in Edge, though (so presumably Chrome works too, since they share the same rendering engine).