Have you recently purchased a device from T-Mobile that you’re looking to return? Well, T-Mobile has some requirements to take the phone back. Most of the requirements are common sense. It must be in good working order without damage, and you have to have the original box and everything inside of it. It has to be in the two week (14 days) return period.
They also ask you to have the original receipt, but I’ve had success without it. The good people there have been able to pull up my order and print another copy of the receipt for me. Not the biggest deal in the world, but if you’re walking into a store with a long line, they may not want to take out the time to perform this special step for you.
If you follow these simple steps, there’s a $50 restocking fee to return the device. If you paid anything out of pocket at the time of purchase, the $50 will be deducted from your refund. If you didn’t pay anything up front, like on a Jump on Demand lease, you’ll owe that $50. Tablets will get hit with a $75 restocking fee instead of the $50 fee on phones, so keep that in mind if you’ve picked up a cellular enabled tablet from T-Mobile.
Now, here’s where some may run into a problem. If you’re like me and have multiple devices on multiple lines, you HAVE to have the sim card for the line you’re returning a phone on. Here’s an example:
I recently picked up an LG V10 after Josh Noriega’s excellent review of the device. I definitely wanted to play with it for a few weeks and experience listening to HiFi music through Tidal with it. I’m not quite an audiophile, but I do appreciate high quality audio and the dedicated HiFi DAC in the V10 was a major selling point.
I have Jump on Demand set up on my wife’s line since at the time of purchase I was leasing an iPhone on my line. When I went to return the V10 today, in which I met all requirements I talked about above, I was asked for the sim card for the line so they could verify the return.
I’m not going to lie, I was a bit floored. No one has ever mentioned that I would need the sim card for that line. The T-Mobile employee at time of purchase went out of his way to let me know that if I returned the phone, which I had mentioned I might, that I’d need the box, accessories and the receipt. Nowhere on T-Mobile’s own “Return Policy” website does it state this.
As a logical person, I can understand why this sim card policy isn’t the first thing they tell me when I get ready to leave the store with my phone. It’s going to be a very rare case, but this is listed NOWHERE. T-Mobile is very aware that there of those of us that swap phones a lot which is why they have the Jump on Demand program. Letting us in on this apparently brand new requirement, especially when things are explicitly laid out like they were in my situation, isn’t the craziest of ideas.
You neglect to mention what the ultimate outcome was. Did they finally cave, or were you forced to return home & find the proper SIM card? I’m thinking they would have to cave, lacking any printed requirements spelling out the SIM policy.
There hasn’t been an outcome yet. I left, extremely frustrated. Part of that was because I waited around forever for the phone to charge so I could reset it and I had my daughter with me. Most of it was because of the policy.
I’m going to head back to the store today with my wife’s sim card. She works pretty long hours and she’s very tired when she gets home so I don’t want to make her go stand around at a store after work if she doesn’t have to.
I’ll update the story when it comes to fruition.
There hasn’t been an outcome yet. I left, extremely frustrated. Part of that was because I waited around forever for the phone to charge so I could reset it and I had my daughter with me. Most of it was because of the policy.
I’m going to head back to the store today with my wife’s sim card. She works pretty long hours and she’s very tired when she gets home so I don’t want to make her go stand around at a store after work if she doesn’t have to.
I’ll update the story when it comes to fruition.
Contact the “Office Of The Predident” (aka “Executive Escalations”) and let them know too. If there is in fact a problem they can fix it.
I would recommend returning after that individuals shift and giving it another go.
A few months back I came in to get a phone on the jump on demand plan. I was all set but then I was told that I had to have a phone to trade. I have an old Nexus One so I thought I would use that but I was worried they would not take it because the power button is busted. I called a bunch of people and nobody could give me an answer about the phone other than it had to work. I figured it was worth a shot and had a junk phone available on craigslist just in case.
I brought the phone in and suddenly no phone was required to go jump on demand. Kind of frustrating as I was hoping to get rid of my old phone.
Man, that’s frustrating. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.
I’m going to head back today with my wife’s sim card. I plan on bringing it up again that this isn’t posted or spoken anywhere. You can’t expect your customers to follow guidelines they do not know about.
Man, that’s frustrating. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.
I’m going to head back today with my wife’s sim card. I plan on bringing it up again that this isn’t posted or spoken anywhere. You can’t expect your customers to follow guidelines they do not know about.
I work for a T-Mobile retail store and I can confirm that the reason you can’t find the policy anywhere is because it doesn’t exist. Returning the SIM card is not necessary and would be silly if it were because it would not be reusable again anyway and we would have to give you either one for no reason. Sorry that representative didn’t know what they were doing.
That’s very strange…
I assist companies in setting up merchant accounts (Visa/MasterCard/Discover) and in order to accept these forms of payment, a return policy needs to be clearly posted and disclosed for customers to review.
I had one small business who didn’t explain or have a return policy posted and Visa actually took their ability to process payments away.
Either way, it’s just good business to explain these things to customers so they don’t complain.
Thanks for sharing. I went back over the weekend and had the return processed. I talked to the manager and several associates and their stories were pretty much all the same thing, they have no idea why they have to do this now and they were never trained on this new procedure. It just showed up one day. I’m not going to go in and fight cause a big fuss at a retail location, but I have reached out to T-Mobile for comment. We’ll see what they have to say.
Yeah I have no idea what they’re talking about. I have since processed a couple of returns and still had no prompts in the system for returning a SIM card. It’s still not in our policy either.