It will currently only work on 3g smartphones (or presumably, any 3g phone). They will NOT honor it on 4g lte devices, or any Iphone devices.
Basically you call up, tell them you are having problems with your phone. It shuts off randomly, drops calls, wont turn on, etc. These have to be major issues (i.e. NOT "my phone is working slow" or "X,y,z, feature is not working right". They have to be issues which PREVENT your phone from operating as a PHONE, like the ones I listed above.
They will offer you a refurbished model of your phone, do not accept it. I usually tell them "the phone is a year old now, why would I want a used version of an already year old phone?". At this point, ask for a supervisor. Most times your call will get transferred at least once.
The second person you get on the phone will usually be a bit tougher (good cop/bad cop). They'll want to insure your phone is updated to the latest signal, you have updated PRM, the latest version of software running, etc, etc. After all that you insist that if you aren't given the option to at least pay for an early upgrade, you're going to switch carries.
Sprint right now for example is/was offering to pay half of your contract cancelation fee to switch and start with them. My rationale was basically, I'm willing to pay for an upgrade, I don't want outdated/obsolete hardware (lets be honest, the LG ally was pretty obsolete). This is where you ask to speak to this persons' supervisor. This representative, told me she couldn't authorize an early upgrade without a managers approval, but if I was willing to hold on a bit, she could see what she could do (when they do this, you got em).
5 minutes later they come back saying "My manager is busy right now but she said if that giving you an early upgrade is going to make you happy and keep you as a customer to go ahead and do it, so let me get that started for you." Boom, done. Cash saved: $259, time spent: 33 minutes.
edit: I'd like to add that, I wasn't lying in my call. All those things really WERE happening with my phone, but they don't make you send it back or anything. So I suppose if you wanted to imbelish a bit, anyone who's within a year of an upgrade being available could try this every so often.
Basically you call up, tell them you are having problems with your phone. It shuts off randomly, drops calls, wont turn on, etc. These have to be major issues (i.e. NOT "my phone is working slow" or "X,y,z, feature is not working right". They have to be issues which PREVENT your phone from operating as a PHONE, like the ones I listed above.
They will offer you a refurbished model of your phone, do not accept it. I usually tell them "the phone is a year old now, why would I want a used version of an already year old phone?". At this point, ask for a supervisor. Most times your call will get transferred at least once.
The second person you get on the phone will usually be a bit tougher (good cop/bad cop). They'll want to insure your phone is updated to the latest signal, you have updated PRM, the latest version of software running, etc, etc. After all that you insist that if you aren't given the option to at least pay for an early upgrade, you're going to switch carries.
Sprint right now for example is/was offering to pay half of your contract cancelation fee to switch and start with them. My rationale was basically, I'm willing to pay for an upgrade, I don't want outdated/obsolete hardware (lets be honest, the LG ally was pretty obsolete). This is where you ask to speak to this persons' supervisor. This representative, told me she couldn't authorize an early upgrade without a managers approval, but if I was willing to hold on a bit, she could see what she could do (when they do this, you got em).
5 minutes later they come back saying "My manager is busy right now but she said if that giving you an early upgrade is going to make you happy and keep you as a customer to go ahead and do it, so let me get that started for you." Boom, done. Cash saved: $259, time spent: 33 minutes.
edit: I'd like to add that, I wasn't lying in my call. All those things really WERE happening with my phone, but they don't make you send it back or anything. So I suppose if you wanted to imbelish a bit, anyone who's within a year of an upgrade being available could try this every so often.