How to Avoid AT&T Upgrade Fee?

Is there a way on how to avoid AT&T upgrade fee? Can you possibly do and perform an upgrade without stressing about paying for the upgrade fee?

Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do to avoid the upgrade fee on your AT&T device or subscription.

In order for you to be able to avoid the AT&T upgrade fee, all you have to do is to call and contact the company’s client experience or customer support department.

Negotiate with them and politely tell them that if you could have the upgrade fee waived.

You can also request to speak with the retention department so they could cook up a decent deal for you.

Understanding AT&T’s Upgrade Fees

AT&T’s upgrade fee is what that you’re billed when you purchase a new device under your plan.

This is because of the fact that some systems wouldn’t support the current plan you have.

It can be an upgrade to your smartphone.

For instance, if you’re upgrading from your iPhone X to an iPhone 12 Pro through AT&T, you’d have to pay for an upgrade fee.

Alternatively, if AT&T has a new plan with better network coverage and better features and you want to upgrade to that, there’s a large chance that you’ll be required to pay the upgrade fee, too!

Therefore, AT&T’s technical teams need to make sure that your device is in line with your plan.

While this is something common, many people ask if there’s a way on how to avoid paying the AT&T upgrade fee.

When You Don’t Have to Pay the AT&T Upgrade Fee

If you see an extra charge on your bill and you see it labeled as “upgrade fee” but you didn’t upgrade anything, contact the customer service team and department right away.

There are many cases and instances where these are applied as errors and mistakes, so the best thing to do is double-check it.

Also, the following are the situations and instances where you don’t have to pay for it:

New Activations and Installations
Transfer of Services (ToR)
Changing or Modification of Plans (Retained Hardware and Price)

If you get billed the upgrade fee and you didn’t change your device or your plan, contact them immediately and tell the customer service department about it!

If you’ve been looking for a guide on how to avoid paying the AT&T upgrade fee anywhere, you’re now on the perfect page at the perfect time!

In this guide, we’ll be going through some of the most effective ways that you can do to be free from paying the fee when you upgrade your device or your plan in AT&T.

Here are some of the steps you can do to be able to avoid the upgrade fee of your AT&T.

Contact AT&T’s Customer Support Team

What you can do to try and avoid the upgrade fee is to contact the customer support or client experience team of AT&T and ask about what they can do since you’re trying to do your upgrade.

Contrary to what you believe in, they wouldn’t be proactive in offering the discount or the waiver.

Instead, you’d need to haggle and try to negotiate it with them.

In their protocols, they’d tell you that you really have to pay that particular price because it’s the formal rate for the upgrade.

But, there is actually a workaround to it and that is by trying to negotiate the upgrade fee to be waived.

You can try a few techniques and strategies like telling them you saw a better offer with the competition; that you’ll just bring a phone you purchased from another source in, and so on.

Some, but not all client representatives and customer specialists would already give it to you.

But the vast majority of them wouldn’t.

That brings us to the next thing you can do and that is…

Try and Request to Speak With Retention (Client Experience Specialists)

If you tried that and it’s not effective, the next best thing to do is to attempt fixing it through the client retention team.

It’s the team or the department that’s considered to be the supervisors or the superiors of customer reps.

They’re more likely to give you the waiver of the upgrade fee that you’re looking for.

You can consider them to be the higher or the superior team that can take care of whatever customer service representatives can.

Waiver or Voucher

Another option you can take is to have a voucher or a waiver applied to your account.

Oftentimes, these vouchers are given to customers and clients that have had unpleasant experiences with the service or the company.

It can be because of an intermittent connection even if you’re properly paying for it.

Quite possibly, it could also be due to the fact that you weren’t able to get what you were promised, etc.

Don’t confuse yourself on what it is as they’re sometimes called bill credits and vouchers too.

Reducing the Upgrade Fee

There will be times when you wouldn’t really be able to have it waived or credited, and it can be because of the representative you’re talking to.

Should this be what your case is, let’s get down to the next level in the hierarchy, and it’s by reducing the fee.

Generally, the AT&T upgrade fee will be between $20 and $50 for each upgrade.

This will depend on the upgrade you’ll perform, and whether it’s a device or a plan upgrade.

If they can’t give you full credit for the upgrade fee, the next best thing to do is to try and haggle to reduce and decrease the fee.

Conclusion

If you’ve been asking for ways on how to avoid AT&T upgrade fees, this is the key!

You’ll find many different guides online but you wouldn’t be able to find as accurate and as detailed as this!

If you thought that you need to speak to the upper and higher management of AT&T to get the upgrade fee waived, think again! You can simply attempt and try to contact AT&T’s customer service team for it!

Finn Wheatley

Finn Wheatley holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from UCL, London. He helped small data science consultancy firms, helping large corporations to grow their data capabilities, deploy advanced machine learning-based analytics and troubleshoot tech-related issues. Check out more about him here.