I’m a long-time Apple Upgrade Program person, and for the life of me I can never figure out where/how to return my old iPhone
Apple always sends me a box with a prepaid label in it to return my phone. Never had any issues. You wipe and put the old phone in the box, put on the new shipping label, and drop it off at a place that takes FedEx (or whatever service Apple uses in your area).
I got my box Friday and I’m returning my old phone today.
If you didn’t get your box, call Apple and they’ll send you one.
Yes, that’s the Apple Upgrade Program. I have been on it for years. They automatically send you the return box, so I’m puzzled why you’ve had issues with it. Citizens Bank can’t close out your old loan until the old phone has been returned, so it’s definitely important to send it back.
Okay, mystery somewhat solved. Marc, I’m guessing you had your iPhone shipped to you? I did an Apple Store pickup. When I picked up the 17, the folks in the store said Apple would ship me a box. But as of today, I had no notification of a trade in box being shipped to me. So I called Apple. First support person didn’t have an answer, bumped me to another person who said of course we can ship you a box. But she couldn’t figure out how, so she bumped my case up again. An hour later I got an email saying “no, we cannot ship you a trade in box, you must return the old iPhone to the Apple Store.” So even Apple is not entirely clear on the procedure.
I went back to my Apple Store this afternoon (not that far from my house). This time the support person in the store was aware of the confusion, and knew exactly what to do. Took five minutes to delete it from Find My, wipe data, etc, close out the Citizen One account and send me a confirmation email.
I think when you pick up the new phone at the store you’re supposed to (or can) wipe and leave the old phone there after the new phone is all set up. So for that method of delivery, there is no box needed.
I’m an hour from my nearest Apple Store and it’s easier to just have the phone delivered at home, so I’ve always done that and never had an issue with the return box.
So bizarre that the Apple Support people didn’t know what was going on. That makes me wonder if the quantity of people on the Upgrade Program is extremely low or Apple just isn’t training their hires properly. Glad you figured it out!
Yes, the closeness of my Apple Store leads me to just go get it there and not worry about monitoring my delivery – I live in a city where door thefts do occur. I’ve done both in the past, which is probably why I never remember how the process works. It is odd that the phone support people didn’t know how to handle this.
I did an Apple Watch trade in and that went smoothly, the box arriving about a week after the watch, which I did have delivered knowing I would be home to watch for it.
I had a similar problem. Previous iPhone Upgrade Program purchases had the new device shipped to the house so the return package also was shipped to the house.
This time, in-store pickup was faster than delivery so I opted for that. My email did mention “pick up and trade in” but the multiple staff members I asked at the store said they would ship a box. After not receiving a box and finding a deadline to complete the trade in was next week I figured a store visit was warranted. I visited the store earlier this week and explained my situation; they handled the trade-in and I have now received confirmation the trade-in is complete and the old loan is closed.
My only issue was that I held off resetting the phone so they could easily look up the serial number. This however caused some problems because I had Theft Protection enabled and the store was not a trusted location. We wiped it through Find My but I’ll remember to wipe it from home next time if I choose to pickup in store.
That was true for me also. I went to the Apple Store and set up my device there. I was not offered the opportunity to take the new phone home without returning the old phone before I left the store.
Not wanting to risk being without a phone should the transfer of my settings and data to the new phone go bad, I opted to set up the new phone in the store.
The process began slowly, as a system update was required before setup could commence. The store’s Wi-Fi was slow since there was a lot of activity from folks setting up their new iPhones. Once I could start the Phone-to-Phone transfer, things proceeded reasonably quickly. When the process was finished, including the transfer of my phone number, I confirmed that the new iPhone was working correctly and proceeded to clear out my old iPhone. The store associate took the old phone, and by the end of the day, I received a notification that the old phone had been inspected, and the old loan had been cleared.
This may have saved a few bucks since, unlike when a phone was delivered to my home, there was no overlap period when I had both phones.
This is another reason I was actually happy the Apple Store staff made the mistake of sending me home to wait for a trade in box. Even at home with my excellent WiFi, it took much longer than I remember taking in the past. I’m glad I did the setup at home.
Well, I’m retired and work from home too, and so theoretically could be here to wait for the iPhone delivery. But my work area is not near the door where UPS delivers, and UPS is not great at giving an accurate delivery time, so for iPhones, I generally prefer to pick up at my conveniently located (12-15 minute drive) Apple Store.
The overlap doesn’t usually cause double-payments. If it does, once the old phone is returned, they automatically credit the extra payment back onto your card. At least that’s what happened to me one year.
(I think they lock in the payment quantity when you secure the loan for the new phone during order. So if you’ve made 12 payments at that point, even if the new phone takes a while to arrive and a 13th payment on your old phone happens, they’ll reimburse you for the 13th payment once that loan is closed. They charge your first payment on the new phone upon order/shipment, so that’s your new payment. The only exception where you’ll get extra payments is if you completed less than 12 payments on the old phone – then they’ll charge you enough old payments to bring it to 12 first as that’s the minimum before you can upgrade. That happened to me one year when the new phones came out late – maybe Covid year – and the next year the new phones were in September and I’d only made 11 payments. So I got charged the 12th and also the 1st on the new phone.)
