Free iPad Offer

So I'm still sitting here trying to figure out what happened yesterday.  I had a promotional offer expire on my internet only bundle.  Pretty normal, so I called in to see what else was available.  I was steered by an Xfinity employee to the Free iPad offer.  I said I had no use for an iPad and what else was available, he told me not only was it the best one, but the ONLY one available.

I then started hearing the details, and they didn't sound bad.  However, since "free iPad" is about the most common scam text in the past 10 years, I looked it up here on this forum and in other locations.  EVERYONE agreed this was a very shady deal with very misleading terms.  So, I started asking questions.  Was the price he was quoting me including everything?  Yes.  Would the price go up over the 5 year period, absolutely not, in fact it'd go down.  Was I paying any activation fees, cost for the hardware of the iPad, or cellular service for the iPad?  Again, absolutely not.  This didn't match what I was reading online, so I asked to see the offer details in writing.  I was told SURE, after I typed in my credit card over the phone.  No, not doing that.  After some pushing to do it and my refusal, I was told, well no big deal, just type in a fake credit card number, it should work, then you can see it in writing...  No, I'm not typing fake credit card numbers in anywhere.  Okay, so he'll do it.  I heard the beeps as he typed in some numbers.  Okay, I should now have an offer in my email in writing.

No, I didn't, and he couldn't get it to work, I was on hold over and over over 15 minutes, during which I was asking for other offers that didn't include the iPad.  No, nothing that applied to me.  Finally I found a great post there on this forum of exactly what to ask about the "free iPad".  You said no activation fees, what about enrollment fees?  Well yes there is one, but they are small.  They, multiple of them?  Only two.  There is no hardware cost but am I paying sales tax on a $300 iPad?  Yes, but only $40 (numbers don't match up).  The cellular service on the iPad you said is free is included for the full five years, yes?  Well no, only the first year, then you pay, but it's only $20 monthly as long as you stay under the limit.  

I don't know if I missed anything else, but WOW, I didn't feel like I was talking to a scammer, I WAS talking to a scammer, except this is the actual Xfinity company.  At this point I told him I was disgusted, felt lied to, and wanted to talk to someone else about cancelling the service entirely.  To his singular credit, he said he'd send me to retentions and actually did.  

I spoke to a perfectly normal employee there who apologized, but had no way of knowing who I talked to and definitely did NOT want to talk about the free iPad offer.  They said nothing bad but definitely didn't try to defend it.  They however said there were two other offers available to me that would save me as much as my old promotion.  I took it for now.  I'm now looking at other options for internet, but with the speed I require it's not easy, the option may be to pay to have Fiber run and then pay a reasonable fee after that with another company.  

I've had bad service from companies, or a bad employee, this was the first time I ran into an organized scam ring inside of a large company, I know this matches multiple other posts on this forum, but I'm writing this to continue to warn others and to let Xfinity know just how badly this is hurting their reputation, I was blown away.