Why the deceptive language and misinformation from employees?

On the Saturday of September 23, 2023 I called xFinity to discuss increasing internet speeds (which ironically would save me money).  After resolving this issue, the xFinity agents informed me that I could save even more money by moving my two cell phone numbers from Verizon to xFinity mobile.  This was and is true.  However, she informed me that xFinity was running a promotion that by trading my paid-off iPhone 12 Pro 256 GB, I would receive an iPhone 15 128 GB for free.  As the advertisement stated, "Get the new iPhone 15 128GB ON US with trade-in."  Unfortunately, after nearly an hour of working with this lady, she said the system was malfunctioning and would instead call us back the following day, Sunday September 24th after 12:30 PM PST).  This return call never came.  Instead, after five hours of waiting for the call, I phoned xFinity and spoke to two other agents who continued the process of moving over our phone lines and confirming the trade.  I questioned the last employee, who I believe was a supervisor, about the $700 credit being applied for the trade in and why it was not the full retail amount for the iPhone 15 ($830).  So, there was a deviation of $130.  The man informed me repeatedly that "not to worry, you won't be paying anything for the new iPhone 15.  Once the trade in is received, xFinity will handle the rest and will be reflected on the bill. "  I finished placing both orders. 

By the next morning, less than 12 hours after placing the order for the two phones, I received and responded to an ID verification request.  Only a few minutes later, I had an email stating that one of the phones had shipped.  But, another phone order had been cancelled.  The email stated that "this [cancellation] had happened for one of the following reasons: 1. we haven't heard back from you with required information within the allowed time frame or 2) the information you sent didn't meet our requirements."  Confused by this email, I called xFinity and was bounced around to four different departments over the course of 1.5 hours.  Ultimately, this equated to 5 hours of dealing with this issue in total.  The representatives told me that the error was because I didn't do the photo ID verification in enough time.  But after being corrected on the matter, they realized that it was completed in less than 12 hours (when there is 72 hours allotted).  So they came back and said that it was an "internal error" but that they'd have to start the whole process over. 

Instead of starting the process over for the second phone line, I drove into an xFinity customer service center to explain my situation, waiting for another 45 minutes  I did this because I found that I couldn't trust what the phone agents were telling me.  I explained to them that given the misinformation about the "ON US" iPhone 15 that I had experienced, being promised that I wouldn't pay a dime out of my own pocket for the iPhone 15, I didn't want to keep the one that they already shipped.  The informed me that once I received the new iPhone, to bring it back to the customer service center and they'd cancel out the order from there. All in all, I had to speak to a total of 9 different employees and lost 5.75 hours of my life to a fruitless endeavor that I'll never get back. 

I share all of this to demonstrate how relations between xFinity, its employees, and customers is increasingly becoming more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.  This ordeal was a nightmare when it shouldn't have been one.