Long Term Promo & Phone Issues

To view with Photos: https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/comments/1s7guy9/year_long_trade_in_promo_issue/

On 4/28/25 I took advantage of a promotion to trade in my phone early and hopefully lower my monthly phone bill. I agreed to trade in my phone for an estimated monthly device payment of $2.08 + $25 down, granted I first pay off and then successfully trade in my old phone in good condition. These conditions were met; the funds to pay the phone off were charged to my card and I sent in my old phone, which was received in good condition. However, I was still charged the full $20.83/month that the phone would have been without any trade-in promotion. My bill should have lowered from $79.04/month to $66.54, but instead went up to $85.29, and has remained since. I have been overpaying $18.75 every single month. 

   

I went to the stores, the chats, the phone lines and callback scheduling. The stores were generally either sympathetic or apathetic, but couldn't help. The chats and calls would walk me through from a robot to worker to supervisor to maybe another supervisor. Then they'd either tell me to try the chat or call, and the cycle would start again.

   

It feels purposeful that it's difficult to retain a paper trail for any of these conversations, and that they don't share information between their three "customer service" platforms. Even here in Xfinity's own forum there is no way to upload photos. All I have screenshots and one "Thank you for stopping by" paper where I asked an employee to help with this issue and to explain a $142.27 charge from 5/2 on my card by Xfinity that doesn't appear on their own website / billing portal. He told me $70 went to something called the "EEF," which I've been able to find no explanation for. The longer I spent on this, the more I felt insane. At the end of chats, bots would refuse to send a transcript or pretend they didn't understand. Bots and humans alike would refuse to give me an email or portal to upload my evidence aka the screenshots of the trade-in I'd agreed to. I'd have to repeat the entire situation to every new bot, person, bot-pretending-to-be-a-person. Whatever format I used, the agent would usually open a ticket and would always tell me to save the number. But then it'd be closed or "resolved" within 24 hours. I still have some of those numbers saved.

   

I feel like I talked to every department, including retention ,who at one point credited me $40 with the understanding that this was more because they felt bad for me than because they actually wanted to or could help to solve this issue. I was gaslit frequently with implications I was making things up. I was very open to hearing that I was simply wrong or made a mistake, but no agent even went as far as to make me feel like they understood the situation. I spent at least four hours a week from May-September on this issue. But October was extremely hard. It's the anniversary of both of my parents deaths, I broke up with my partner of five years, and my cat died. I was too demoralized to care about trying to convince an Xfinity rep to take me seriously anymore. 

   

Now it's almost a whole entire year, and guess what? I got an email congratulating me on the chance to trade in my device. Honestly, I hate this phone and I would love a different one. I pay Comcast-Xfinity month every month to have internet and mobile service, but my phone *doesn't* work on my home wifi. That's a whole other issue that hasn't been solved by visiting the xfinity store multiple times, though it is apparently really common in Pixel 9's. I'm not a fan of this device, and am still really hoping to lower my monthly bill.

   

   

So my questions here are: 

   

Do I keep trying to get my $18.75/month refunded or resolved? 

Do I give up and just see about trading in my phone again? 

If I trade it in, how do I make sure this doesn't happen again? 

Follow up, do I need an Xfinity witness to actually get a promised trade in promo? Because apparently I can't trust a thing y'all say.

   

Best,

Andy

- Xfinity customer for at least 70% of my life, help