Have you had trouble with the $200 Galaxy S8 trade-in deal?

Earlier this summer, Samsung offered a $200 trade-in deal with the Galaxy S8. But it turns out not everything was as clear-cut as it appeared.

Back in May, Samsung started selling an unlocked version of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ on its e-commerce portal, and with it offered $200 towards the phone with a valid trade-in. The beauty of the deal was that Samsung didn't (at least not on the surface) put a limit on what phones could be considered for the trade-in; any device, as long as it was in good working order, would be valid.

See at Samsung

But soon after the program began, and people started shipping their older phones to Samsung, they received rejection emails telling them that phones they thought would be eligible for the program weren't, and they would be charged $175 and wouldn't get the traded phone back — even phones deemed ineligible for the program are worth $25.

msp1518

07-02-2017 02:34 PM

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This deserves its own thread. I am really stunned that they could be so incredibly stupid. Yeah, some people would try to take advantage of the 200 trade in offer on the S8's and some did. Loudly so. But rejecting phones that actually do qualify is a bad bad move. People who sent in good condition, working iPhone 4's, Galaxy S6's, Note 5's ,etc. were rejected and then charged $175. Some...
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The issue mainly stems, according to people in our forum and on Reddit, from the inconsistent application of Samsung's trade-in terms and conditions, which states that all units submitted to the program must be of good working order, and must have a functioning display, no cracks or breaks, not be on a carrier blacklist, not have any reactivation locks, and must have clean, factory-reset software.

These things all seem obvious, but some people have received emails that stated their seemingly "good working order" phones were ineligible for the deal, and because Samsung has the last word on the decision (and keeps the phones) many users have been frustrated by the opaqueness of the proposition (which is now over, for what it's worth).

Some, however, have fared better:

clownin72

07-03-2017 06:39 AM

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I did this promo about 3 weeks ago on the at&t variant and was really skeptical about it. After reading everywhere and a chat with Samsung support I sent in an old old HTC phone. Got an email last week saying it was accepted. I guess I was a lucky one.
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Many people decided, perhaps justifiably, to sit the deal out, despite its tantalizing proposition:

trucksmoveamerica#AC

07-02-2017 06:30 PM

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I stated in another post that this is a disaster in the making, I was told that any phone is OK so it won't be an issue. I stand by my initial post, this has disaster written all over it, anything that involves Samsung directly is a disaster coming. I won't deal with Samsung directly ever again, the last $99 promo for the S8 sucked, I got my promo, but it was a rough ride and a lot got...
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