An AT&T worker has ideas on how you can switch carriers whenever you need to.
TikToker @pj_thatcamerakid, who started by stitching a video asking people to reveal company secrets, asked viewers to imagine “a world where blue doesn’t exist”—while taking off an AT&T-branded lanyard —and presented a hack for switching carriers.
Though it’s a little involved, he presents it step by step, starting by saying, “There is this really, really cool thing.” He then sets a hypothetical: “Where if you go into your store and say, you want to like leave your carrier and like, you know, you still have an iPhone 14 Max 36 Pro, whatever the hell you want to call it, you still got to pay the phone off—you got like $900 left on your $1300 phone.”
@pj_thatcamerakid #stitch with @Taco reacts dont tell anyone i told u this!👀👀#funny #viral #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #fypシ #phonestore #wireless #lifehacks #tipsandtricks ♬ original sound – PJ_thatcamerakid
He’s got a solution for you if you’re in this kind of scenario. “You go into your carrier, you find out if you can upgrade that phone early, like if they have some early upgrade option.”
He maintains that “nine times out of 10,” you can with most carriers. He then suggests, “Upgrade the phone early to the crappiest, sh*ttiest flip phone you can find on there … basically you take your phone that’s worth a lot of money, and you upgrade it early to a really, really crappy cheap phone. But you do it online. That’s the most important part.”
He also says it’s possible to do this by calling customer service—but the idea is to get your new bad phone sent to you.
Then, once you’ve bought “an upgrade” from the carrier you want to leave, hypothetically only $72 in the scenario he’s laid out, “You then go to your carrier you want to go to you, get the new phone through them and then you take your nice old iPhone, you transfer your information over, copy all your top contacts and everything.”
“And then as long as you do that within 14 days, you ship that iPhone back to your old carrier. Congratulations. You just started up a new contract with the carrier got to keep your phone number and on top of all of that you didn’t have to pay $900.”
“It’s legal; it works,” he asserts. “Carriers just hate that it exists because technically it’s an option.”
One commenter offered, “I hope you’re not gonna get fired for this.”
Another wondered, “For clarity, this is just a hack to change carriers, not get your phone paid off? seems convoluted when these carriers have things in place to do this.”
Someone questioned the advice, declaring, “You’re an idiot and this is very misleading. 9/10 there is NOT an early upgrade option. I worked in cell phone sales for years and that is not true.”
But another refuted that contention by saying, “If you do an early upgrade on an iPhone you have to have 50% paid off. You can upgrade to anything. Then return the new phone. Boom no payments.”
It was too much for one viewer, who said, “I’m so confused. I need a diagram.”
Someone who didn’t understand all the steps then said, “I USED TO WORK FOR AT&T , when you upgrade early you GOTTA SEND THE OLD PHONE BACK.”
But someone tried to help, responding, “Yeah but if you do it online they’ll give you a time limit to send it off. I kept mine for two weeks and then sent it off.”
One commenter did bring up a valid concern, though: “Upgrading isn’t going to restart your contract?”
Finally, one commenter had a hack to suggest: “First hack is NEVER EVER EVER use AT&T. The absolute WORST experience I’ve ever had.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok comment and to AT&T via email.
