Last week, a person wearing an AT&T uniform came to my door to promote a home plan.
After confirming he was authorized, I signed a contract for nine lines. That evening, when I received the electronic contract by email, I discovered numerous fraudulent activities.
The salesperson promised the following:
A total of $305 per month for nine lines, fixed for 36 months, free upgrades to the latest phones for all lines, and multiple stackable promotional credits.
In reality:
1. The salesperson illegally added teacher and device discounts to each line. These discounts cannot actually pass identity verification later, which would cause a significant increase in the plan’s total cost.
2. The salesperson claimed that any phone could be traded in for free toward a new one. In fact, devices valued under $230 are essentially worthless and have no trade-in value; any damage further reduces the value drastically. As a result, users’ old phones are taken for $0 trade-in value, while they must pay full price for the new devices.
3. The salesperson promised multiple credits that AT&T does not officially offer, such as phone number transfer credits, loyal customer credits, and trade-in bonus credits. None of these appeared in the actual contract.
4. The contract contains four different signatures, but I only signed one. The rest were forged by the salesperson, including the most important Right to Cancel Disclosure.
5. The salesperson intentionally concealed the true billing details, preventing customers from noticing the real cause of price increases. They claimed that starting from the third month, the monthly fee would become cheaper and stable — which turned out to be completely false.
Overall scam logic:
The scheme works by using fake discounts to offer an unrealistically low plan price, enticing customers to trade in as many devices as possible, forging signatures to hide key contract terms, and then delaying communication until after the 3-day cancellation period and AT&T’s 14-day return policy expire. By the time the inflated bills arrive, the customer has already suffered irreversible financial losses.