It all started when my wife and I both had phone troubles at the same time. On mine, the battery was swollen and the back of the phone had cracked; my phone case was the only thing holding it together. I was able to replace that Pixel 3 with a Pixel 7a through AT&T for a really great deal.
Meanwhile, my wife's iPhone 8 died, and so she fell back on her old iPhone 6. That one works fine, but is kind of a potato in terms of performance, and doesn't receive the latest iOS updates, so we needed to get her an upgrade. Great, I figured, I could get another deal through AT&T for the new model. Also, I could finally transfer her line from her parents' phone plan onto mine (we got married two years ago, and I never got around to it, oops).
Queue a whole run-around where she and I repeatedly went into various AT&T stores, only to get deflected each time by hapless employees, all of whom give a different reason for why I can't do this line transfer. First, she has to get added to her parents' account as an authorized user so they can transfer her. I call my father-in-law, who is the account owner; he tries to do the authorized user thing online, and it doesn't work. Mother-in-law also tries, to no avail.
They finally get the authorized user thing sorted out, so wife and I go into a store to try to do the line transfer. Well now, apparently, there was too much account activity that day (another family member got a phone upgrade), so we have to wait a few days and try again. Finally, yesterday, father-in-law gets on the phone with AT&T, adds me to the call, and we get the transfer done.
Well now that apparently jacked up my account profile. I log in, can't find either my phone line or my wife's and I have to hunt through old emails to find the billing number to re-add the wireless line to my online AT&T account.
Great, now I can order a new phone for the wife. I put in the order online, and set a nearby store as the pickup spot. The store cancels the order because they don't have any of the iPhone SE in stock, but when I get there, they suggest trying a different store. I call another store down the road, they say they'll check stock and call me back. Well, they never call me back, so I walk into that store to say I want to buy a new phone for my wife's line.
The employee tells me that I can't upgrade a phone line until it's been on the account for at least two months.
At present, I put in a new online order with instructions to just ship it to my apartment. We'll see if their computer system can sort this one out.