I had heard about this deal about 9 months ago, but screwed up and thought my SE 1st gen was a 5S. Anyway, if you have an old Tmobile iPhone 5S laying around and have a spare line, pop it into the 5S. Then you’ll need to wait many months – 6-9 months or even more (and still no guarantees at that point,) but eventually, you can ask them if there are any promotions on that line/phone and they should give you an offer to trade in the 5S for a free current SE (no tax, no credits, no EIP.)
I wouldn’t go out and buy a 5S on Ebay to do this but if you have one laying around, give it a shot. I just popped 3 sim cards into 3 x 5S’es and I’ll let you guys know in 6-9 months if I get an offer to upgrade them.
I have two iPhone 5S’s sitting in a drawer (can’t seem to just throw away a perfectly fine device).
How does one get extra lines (SIM Cards) for this to add to their T-Mobile Plan without incurring extra costs?
I’d love to be able to take advantage of this and get an offer to upgrade them to iPhone SE3’s.
The point of the promo is for them to upgrade you off a crappy phone to use on their network, so you’ll need a spare line.
It’s not just any junk phone, the point of the offer is 2G/3G network shutdown compensation. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have all done it for 3G, now only T-Mobile is left for 2G. The worst part of this offer is the unknown about of time it takes for T-Mobile to detect your old phone, which means unless you’ve gotten a free line from them that is not being used it’s not practical for anyone.