This morning, Google emailed me to tell me the Pixel 10 Pro I traded-in to purchase the Pixel 11 Pro was rejected. As a result, it is returning the old device to me and will charge another $600–the value of that trade-in–to my payment method.<\/p>\n
What?<\/p>\n
“We inspected your trade-in device, and its value is less than the estimate,” the email explains. “As you requested, your device will be returned to you … To reverse your instant trade-in credit, your payment method will be charged $600.00 plus taxes if applicable.”<\/p>\n
Aside from the “as you requested” bit–I don’t recall even getting that option–this seems straightforward enough: I believe that the phone I traded in is in near mint condition, but Google (or whatever Google partner) must have found some defect I did not see or know about. Surely, the email explains this.<\/p>\n
It does not.<\/p>\n
According to the email, I reported the device condition as:<\/p>\n
\tDevice turns On
No cracks
Factory reset<\/p>\n
But the email explains that the device condition is:<\/p>\n
\tDevice turns On
No cracks
Factory reset<\/p>\n
I’ll give you a second to spot the differences. Right. There are none.<\/p>\n
But it gets weirder.<\/p>\n
Based on my description of the device condition, Google estimated that the value for trade-in was $600. Based on the assessment it (or its partner) did, however, the value for trade-in was … wait for it … $600.<\/p>\n
$600 is not less than $600. $600 is $600. This phone is exactly what I said it was, and Google’s assessment agrees. Regardless, they are sending it back and have charged me an additional $600.<\/p>\n
But it gets weirder still.<\/p>\n
When I click a “View details” button in the email, it opens a page on the the Google Store website to view the details of this transaction. It has Trade-in initiated, Trade-in kit shipped, Old device received, and Device assessed sections, and the latter explains that “Your device’s value matches the estimate. You’ll keep the instant trade-in credit applied at checkout.” But that is not what happened according to the email I received.<\/p>\n
This seems like a weird screw-up, and while it doesn’t change my opinion of the phone–or Google, for that matter–it does upend my desire and ability to review this device. So I visited the Orders page on the Google Store website to see what that said. There, I found that I still had “$600 off this item with instant trade-in credit” plus the $308.19 in Google Store credit I received from two different promotions. But there was some screwy math, too: The total price of the phone was $1099, and so that should have been about $520 after the trade (and plus whatever taxes). But it listed the adjusted price as $1699, which is $1099 (the price of the new phone) plus $600 (the trade-in value of the old phone). And that is, of course, incorrect. Like everything else noted above.<\/p>\n
So I requested a return.<\/p>\n
Google lets you return a phone within 15 days of its arrival, and this phone arrived here in PA exactly one week ago…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning, Google emailed me to tell me the Pixel 10 Pro I traded-in to purchase the Pixel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[18,1391,19,17,279,259693,1560,82],"class_list":["post-657826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-eire","tag-google-pixel","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-pixel-11-pro","tag-premium","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117163084019494899","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}