Don’t Worry, Your Old iPhone Trade-in Has Not Been Canceled

Something appears to have gone awry in Apple’s internal tracking and messaging systems. Despite whatever email you may have received about your iPhone trade-in, it’s highly unlikely that it’s retroactively been canceled.

First reported by MacRumors, hundreds of iPhone 15 customers in the US received emails this morning telling them that iPhone trade-ins have suddenly been “canceled” and that their paid-off loan will “resume” as a result.

In many cases, these emails appear to be way behind the times, with some folks perplexed as to why a trade-in that was successfully completed last September when buying a new iPhone 15 is being questioned over six months later.

Reports of the emails have surfaced, not only on the MacRumors forums, but also on Reddit, X, and Threads.

From what we’ve seen, it appears the message is only being sent to those who are members of the iPhone Upgrade Program, which allows iPhone owners to easily trade up to a new iPhone every year. The program has had its problems in the past, usually during new iPhone launches, but this is the first we’ve heard of any widespread mid-cycle glitches like this.

The e-mail has a subject line of “Your iPhone trade-in has been canceled” and leads with “We never received your iPhone,” advising customers that “The associated loan on this iPhone will resume.”

There’s every indication that the email is legitimately from Apple rather than a phishing attack, but it’s likely the result of some process on Apple’s back-end servers mistakenly spitting out these cancelation emails to a number of customers that they don’t apply to — possibly even to every member of the iPhone Upgrade Program.

The iPhone Upgrade Program is currently only available in the US, UK, and China. We haven’t seen any indications of these messages going out to anybody outside of the US, although it’s not always certain where the folks who are reporting these are posting from.

While it’s certainly possible that a message like this may be legit for anybody who recently traded in an iPhone, it’s unlikely that Apple has only now realized it lost a whole pallet of iPhones from last fall and is now going after its customers to recoup those costs.

While there are unfortunate cases where iPhone trade-ins get lost or even stolen, it’s unlikely it would take Apple seven months to notice this. Plus, many of the customers who are receiving these emails reported physically handing their iPhones to an Apple Store employee in person months ago.

Some of those reporting the problem also say that the status in the Apple Store app and online order status also show the trade-in status as “canceled,” further reinforcing that the email actually came from Apple and is the result of an error rather than a scam. One Redditor contacted Apple support, who confirmed that everything was fine with their trade-in and revealed that they’ve “been getting a lot of these calls today.”

Along with several other publications, we’ve reached out to see what Apple has to say about this and will report back if we hear anything. If you’ve received this email and are concerned about it, you can follow the instructions in the message to contact Apple, but it’s likely not worth taking the time unless you’ve only recently traded in your iPhone.