- Trump Mobile has changed the pre-order deposit terms and conditions for the T1 phone
- New terms suggest phone may never ship
- It’s the latest in a long line of embarrassments for a product that increasingly looks like vaporware.
The Trump Mobile T1 phone is the gift that keeps on giving, well, as long as you haven’t paid a deposit for one. For everyone else, this is one of the funniest and most baffling stories in the tech space.
As of May, the T1 phone, first announced in June 2025, has yet to ship and has also not met its previous March shipping estimate. So when will people receive it? Well, maybe never.
While around 590,000 potential buyers have paid a $100 deposit (around £75/AU$140) to secure the gold-coloured T1, so far no one appears to have received the phone, and changes to the product’s terms and conditions cast further doubt on whether it will ever ship.
As noted by International Business Times UK, an update to the T1 terms and conditions on April 6 specifies that paying a deposit “is not a purchase, does not constitute acceptance of an order, does not create a contract of sale, does not transfer ownership or title, does not allocate or reserve specific inventory and does not guarantee that a device will be produced or available for purchase.”
It also includes the revealing addition that this payment “provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile subsequently decides, in its sole discretion, to offer the device for sale.”
That warning suggests that the company could choose not to sell the T1 phone at all, and with all mentions of a possible release date now removed from the Trump Mobile website, we probably won’t see this phone anytime soon anyway.
Growing frustration
Right now, potential buyers are understandably unhappy. In fact, some have been for a long time, like 404 Media’s Joseph Cox, for example, who describes the pre-order process as “‘the worst experience I’ve ever faced when purchasing a consumer electronics product.'”
But as the wait drags on, it’s understandable that more and more people are feeling frustrated; penguinz0 recently posted a lengthy YouTube video about his frustrations.
If you’re among those who’ve paid a deposit, in theory you can at least contact Trump Mobile to request a refund, something you should seriously consider doing, especially since the updated terms also state that “device specifications, features, software, hardware components, storage capacities, included accessories, colors and configurations are subject to change before final sale,” so you may not even be buying the phone you made a deposit for.
And even getting a refund may not be easy: while the terms and conditions say you can request one, there are unverified reports of people receiving emails saying the deposit is non-refundable. Who could have seen this coming?
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