Not so. I just traded in/upgraded (on a Verizon contract, but AT the Apple Store; maybe that affects this… but still paying Apple directly) and they handed me the new phone and had FedEx send a trade-in mailer that I had a while to send back with my trade-in.

Ah but you told them at the time of purchase that you were going to do the trade-in. As I said. It’s different if you want to do the trade in later, which at that point looks more like “sell an old random phone back to Apple for some credits”