Like I said, just threaten to switch. I like to do it nonchalantly and say something like 'Yea my neighbor has Verizon, he says he loves it and I've been thinking about switching. Maybe I'll head over there when we're done here'
My mom bought her first smartphone a couple of weeks ago at a local verizon store. Her and my dad have used each others upgrades and weren't sure if she could even get a new phone, the salesman also seemed like he wasn't sure. It looked like she wasn't going to be able to get it, when I said something like, 'well att will buy out your contract, we should go check them out'. He said 'hang on' and immediately went over to his computer. In about a minute, he was like 'ok we're all good, I got it straightened out and we can get you the upgrade'. Lol, it was pretty funny to see him immediately fix the issue that he couldn't seem to figure out before.