Deceptive advertising by cricket or is this expected?

I recently completed the 2-month $60/mo requirement for an iPhone 16e promotion. I intended to downgrade to a cheaper plan for month 3, but got stuck in a billing "lock-in" due to the following:

• Early Billing: Cricket charged my card for the $60 plan 2 days before the new cycle actually began, preventing a last-minute downgrade.

• Support Refusal: Customer service cited "policy" and refused to manually adjust the plan for month 3

• BridgePay Trap: I enrolled in BridgePay to delay the full payment, hoping to change the plan during the extension. Instead, the system blocked all plan changes while BridgePay was active.

Result: I was forced to pay for a 3rd month at the $60 rate despite my efforts to downgrade.

Question: Has anyone else dealt with this? Is there any way to escalate this for a partial credit, or is this just how Cricket enforces an extra month of high-tier service?