I meant to update this information.. At the time, there must have been a glitch at the Tmo website, the very next day every thing was fine and ended up upgrading-in store.
I'm still frustrated with the fees and especially the way Assurion does business-and that was my main headache while writing that post at the time because I couldn't (still can't) understand why Assurion was going to charge me a deductible when I'm sending in the defective phone and getting a refurbished one. It's not nice and not fair to the consumer.