Beware of the new cell phone insurance deductibles!

I just had an upsetting experience with Verizon Wireless.

I thought that I had insurance on my cell phone and it turns out that I don't. I distinctly remember telling the Verizon customer service rep that I DID want insurance. I have been with them since 6/14/2006 and have always had insurance. Worse yet, he told me that since I didn't get the insurance within the first 30 days after getting my new phone, it was not available.

Well, to tell you the truth, I think Verizon did me a favor. I think that I will just self-insure my phone -- just put 10 dollars per month in a jar and if I ever lose or break my phone, just go to ebay and get another one.

I have never had a cell phone broken, lost or stolen, so I am thinking that I will come out way ahead by self-insuring.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that cell phone insurance is nothing but a scam.

I have been paying the $7.00 per month insurance premium to and since renewing my contract (and buying a new phone)just under 2 years ago. My first experience with the insurance worked out fine. I was cross-country skiing in my neighborhood, missed an ice patch and fell on the phone. It was replaced without undue hassle and without a deductible. Everything was fine until two days ago when I was stranded in the hot sun in the Nevada desert and went to call for rescue. The phone was dead! No particular reason, it just died! I hiked out and remain alive. Nevertheless, I needed to have the phone replaced, so I called Sprint and was told for the first time that there would be a $50 deductible if I claimed a replacement under the insurance. What happened here? The first time I called on the insurance, Sprint replaced the phone without charging a deductible, now they seem to have changed the rules. Was the deductible added to my contract without my consent or notification? Since my contract with Sprint expires in a few days, I will borrow a friends phone until then and then get a new phone from a new carrier. Sprint sucks as a wireless company anyway. Service at my house has been intermittent and spotty everywhere. They change their billing system, fail to send me a bill on time and then charge me a late fee. Well, Sprint has been bleeding customers at increasing speed for the last few years. If the bleeding continues, the company soon will die as dead as my phone. I'm happy to be a part of company's customer hemorrhage. All I have to say to Sprint is goodbye and good riddance.

Have 4 phones with verizon daughter dropped high end phone in puddle after 1 year we have no insurance verizon replaced for $25 because they consider us premium customers. Now thats service!!

I ran into this today. Sprint talked me into the insurance ($7 a month) after the first phone they sent me died three days after I got it. Claimed if it broke they would fix it for free. Fast forward to today - I dropped it and cracked the display. Called Sprint - very nice lady in India tells me that yes I qualify for FREE repair! Cool! So off I went to the store as she directed me to. Store employee laughs at me and says they changed their policy "Monday". They no longer offer repair of any kind with the insurance and my only option is to contact the third party insurer and pay $50. The insurance company lady is ready to take my credit card info and reads me back my order - for a refurbished phone! I said oh no! I want a new phone as promised. She said no new phones were in the warehouse. I said I'd wait - how long would it be til more came in? She said she did not know. I said I'd call back. The Sprint guy is still laughing - telling me their policy is to only send out refurbished phones. So Sprint lied, the insurance company lied, and I am stuck with a broken phone. Lovely. I will be following your plan from now on -makes much more sense! Thanks.

Wow EZ Protect is a joke i have had insurance for day 1 and now they are telling me that i never paid a dime for the insurance so i am having a hard time getting another cell phone this will be 13 days for me now the company suck big time.

I need to insure my Cingular Black Jack. Can anyone direct me in the right direction?? please email danny@mychm.com

I got ripped off too! The Signal insurance is a joke. I too had to return 2 phones. They sent me the same model but not the same extended life battery, like what came with my cell phone, so in turn my speed talk plan is useless because my battery is always dead?!!! Buyer beware. P.s. Where are the watchdogs for us consumers getting ripped off??????????? Lou

Scam Alert! Beware of the so called "protection" plan offered by NCOA (National Cellular Owners Association). Their services usually being offered when you purchase online through "Wirefly", "Inphonic, Inc.", "Cellular Chioces" and probably some other major online retailers. They lure you by relatively low cost of $49 a year and "no deductible". Here is what happens in reality. I have purchase 2 brand new cell phones Motorola E815 through Wirefly in June 2005 along with the "protection subscription" from NCOA. In year 2005 everything went all right with the phones and in June 2006 I have renewed my protection with NCOA for another year. When 1 of my phones suddenly stopped working properly (the main screen went blank. After obtaining approval from the NCOA I have sent it to their repair facility in MI. Needless to say that few weeks later I was notified that my phone has a "water damage" (wonder where that came from?) and therefore can not be repaired or replaced under the existing protection plan. Since I needed a replacement phone from some other source that the insurance company I went to the website of the retailer who sold me the phones. On their website they have a Q&A page specifically about how NCOA coverage works, and one of the questions specifically answeres: WHAT IF I CHANGE MY WIRELESS DEVICE? The answer is that I simply have to notify NCOA and they will extend the coverage onto the new cellular phone. Keeping that in mind I then purchased a brand new LG-VX8300 from the same service provider as the previous one (Verizon Wireless) and in a couple of weeks after the activation I sent an e-mail to NCOA (by the way, e-mail is the only way you can communicate with them. Isn't that nice?!) just to formally let them know about the changes and requesting the extention of the coverage onto new cell phone. In a week!!! after my couple of e-mails to them I finally was informed that transfer of the coverage is not possible. When I referred them to the abovementioned Q&A from the online retailer they told me that they have nothing to do with it and bear no responsibility for their website. And now here I am with my new phone without any protection. Verizon can only offer one through Assurion that can only be purchased within 15 days from the activation, which I missed while exchanging e-mails with NCOA. I also found out that NCOA doesn't want to have anything to do with me after collecting my money for practically nothing. I hope this posting will prevent others from repeating my mistake and allow everybody to understand that NCOA=SCAM. By the way, those who promote their services are their accomplices since they give you false information.

Hi, I started a blog on myspace to help folks understand the "cell phone insurance" scam. I have been blogging there. Actually I found a cool site that offers a "cell phone insurance alternate" They products are call CellYos. Check out myspace.com/CellPhoneHell, or go to CellYos.com The devices are really kewl, and cost about the same as one month of "Cell Phone Insurance"

I purchased my sony s710a last year around the same time. It was at the time and still is a 400+ dollar phone. Well today a year later I decided this ones had enough and I called cingular to get it replaced. I expected it to be either replaced or something of similar monetary value be substituted in its place. Well to my suprise they told me they would replace it only with something with similar features. My option with the customer service representative was one phone the samsung d807. Though a nice phone its less than half of the price I paid for mine, and its not nearly as cool. I found this unacceptable so I asked to speak to a manager. The manager on hand after a brief but cool rebutall that this wasnt comparable told me that she would give me a one time offer of a moto sliver. She also went as far as to say that if I didnt take it today that I wouldnt get that deal aga in. This is clearly another example of the big company running over the little guy. I wouldnt have paid the 4.99 for 12 months and then the 50 deductable if I knew they were going to give me something half the price. Thats just outrageous. I wasnt to know if anyone here has had a similar problem and what they did about it. Im the aggressive type that just wont take stuff like this. There is no way in the world I will be keeping cingular when my contract ends if they dont make good and fix this problem.

AMEN on the charges for cell phones. I recently went thru that with Cingular and had to fight to keep from paying the 50.00 charge for a refurbished phone that was of poor quality and had to send three back to them. I finally cancelled all of it including my account with cingular as the customer service was terrible. The first phone was dead on arrival the second was left on my door so they say and living in an apartment I didn't receive it or sign for it. Then they told me I couldn't receive anymore as my address was invalid so I had to have it shipped from Fedex to a UPS store and pay 5.00 to receive it. Then the phone would turn off after about 40 minutes of use. I sent that one back as well and just bought a new Motorola Razor and started over again. I will  never use Cingulars insurance company again. Good idea on the putting money aside, besidesI went without a cell period from Dec. 22 to Jan. 12th. Glad to see others besides myself tired of things like this.