Monday Morning Rant

"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck) 07/31/2017 at 10:01 • Filed to: None

2

20

It used to be that when you broke your phone, you went to your local Verizon store to file a claim. They would pull a new phone out of their inventory, set it up for you, and then you would be on your way. All that has changed. Now you file a claim and then wait a few days while the insurance company sends you a new (probably refurbished) phone.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

We filed a claim for a broken phone over two weeks ago. Every 48 hours, we’ve received an “update” that told us the phone was still on backorder and it would be another three to five business days before we could get a new phone. We finally got fed up with it and gave them a call.

Our options were to a) wait for the phone; b) accept a cheaper phone as a replacement; c) pay additional money for a better phone because all of their stock of equivalent phones were also on backorder; or d) go buy a phone and get reimbursed by the insurance company. I decided to pursue option d.

Step one was to call all of the local Verizon stores and see which one had the same phone in stock. I drove to the closest one, a Verizon authorized reseller, and asked to buy the phone. They wouldn’t sell it to me. To be fair, they would sell it to me if I had cash, but they wouldn’t accept a either a debit card or a credit card. Their store had been the victim of fraud so many times that they will only do business on contract or for cash. My only choice was to wait for Monday when I could go to the bank or find a place that would issue a large cashier’s check. Both options were bad. The sales guy directed me to the Verizon corporate store.

I explained the situation to the sales lady at the corporate store. She said she would be happy to sell me a phone outright. Then she disappeared to the back to get the phone out of inventory. She came back with the phone, but her manager was the one who started talking. I learned that Verizon won’t sell you a phone if you have another on contract. Since we have a phone on contract, the only way they would sell me one outright was to pay off the contract on the other phone.

What?

Yeah. They wanted all of the money for the phone on contract before they would let me buy a separate phone. That would mean I would have to pay for two phones outright.

So, I decided to game the system.

I asked them how much it would be to add a line to our account. $20. How much would it be to drop that line? No charge. One-month minimum. Excellent.

Please add one line to our account and sell me that phone for that line. No problem, sir!

Now the insurance company will reimburse me for the phone I just purchased, we don’t have to wait for another phone on backorder, and we don’t have to pay off the phone on contract. It only cost me an extra $20.

Win!

adamftw > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:07

0

Damn, thats a good way to do it. I filed a claim on a Thursday and got my replacement iPhone on Monday, sucks they’re making you wait that long. A weekend was a nice break without a phone (mine 100% bricked) but I can’t imagine two weeks.

TheRealBicycleBuck > adamftw 07/31/2017 at 10:11

0

The timing was especially bad for us since my wife was out of state when it happened. I’m thankful our daughter has a phone and was with her so we could communicate as they traveled. Leaving us without a phone for two weeks was just bad business. They didn’t even tell us we could get reimbursed until I called them about it on Saturday.

diplodicus > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:17

0

You can add it to your homeowners insurance and they just reimburse you for the purchase of the new phone.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:26

0

This is exactly why I stopped buying my phone’s through Verizon. The dumbfuckery you have to deal with just to buy a phone is insane. Now I buy all my phones unlocked directly from the manufacturer.

TheRealBicycleBuck > diplodicus 07/31/2017 at 10:34

0

That’s a good idea, but our insurance doesn’t cover cell phones. “Contents” are covered, but are subject to the primary deductible which is way more than the cost of a cell phone. I can add a personal property rider, but they will not cover any electronics.

We probably need to start shopping for another insurance company.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:35

0

That’s really bad. AT&T overnights you a new phone right away, then you have a week to send back the broken one.

TheRealBicycleBuck > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 07/31/2017 at 10:35

0

That’s going to be our approach moving forward.

Textured Soy Protein > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:35

0

Phone insurance through the carriers is always terrible. Actually, buying any phone through a carrier is terrible and nobody should do it because they’re screwing you hard if you do, but that’s another story. Sort of.

Some of the phone manufacturers are offering their own repair/replacement policies when you buy a new phone. HTC gives you one free replacement due to accidental damage in the first 12 months, and ZTE has a $79 deductible to to repair/replace accidental damage for 24 months.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:38

1

And you wonder why people hate insurance companies.

Make no mistake insurance companies are here to make money, if they paid out every claim and didn’t make it a pain in the ass then they wouldn’t make money.

TheRealBicycleBuck > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 07/31/2017 at 10:42

0

That’s the way it’s supposed to work with Asurion, the company providing Verizon’s insurance. The problem is that the phone my wife picked is on backorder and all of the equivalent phones are on backorder too.

PS9 > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:42

3

Verizon

Now there’s your problem.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Textured Soy Protein 07/31/2017 at 10:45

0

This assumes that a replacement phone is available. The issue is that everything is on backorder and they won’t provide a replacement from available stock in a local store.

TheRealBicycleBuck > PS9 07/31/2017 at 10:48

1

It’s not just Verizon. All of the carriers are using third-party insurance providers. It’s the insurance providers that are being a pain in the ass.

We switched to Verizon because of problems we had with AT&T. They screwed us on a couple of phones years ago and there are a few places we travel where Verizon has coverage and AT&T does not. It sucked having to borrow someone’s Verizon phone to make a call.

404 - User No Longer Available > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:50

0

I’m not even sure why phone insurance is a thing. All it did was open a loophole for fraud:

- Perp takes out a phone on a $0 contract with insurance

- Sell the phone on Craigs/Kijiji/Whatever

- Report the phone as lost, victim’s phone gets put on the national blacklist

- Perp gets new phone and money, victim is out money and gets a brick with the carrier telling them to go pound sand

TheRealBicycleBuck > 404 - User No Longer Available 07/31/2017 at 10:54

0

Insurance is a thing because most phones are bought on contract. It provides the carriers a way to get reimbursed even when there is fraud.

Fraud is getting harder since the carriers are tracking the serial numbers on the phones. Someone who gets defrauded has recourse by filing with the police and taking the person to small claims court.

I went through something similar when one of my phones was stolen.

Textured Soy Protein > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 10:55

0

Well yeah, they need to have one in stock, but both HTC and ZTE will ship you a phone first and then let you return yours afterward. Which is fine, as long as your phone is at least somewhat operable. HTC specifies they do next-day shipping, ZTE doesn’t list their shipping speed. Both of them do require a hold on your credit card. But the point is, these policies are included with the phone, you don’t have to pay some monthly fee for insurance.

Both I and my wife have unlocked Motorola phones on Total Wireless, which is Tracfone’s prepaid brand that uses the Verizon network.

My sister asked for my help in buying a phone. She’s still on my parents’ plan and was eligible for an upgrade. I told her to get an unlocked phone, but she wanted to go to the Verizon store and see her options. Without knowing what her cost would be, I suggested some phones to look at. She called me from the store where they were going to sell her a Moto Z Force Droid for $30/month for 24 months, i.e. $720! That was with the upgrade pricing.

I had her buy an unlocked ZTE Axon 7 with the exact same specs for $369 from Newegg.

Point is, now that the carriers have essentially quit subsidizing phones and instead slap people on payment plans with weird contracts and family plans designed to make it harder to leave, there’s all the more reason to go to cheap prepaid plans and unlocked phones.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 11:08

0

When we replaced my sisters iPhone 5s (which was on its last legs) with an iPhone 7 we had to go to the apple store to buy an unlocked model because even buying it outright from Verizon was going to make her line cost $20 more per month. Buying them without carrier ties and just dropping your sim card in works so much better and is cheaper in the end.

Mercedes Streeter > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 12:00

1

Sprint’s not too much better. Sprint poached my parents from Verizon with the tasty offer of a BOGO Galaxy S8 and the promise to pay off the old VZW phones.

Well, after they signed the dotted line Sprint was like “cool, so just give us the phones now and we’ll pay them off in two months”. Verizon was like “pay us in one month or we’ll screw your credit”.

I ended up selling the stupid things on eBay for half the price Sprint was going to offer and my parents had to pick up the rest of the purchase price to protect their credit.

Oh and the Galaxy S8 is hilariously fragile...so much that both of their new phones got cracked (through thick cases and on both sides) in less than a month. Sprint basically told them to pound sand because they didn’t get the insurance and Samsung said “sure, we’ll repair the devices for several hundreds, lol”.

And they wonder why I buy nothing but unlocked phones and don’t go with the big carriers...

TheRealBicycleBuck > Mercedes Streeter 07/31/2017 at 13:21

0

“Oh and the Galaxy S8 is hilariously fragile...so much that both of their new phones got cracked (through thick cases and on both sides) in less than a month.”

My daughter’s S7 cracked while in the case. We had to wait for the insurance on that one. It was too expensive to repair without it.

Trimble is a company that makes high-end ruggedized data collectors for GPS and survey. We’ve used their equipment for years. I was at a conference when they introduced their smallest handheld. The guy on stage tossed it down the center aisle where it landed with an audible thud. The audience gasped. He asked someone to pick it up and hand it back to him. He showed us it was no worse for wear. I’ve had clients drop their GPS into the mud, then wash it off with bottled water and keep collecting data.

It might be bulky, but I’d pay good money for a phone that had that level of protection.

Corkscrew'd > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/31/2017 at 20:55

0

This is why I keep my old phones, and only buy unlocked phones.

Had an LG G3 that I was paying for get a mobo issue and crap out, so I bought a friends older Samsung S5 for $50 and then had Verizon activate it, all the while getting bombarded with requests to check out the newer LG phones. Then I bought a Moto X Pure unlocked for cheap and then had them activate that and deactivate the S5 after I was finished paying off the LG.

So now, should something go wrong with the Moto, I can just reactivate the S5 and then go shopping for another unlocked phone without having to worry about paying off the newer one.

They can’t win if you’re not playing their game lol!