I purchased my own phone through a third party. It did not need a sim card or anything. I simply took the one out of my current phone and put it in the new one. I cannot find anywhere in Verizon's rules, regulations, policies etc that there is a fee related to doing this. I was first told it must be because I financed the phone (which I didn't). The next excuse is then "well it's just a typical phone industry fee". So moral of the story is Verizon is making up charges that don't actually follow their policy's etc and scamming/incorrectly charging their customers .?