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Insurance Confusion and Corporate Stores

8 months ago I purchased my Droid 4 from Verizon, which has truly been a great phone with good service.

This past weekend, I dropped my purse (with my phone inside) which subsequently cracked my screen into a spidery web of separation. Please note that I had it tucked securely in my bag, with the heavy duty cover on. Somehow in the right series of unfortunate events, the screen cracked. Well I didn't overly worry because 8 months ago when I bought my phone, I also plunked down $200 for insurance.

At the time of purchase, I was home (in Ohio) in what I assumed to be a Verizon Store, because everything about it advertised "Verizon" including the staff having Verizon Wireless business cards. It was even called a Verizon Wireless store. Today, I found out that this is NOT the case. The store was actually a Cellular Connection store that supplies Verizon Wireless. This means the store was NOT corporate.

The difference being, when they offer you options within the store these options do not necessarily come from Verizon, but rather the store itself. When I bought my insurance for my phone, I paid for a one time fee instead of a monthly, because I share an account with another person and I did not want them to have to pay for this. However, the monthly fee would have provided me with Verizon's insurance, instead of the one time fee providing me with Cellular Connection Insurance, a fact that was not made clear. Now I have to figure out a way to get my cell phone to walk about to Ohio, and back to that store in order to process my claim to fix my phone.

There are other cellular connection stores in Illinois, just ones that are three hour trip.

I am very disappointed in this situation and I hope that others can learn from my tale and always ask for a corporate store!

Comments

rcschnoor

Keep in mind sometimes these secondary stores have a better replacement policy than the insurance you get thru Verizon(the provider Verizon uses in Assurion) and at a considerable discount. Quite often there is no deductible, not the case with Assurion which I believe is $100 for a smartphone.

I see stories on these boards all the time with incredulous people yelling about the deductible they have to pay on a replacement phone with Assurion.

ericawhitney

I paid for the same exact insurance when I originally purchased my Iphone5, figuring if anything ever happened I would be covered without having to come up with a another large sum of money down. I let them know that the phone was malfunctioning( same store I purchased the insurance from), that it wouldn't power off, they went ahead and ordered another phone-- course I wasn't informed that I wouldn't get one same day in store. They order it and fail to call me to let me know it even came in, a week and a half later. I call today and go into pick up the phone, now originally I was told if the phone was to break you would pay a restocking fee of $40 to get the new phone, after waiting about an hour or so, the man tells me ok your total today is $155.00. Shocked I ask, why in the world would I have to pay $155 when I paid for the insurance up front. CLEARLY it was all a scam. I plan on terminating all of my lines with Verizon after being a loyal customer for a number of years now. They need to take action against this cellular connection place that is offering fraudulent insurance and calling themselves "Verizon".

unknown

You do realize that Asurion insurance is the same insurance ALL carriers use. So you're not escaping Asurion insurance by going to another carrier. And they require a deductible which is clearly spelled out when you get the insurance. Let me ask you, does you're car insurance have a deductible? How abut your health care insurance? Or how about your home owners insurance? I bet they do.

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