My son fell on his cell phone, its LCD cracked and stopped showing any numbers. I pet myself on the back for purchasing an insurance for $5.99 a month when I signed the contract with Verizon Wireless. The salesman told me, “If you have an insurance, just bring the broken phone and we “ll give you a new one rdquo;.

It was a sunny day, the birds were singing, and I went with my son to the closest Verizon Wireless store. The technician looked at the phone and asked, “Do you have insurance rdquo;. I gave him a wide American smile and said, “Sure, and here “s the receipt that we “ve purchased it rdquo;.

The technician returned me the smile and said, “Please call this number ndash; insurance is handled by another firm for us rdquo;. I called that firm, and they told me that I had to pay $50 deductible to get a new phone.

The birds stopped singing. How come? At the time of signing the contract, the salesman never told me that there would be any deductible…Just bring us the broken phone and we “ll give you the new one hellip; rdquo;

I tried to explain this to the salesman behind the counter, and he confirmed that there is deductible charge. He was sorry that I was not informed about it at the time of sale, but it was written in the contract.

I started to see some clouds up in the sky.

“I “m a loyal Verizon customer for over 12 years and you are telling me to read the fine print? Please talk to you manager rdquo;

He did and said, “There is nothing we can do about it rdquo;

“OK, cancel the contract rdquo;

“We do not do it here, please call the 800 number rdquo;

I did, and explained the reasons of my cancellation to the customer service representative, and she also could not do anything for me, and I canceled all my Verizon accounts.

The same day I “ve got AT amp;T cell phones (no, I did not get iPhone ndash; it does not support 3G networks and its Internet connection is slow) with a data plan that is a lot cheaper and faster than Verizon “s.

Did I make the right decision? So far I have bars everywhere, I bought a USB-to-phone cable and configured my phone as a modem, which gives me Internet connectivity from my laptop through this phone at the speed of 1.3mbps when I “m located in the 3G covered area (in the EDGE area it “s slow).

I “m on GSM network now, which means that when I “m in Europe, I can use the phone with another SIM card (this does not mean I “ll do this as Skype is a lot cheaper).

A week after I cancelled the accounts, I “ve got an automatically generated “We want you back rdquo; mail from Verizon offering me $25 off my two of the cell phones if I “ll come back. Ironically, it ‘s the same amount ($50) that I was asking about in the store. Sorry, it “s a little too late. You had a chance to keep me as a customer for $50 bucks and you blew it. Apparently, Verizon Wireless does not know that it costs 20 times more to return the customer than to keep it.