[NEXT]

I will agree with you that there needs to be changes made to the insurance on the phones. I think the plans cost 5.99 per month, but if something happens to your phone, you have to pay a deductible. The overall cost of the phone is what is used to determine what your deductible will be. For instance, if you have a Milestone X2, your deductible will be either $150 or $175. Can't remember it right off the top of my head.

The reason the deductibles are so high is that if we spend $550 to get a phone and a customer only has that phone for 2 months and breaks it, that $5.99 you paid for those 2 months will not cover the amount our company lost on that phone. Basically, we gave you a $550 phone for 0.01, so there's already a $549.99 subsidy on that one device. Sure, you may have a $40 rate plan plus the $30 data package, so if you paid that for 2 months, you have paid $140 +0.01 for the phone, still leaving a $400 subsidy. Add on the $5.99 for 2 months and that subsidy still sits at $388. So if a customer loses their phone 2 months into a contract, if we just give the phone away, we have lost $388 on that phone alone, not counting the $550 we are giving away by giving you a new one. So in short, the deductible is the only way we can not lose our ass on these phones.

Oh I understand that.