A Lesson in Ownership and Insurance

In January I wrote a post on my daughter a href=”https://mydebtfreeroad.com/2011/01/teaching-finances-to-children.html”buying herself a smartphone/a. Originally her intent was to purchase an iTouch, but she decided to purchase a phone instead. She saved her money and picked out her phone, an HTC Evo Shift.br /br /a href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CQYADM-dsB4/TThhXAP9v9I/AAAAAAAAAWM/B-_fAUcWvv0/s1600/evoshift.jpg” imageanchor=”1″ style=”clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;”img border=”0″ height=”200″ src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CQYADM-dsB4/TThhXAP9v9I/AAAAAAAAAWM/B-_fAUcWvv0/s200/evoshift.jpg” width=”162″ //aLike many Tweeners, she puts her phone in her back pocket for easy access. This summer she decided to pull herself up on some monkey bars and the phone slipped from her back pocket landing perfectly on the mulch to put anbsp;diagonalnbsp;crack on the lower part of her screen. To her credit, she had two different phone protectors, but each on has broken while she was using her phone. i{Thenbsp;slide-out keyboard has something to do with the lack of sturdiness of the covers she has purchased.} /iFortunately it was just a crack and the phone continued to work fine.br /br /This past September, Sprint was offering a Total Equipment Protection plan no matter when your phone was purchased. I looked at the insurance and it covered everything! I researched the insurance, had my husband look at it i{because I can miss stuff}/i and decided to sign her phone up for the coverage. Ironically a few days later i{and several months after the crack}/inbsp;her earpiece went out. She could only hear a caller if she used it as a speaker phone. When I looked up this issue, I found out that it is a defect in many of the Evo Shifts. Shortly after the earpiece blowing, the screen started getting finicky.br /br /We decided to head into a Sprint store and see what could be done. The rep told us that it would cost $100 and handed us a business card with information about the insurance company. When I looked at the card it was all in Spanish. i{Que?!?}/ibr /br /After scouring the website again, my husband finally found thenbsp;deductiblenbsp;informationnbsp;i{having it in plain sight apparently was too logical.}/i Because of that little crack, there was a deductible that needed to be met to replace the phone. If she had not had that crack, the phone would have been replaced at no charge. i{So much for TOTAL equipment protection.}/ibr /ibr //ibr /bMy daughter had an important decision: to pay or not to pay?nbsp;/bbr /br /Yes, you read that correctly, my daughter had to decide whether or not bshe /bwanted to pay the deductible to replace her phone. She had to spend bher /bhard-earned money. She learned a valuable lesson in ownership and taking responsibility for damaging her phone.nbsp;She also got a taste of insurance deductibles. If we did not have that coverage she would have had to use one of our old cell phones or pay full price for a new smartphone. i{It costs over $200 if it’s not time to upgrade.}/ibr /br /She decided to pay the $100 and 12 hours later i{mouth agape for the phenomenal speed}/i she had a new phone!br /br /Daughter happy and parents proud for a smart young woman who is on her way to becoming a responsible adult who does not take things for granted.br /br /iNow if I could just get her to clean her room more often…/ibr /br /a href=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” target=”_blank”img alt=”Anna” border=”0″ src=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” //a