RadioShack's Protection Plan is Nothing but a Ripoff

Just as the title says, if you ever plan on purchasing your phone from RadioShack, go ahead, but I'd suggest you not to go with their protection plan. Long story short they lie about the services they provide and the plan is useless 85% of the time when you actually need it. Just save your money.

February 2011

I purchased my phone in in February last year. At that time, the sales associate explained to me how the protection plan basically covers EVERYTHING for me, except theft or loss of course. They even told me that water damage was included. And supposedly, if I ever had any problems, just bring it into the store and they'll give me a new one. So for $100 I decided to get it.

Summer 2011

My phone was acting up and my wifi pretty much stopped working. I don't remember why, but I ended up getting a replacement from my carrier since I was still under the warranty. During this time I did pop into a RadioShack to ask about my phone/the protection plan and they basically told me that I should've just went to RadioShack first and they would've just replaced it for me right there and then.

Earlier this year

I don't remember what was wrong with my phone, but I had it sent in. Anyways, basically at this point, I found out that my plan does not cover any of those things that the aforementioned sale associate told me. It doesn't cover water damage, physical damage (apparently), or anything that I would need it for basically, except hardware issues. Well..first of all, the guy told me that it basically covers everything, even if wears and tears if I just wanted to replace it just for that alone. At this point I had the option of prorating it and getting about $50 back, and I just felt so ripped off already, but I decided to keep it anyways, in case I do encounter any hardware issues.

September 2012

The screen of my phone basically went crazy and I couldn't use it at all. For about a month or two, the screen would freeze up or spazz out and I'd have to lock and unlock it to get it back to work. After a while the colors just got so distorted and the phone became useless. I had it sent in. They sent it back. No problems with their service plan at this point.

October 2012

Basically now. I sent my phone in because I had two problems.
1) For some reason after getting my phone back, the top part of my touch screen stopped working. It did get annoying because there were a lot of things I couldn't do since the screen wouldn't respond there.

2) Dust got into my front camera some months ago and I forgot to mention it the last time I sent it in. Since I figured that they covered wears and tears and such, this should be no problem for me.

Far from it. I just got my phone back today and basically they did nothing to fix it because they said that it's beyond repairable/not covered under the plan. They said refused to fix it because they said that there's physical damage and said there's a crack on the screen. There is no crack on my screen at all. I admit there's a scratch on the surface of my screen, but it's not even a deep one. And this scratch was from a month or two ago, when the dust has been sitting there for the past half a year. And even if there was a crack, I'm not asking them to fix it. It has nothing to do with my problem.

I argued that there clearly isn't a crack on my phone, and he said that they have pictures on file that showed that there are cracks..wtf? And when I asked him to email it over, he couldn't do it. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. My phone was sent back without its battery -__- But I'll give them credit for sending me a check to buy a new battery excluding shipping costs.

Just for the record, here's my phone. Crack-free.

Bottom line is that you can do so much more with that $100. I could've done so much more. If they had just come right out with what they actually offered in their plan then I wouldn't be so frustrated. I'll give them credit where it's due, but it still doesn't change the fact that they're liars about the services that they provide. Not to mention they don't own up to their responsibilities and dare to say that I have a crack on my screen when it's in my hands and I should know better. They can't even send me the picture that they have. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a picture of someone else's cracked phone.