Hello all, new to the forums here and had a few questions for ya'll, if you can't guess I'm from the south.

First off I'm finally able to get out of my Sprint/Nextel contract and looking for a new phone/carrier and I've been leaning towards Verizon and the Droid or Eris. I first looked at an iPhone since I've always had an el-cheapo phone and mp3 player and figured this would be a good fit for me. However, since I don't live in a metropolis AT&T doesn't have 3G here so Verizon seemed to be a better fit. US Cellular also has good service here but not 3G and also only really have Blackberries for smart phones to my knowledge. Just a bit of background on my situation.

Since I'm leaning towards the Droid I've been looking into where I could buy it from and Walmart, through LetsTalk.com, and Amazon both have it for $19.99 with a new contract, which I will be getting. I'm a bit leary of this though since its still 199.99 after rebates in store. My concern is that if something goes wrong with the phone I won't be able to take it to the Verizon store as I didn't buy it from them. Considering the expensive plan I'll be going with I'm a little worried about having a problem and having to send it back in to through the on-line company I bought it from and waiting for a replacement/fix. Has anyone had any experience buying through these companies and/or having to return anything? I'm also worried of violated the extra stipulations from buying them from a 3rd party and incurring the $250 fee. Any advice on this issue?

I've also heard that Verizon has told people that buying it on-line from certain companies like LetsTalk.com voids the warranty, which seems crazy and could just be rumor.

I've heard of a few people on here negotiating deals through Verizon and getting credit for the difference between Best Buy's price of $100, $120 last I checked. Anyone had any luck with this? If so any advice on how to accomplish this? I may try to negotiate with the Verizon store here but I doubt I have any luck.

I guess I'm pretty set on the Droid, unless anyone has some reasons I should go a different route, but I'm just torn on how I should buy it. If buying it from the Verizon store will ensure better service then maybe I'm better to fork out a 1000% price difference for piece of mind.

Sorry if this seems jumbled or hard to understand, think I'm overloaded from all the searching for answers on this. Two year contracts and sizable investments in the phone and plans are stressing me out so any advice is very welcomed please.

 

Thank you all for the advice. I was recently at Sam's Club and they have a kiosk in the store with phones and have the droid for $99. Not sure how much help they would be in case of having trouble with my phone but it would feel better being able to talk to someone in that case. I may still try to talk the guy down at the Verizon store or to someone over the phone at Verizon and see if they will match the price. I'm not confident about the salesman at the store coming off his price but maybe someone at Verizon will give me a credit to my account to match the price.

To tjoebjen, the article does seems promising for the near future, but the problem is that they currently have no 3g service in my area. Right now they only have Edge service here because their 3g is only in the metropolitan areas. I usually consider myself a tech savvy person, but not to the point of messing with the operating system. However, I have great faith in the community to produce quality apps in a more open setting than the iPhone community.

Again thank you for the responses.

 

Anyone had any experience buying from a 3rd party? How about if something went wrong, what did you have to do? Could you get any support from the Verizon store? I'm going to talk to the guy at the Sam's Club kiosk and see if they offer any, not sure how honest he'll be but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

Got restless and went ahead and bought it from the Verizon store. Now I get to figure it all out. Going to be searching the forums for some new user guides now and will be up all night . If anyone has some advice or links I'd still welcome it!

 

Looking forward to it, just so much to do...trying to figure out where to start. Plus I've switched to a new carrier so a lot to do with that as well.