One evening I put my then Nokia 6230i in my pocket somehow during the course of that evening I managed to crack the screen on the device (still a mystery) however as my “O2 Gold” insurance covered accidental damage I though I’d be okay. In fact I’d paid to replace the screen if necessary. The next day I had to leave home for 6 weeks on a business trip; I needed my phone. So I phoned O2 and was assured that subject to the £25 excess that I could have a replacement phone. However they could not deal with anything but my home address even though I offered my business address (who would forward items to my current location). They told me that it was the insurer’s policy and not theirs. I was mildly unhappy with this statement after all it was their direct debit taking the insurance money, the insurance appeared on the mobile phone bill and the policy was called “O2 Gold” .

End result; I told them to poke it, dropped the insurance, changed my price plan, found a new screen for my phone on ebay for £21 and had it fixed in four days and have neither dealt with O2 or mobile phone insurers since.

Now I’m very happy with my iSync-friendly SonyEricsson W810i on T-Mobile, although it does get kept in a case.