Replacing lost Verizon phone

If by no contract phone you mean buying a prepaid and activating it on your number they were correct, you can not do that. You can however by any postpaid phone at full retail price and put that on your account. Another possibility is, depending on what service plan you are on, you may become eligible for a discounted upgrade once you hit the 1 year mark. If you are 11 months into it you may only be a few weeks away from saving a lot of money.

 

If cost is an issue, you can always look into a used/refurbed phone. Just be sure that the ESN is good.

 

My daughter in law lost her verizon phone. I had purchased a prepaid Verizon phone months earlier, had a phone number assigned, but never used any minutes. I called the # that came with the prepaid phone, and they were able to move my DIL's phone number to the pre-paid. No hassles and much cheaper than paying for months or years of insurance.....or buying a phone @ the verizon store. If the Verizon store refuses to do it, it's worth a chance to go buy one (I paid $24 for mine), then call the customer service # with the prepaid.

 

If I am not mistaken, Verizon requires the prepaid phone account to be active for six months (perhaps yours was on that long?)... after that, you can move any number onto it as needed.

This is why I keep my old phones around. I have an enV Touch, a LG VX3300, and 2 Motorola W385 phones. I do keep insurance on my line because my old phones are too much of a downgrade for me... the older phones are for my family.

Other than that, the only "cheap new non-prepaid" phone at retail price is the Kin OneM, which is $120, the CDM8975 is $140, and the Samsung Haven is $160...

 

last time that I called customer service to move a phone number to a different phone, they wanted $20 to do it. I just do it on-line now.. It's pretty easy and quick.