Nokia 97 vs. the David

I’m thinking that testing phones is a tradition in my family.

About a year ago, Elie tossed his M16 onto his bed. To his surprise (and horror), the gun landed on his Nokia 95 with predictable results. The screen of the phone was smashed. Luckily, our cellular provider at the time was Cellcom and, with a laugh and a smile, they fixed the insured phone.

Now, Shmulik’s experiment was not nearly as successful. It seems while getting out of an army vehicle (the David, a Land Rover jeep-type thing), the phone went crashing to the ground with predictable results. The screen of the phone was smashed. This time, a year later, we aren’t nearly so lucky. After 14 years with Cellcom, we were tired of what we thought was bad service and several instances of over-billing or errors from mistakes made. We decided to try another company (Orange/Partner) and hoped to have better service.  Our cellular provider is now Orange / Partner and though we have insurance, apparently their idea of insurance and ours is radically different. If you pay every month – and then pay more when the phone breaks, they might fix it. This time, they want 200 NIS (about $60) to fix the phone.

Of course, this is just one of a long line of failures by the Israeli cellular company (I’ve been documenting our 9-month long battle to get them to actually send us a correct bill on another blog called Cellular Agony and have posted this story to: And I’m Paying Insurance…WHY?).

So, I guess the newest lessons include:

1. If you have a kid in the army, you should get insurance on their cellular phone (unless you have a plan with Orange, in which case, why bother?).
2. If you have a kid in the army, consider dealing with a different phone company (if you are dealing with Orange).