Sending a Verizon Wireless phone in under manufacturers warranty, with prior, unrelated cosmetic damage...insight?

I got my Note 3 in mid August, everything was great the first few months, but I've had nothing but issues this year. There seems to be an antenna issue, I have a hard time accessing 4G, and once it is dropped, I have to manually turn on airplane mode, and immediately disable it, in order to allow my phone to gain access to the 4G network, and once it is on 3G, it may as well not have Mobile Data on at all, because I simply cannot access anything on this phone, unless on wifi, or 4G, sometimes I can't even access anything while on 4G, and I'm forced to pull the battery, and reboot the phone in order for it to reinitialize, so to speak. and to add insult to injury, during a call with my dad this morning, the call dropped my mic out of nowhere, and I was left with my dad repeatedly saying "hello?", "did I lose you?", "are you still there?" I restarted the phone a few times, no luck. Finally I pulled the battery and the SIM card for 5 minutes, rebooted and attempted to call him back, and all was well, but this was the final straw. I decided to contact VZW via online chat. After explaining my predicament(s), and reassuring the lady I was quite proficient in the ins and outs of troubleshooting the Android OS, she decided to skip the "over-the-net" troubleshooting process, and she said she would initiate the process of mailing a replacement to me. She then advised me that a $299 charge would be applied, if upon receiving my current phone, the VZW warranty department were to find that my issues were of my own fault, via liquid, or "negligent physical damage" by myself. This concerned me, because I did drop this phone once, getting out of my truck. Mind you, the phone has been in an Otterbox Defender since day one, it did drop on the corner of the phone that houses the stylus, this corner just so happens to be the weakest link of the otterbox, since it has the least material on that corner, allowing the stylus to be removed from the phone, I'm just concerned that VZW will try to turn the tables on me, and say that this damage was the reason behind my phones issues. Granted, this damage occurred the first month that I had the phone. Just reaching out to see if anyone else has sent a phone in to Verizon under a Manufacturer's Warranty, and how it went. Thanks in advance for those of you who may be able to provide any insight from your prior experiences! Attached are a couple of pics of the damage. [attachment=13929:20150418_151557_resized.jpg][attachment=13930:20150418_151613_resized.jpg][attachment=13931:20150418_151752_resized.jpg][attachment=13932:20150418_151758_resized.jpg]

Any reason why you didn't go to a local VZW retail store? They could have run diags on the phone and figured out the issue in a few hours, plus started the replacement process and know if there was a $299 charge coming up or not.

This is experience that is a decade past it's prime but odds are decent that they will consider that normal wear and tear. At least I would have during my employment period. I also would have tried selling you a spare case.

On another note depending on where you live the verizon store may not do any technical work on the phones and most do not have any diagnostic equipment. Only certain sized stores have technicians. Plus generally in all the stores in my district wait times to be seen could be 15-60 minutes or more.

Regardless, there's a chance no matter what. You could get someone who is really strict inspecting it. Or you could get someone that sees tons worse and says that is minor particularly considering the area, materials, and build quality. It also depends how often they see damage to that particular area on that phone during normal warranty replacement. Finally how uptight is their supervisor? Lax or understanding supervisor and they probably don't care as much. One riding their ass over everything and they may be more likely to charge for it.

Really though that is pretty normal non fee invoking stuff under my inspection and I would guess most vzw employees. Normally fee is meant for cracked screen, cracks all along phone, severe crushing damage as from a dog, phone in two halves, basically we're talking major damage. Yours is certainly a step up from a scratch on the back but not anything that isn't accountable for through normal, routine use.

Tough call. I didn't think any carrier had on-site techs anymore. It's entirely possible that the drop jiggled something internally and eventually make the phone unusable. You could always call up Samsung and have them deal with it instead of Verizon.