Iphone stopped reading the simm card, apple does not want to warranty it or Verizon, 7 month old phone

I purchased a brand new iPhone 14 Pro from Verizon for my son. 7 months down the road such iPhone stopped reading the sim card, Apple store verified that there is an internal problem, yet the warranty was not granted bc there is a small crack on the back

plastic cover. Phone has had this crack from the 1st week my son got it but is was working fine. In France we got a digital sim card and swapped it while there but once we got back we swapped it back to the original one but a, week after, the sim card stopped working so Verizon programmed a new one which lasted for 3 days. After that the phone does not read any sim card as Verizon tried 4 different sim cards for nothing. I went to an Apple store, they confirmed the internal fault but then asked me to pay $500 to fix it. Very disappointing. Any suggestions?