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Ask Slashdot: Best Protection Plan For Your Phone?
First time accepted submitter nastav writes "Now that I'm eagerly awaiting the delivery of my new shiny iPhone 5, I'm faced with a dilemma — SquareTrade, Applecare Plus, or some other insurance option? I have used SquareTrade in the past for my iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (I skipped iPhone 4S). It provided Accidental Damage Handling (ADH) for the iPhone before Apple introduced its own version of ADH. I've had the opportunity to file claims with SquareTrade multiple times, and they handled it quickly and professionally each time. Now that there is a product from Apple itself, I'm not sure which one to get. They are priced similarly (~$100 for a two-year plan, $50 deductible for each ADH incident) Apple limits the number of ADH claims to two, whereas SquareTrade (AFAIK) limits the number of claims to the 'value of the product,' which translates to approx. 600 USD in coverage (or about 4 ADH claims). I've tried reading many comparison articles on the internet without definitive answers. I'm hoping that the tech-savvy folks on Slashdot would help out with a discussion on pros and cons of each, and perhaps add other options into the mix."
Take good care of your phone and be careful when handling it!
If you're naive enough to spend a fortune on a status symbol, you should easily be able to afford a replacement.
$199 if you bring them a damaged iphone that was your fault and they will replace it on the spot.
I'll take the possible risk of paying some money over paying up front in case of an accident any day
To me, this sounds like a decision of "Should I use a professional service that worked for me in the past or go with Apple?". Why ask this question when you are happy with the current service, I do not even know. Sounds a tiny bit like the Apple fanboy inside of you is revolting.
The insurance is roughly 1/3 the cost of a replacement. Do you really think the odds of loss are so high that you need to pay that premium?
Provide a chair and sit next to it while you use it.
Those old wall mount phones never got dropped, and very rarely got wet.
and it's underwriters.
My father always taught me: Never take insurance for things you can pay for yourself.
On general you pay more for insurance than you get out of it, because of the insurer pay check and people scamming insurance.
Only take insurance for things you can;t pay yourself (e.g. health insurance and big operations).
Don't take insurance if you can pay for the repairs yourself, otherwise it is silly/stupid to get an I-Phone.
Self-insure it. An insurance company pays out much less money than it takes in. It has to be that way or it wouldn't be a worthwhile business. Thus the chances are that you will get less out than you put in. It's a form of gambling, and the odds are even worse than the casino.
So, if it's a risk that won't cripple you financially if it happens, it's not worth insuring. You have to insure the car, and you probably want to insure the house, because that would be crippling if it burned down. But for something where the risk is only a few hundred dollars or less, insurance isn't worth it.
You could literally self insure, by putting the amount they would otherwise have spent on insurance in a separate account. From which you withdraw money when a bad thing happens. But it probably is better just just do it in the old-fashioned way, and just always have enough money saved up "for a rainy day".
Quite simply, I wouldn't spend $100 + $50 insuring a $600 product. Especially one that depreciates as fast as a cell phone. Perhaps taking the 1 year agreement with your cell plan provider would work out better. It's usually not that much more, and you play the odds that you can make it out 1 year without doing something serious to your current phone.
Insurance makes a degree of sense(as hard as insurers try to change this) when dealing with situations where risk is either inevitable(ie. your body, with all its potential for horrible and expensive mishaps, comes standard and you'll need one until you die) or a fairly large chunk of your net worth(most homeowning, say) or where your potential to hurt others potentially far exceeds your personal ability to compensate them and insurance is therefore mandated(car insurance on the consumer level, potentially various other flavors among venue operators and the like).
On cheap consumer devices, it just doesn't make much sense. The insurer has to make a profit in order to continue offering the insurance, so you know that(on average) purchasing the insurance is a bad deal compared to self-insuring, and you also know that the potential costs are bounded(ie. there is nothing that could happen to my cellphone that could possibly cost more than a new cellphone. There are plenty of diseases and/or accidents that could happen at any time that could run into an unpredictable but very large number that I don't even necessarily have a good way of estimating).
Just put the price of the insurance wherever you usually put money for storage, let the warranty handle any material defects/abnormal failures, and maybe buy a case if you are a bit of klutz. Unless you murder your phone both brutally and swiftly, you'll probably be able to get a refurb for the money you saved by not buying insurance, plus the deductable you would have paid, by the time your phone eventually does bite it. Worst case, a used or refurbed iphone 4/4S will cost peanuts if you kill your present one and really can't afford a replacement.
Given that, on average, buyers of insurance lose money, you should really only be buying it on things that are at the outer envelope of affordability; but that you must have for one reason or another.
Think about it. If you paid for insurance for your car and had a deductible of 8.3% but a payment rate which is about 17% the value of the phone for the predicted duration of ownership or less... guaranteed to get refurbished crap...
Sorry, but I think I'd rather roll the dice, save money and buy bumpers and simply be careful. At least when/if I break my expensive phone, I wil be able to comfort myself with a brand new perfectly shiny latest version of whatever is out there.
I have never actually broken a phone before, so I can't say if this is a good deal for other people but definitely for me it would be a loss of at least $100.
Exactly my thought fellow coward!
It will be the 3rd iphone device that the submitter buys over a span of four years.
Which means that a. he/she probably can afford its loss, b. the expected lifetime of the device is 2 years.
Insuring a device with a lifetime of less than two years?
What is next? Insuring your shoes?
I think the main problem here is that the insurance costs way too much. Consider the iPhone which costs about $600. The $100 insurance plan assumes that 1 in 6 people are going to need a total phone replacement for them to break even. Even counting in operating costs, and the fact that they will want to make a profit, let's say 1 in 20 end up needing a complete replacement over the life of the phone. This doesn't even count the fact that after about a year, the cost of the phone has come down considerably. Something like $20 may make a lot more sense for most people. A year of insurance on a house probably costs $1200, which is around 0.4% of the value of my house and possessions. Yet for some reason it costs about 20% of the value of the phone to insure it. I think it all comes down to the fact that it's way too tempting to drop/fry/submerse your phone on purpose in order to get a shiny new one. Whereas one would be crazy to try the same with their phone. Insurance fraud is illegal, but probably impossible to prove with phones.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
How idiotic can "ask slashdot" questions become?
Really?, you need to ask the whole slashdot community what to do to insure a freaking phone???, give me a break, do whatever you want, it's not that important anyway...
AppleCare & AppleCare + are extended warranties NOT insurance. You must be able to bring the old iPhone in for the extended warranty plan. Theft & loss are NOT covered by an extended warranty plan. It is worth noting that AppleCare covers everything that comes in the box & possibly other iPhone related items by Apple (like a dock) that are purchased on the same receipt. Ask at time of purchase. The extended warranty must be purchased at the time that the iPhone is purchased. Otherwise, the iPhone must be checked out by Apple staff in order to qualify for the plan For loss or theft of an iPhone or any smartphone, review your homeowner's or renter's policy or consider getting a renter's policy from your auto insurer. The rates are usually good, Multi-plan discounts will apply Cheers !
Cheers !
It isn't coming from fraud. The life expectancy on smartphones (insured or not) is 11.5 months. Between, loss, defect and accidental damage they just don't tend to survive. Houses on the other hand do quite a bit better.
The best theft protection is make your stuff unattractive to thieves. My car with the wood trim and the words "Ford Pinto" highlighted in chrome was a classic example of this strategy.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
My homeowners insurance charges something like $10 per YEAR for computer insurance that also includes... smartphones. With a $50 deductible and $1000 per incident. My some dropped my wife's Samsung Somethingorother in the pool and the insurance paid out ~$500 for a new phone. Way cheaper than any other plan I have ever seen for phones. It also covers laptops, and all devices in the house are covered under the single $10 payment.