Mobile phones have been advancing and developing at a crazy-fast pace. The technology advances daily - and so do the mobile phoen crime figures. They are expensive bits of kit. You know it - thieves know it. So it is worth insuring your phone. But where do you get mobile phone insurance from, and what are your options? Read on to learn more ...
Mobile phones can do all manner od cool and crazy things now - from surfing the internet to playing your favourite music and audio files, to managing your calendar.
The trouble - and the reality - is that with this cool and advanced technology comes a price.
A price of buying the phone.
And a price of replacing it if it is lost, stolen or damaged.
Maybe you get pickpocketed on the tube? Maybe it drops out of your bag and smashes. Maybe you just lost it and do not know where it is.
There are a few knock on effects of mobile phones being expensive, cool and advanced:
1. Phone owners will be quite careful of their new delight
2. Others will covet and be jealous of your phone - because you are the proud owner, and
3. Criminals will specifically target the phone for theft.
So what are your options for mobile phone insurance?
One option that is often touted as a way around getting specific insurance for an expensive item it adding it to your household insurance. This can work, but there are 3 key drawbacks to doing this.
1. Usually home insurance policies have a FAR higher excess than any specific insurance policy, often £150 or more.
2. If you make a claim (albeit relatively small) for your phone on your house insurance, your house insurance premium will likely be more expensive next year. It will go through the roof.
3. How long would you comfortably be without your phone? You might expect it to be a long while for your house insurance to process a claim. Household insurers have been known to take weeks to solve a claim. Most customers cannot accept to wait weeks for their phone to be replaced. Are household insurers experts at replacing phones?
Would you go to get your *tooth* fixed in a general hospital? Probably not. You would go to the expert, the specialist - the dentist. In the same way, it might be a wise move to use a specialist insurance firm to insure your phone.
This all leaves the question - What specialist insurer is there, that protects you and your phone with a decent level of cover AND is cost effective?
Let's look at what 'cost-effective' is:
As an example, let's look at the "iPhone" mobile phone. The iPhone is only available on the O2 network. You can get an unofficial iPhone, which has been unlocked, to work on other networks, but lets look at the official picture. The phone costs £269 for the handset, plus there is a 24-month contract at either £35, £45 or £55 per month.
If you lost your phone after 6 months from getting it, you would still be contractually obliged to pay every month for the next 18 months. That means 18 months multiplied by a minum of £35 per month ... a total of £630 or more - whether you got a replacement phone or not.
So in this instance you would need some kind of replacement to justify spending the £35+ each month.
Aside from this, there is the cost of replacement itself. This is likely to be around £350, although you might be able to get a second hand or less-than-legitimate phone for less.
So any insurance that would get you a replacement phone for considerably less than £350 is cost-effective. Ideally (obviously) it needs to be as low cost as possible, but equally obviously, there is going to be some cost involved in the replacement.
You would then also want to consider what eventualities you want the insurance to protect you from - what level of cover do you need? Mobile phone theft might seem the most obvious possibility, but do you want to be protected if you simply lose your phone? Or if your phone is damaged? Or water damaged (a big killer of mobile phones). Do you need cover while you are abroad? Do you need extended warantee (ie if the phone simply stops working or malfuntions after the 12 month statutory manufacturer's warantee)?
You need to think about this before you spend any money on what you think is 'insurance' for you phone - but actually might not be adequate protection. You could be paying for only one of these levels of cover.
Wherever you chose to get your
mobile phone insurance from, one thing is clear - once you have got your phone and you start to realise what a great piece of kit it is, you are probably going to want to protect it with some kind of insurance that protects you and your phone properly.
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