Insurance For iPhones

Wowza!  Beware!  After you spend $199 initially on that sweet little apple iPhone, you better protect it with your life unless you own iPhone insurance.  The iPhone one time purchase price was offered as an incentive or inducement to you to sign a contract with AT&T.  If your iPhone is damaged or stolen during that contract period, you better get ready to belly up and buy a replacement at full retail for $400 to $600, depending on the model you own.

Applecare is Apple’s extended warranty and support program which covers products outside their limited manufacturer’s warranty. In the case of the iPhone, AppleCare will provide an additional year of coverage for defects and repair, including the battery.  Applecare does not provide coverage for losses due to theft, fire, flood, natural disasters, and vandalism or accidental damage (drops and spills.)  In other words, Applecare does not cover iPhone user negligence….only product failures.  So, in essence….it is a warranty.  80% of iPhone product failures are due to user negligence (drops and spills.)

Several companies have risen to the occasion to fill the gap created by the lack of iPhone insurance.  Worth Avenue Group and its affiliates have been in business for 40+ years and offers the broadest coverage at a very value engineered price. The Worth Avenue Group iPhone policy provides worldwide coverage with a very low deductible of $50 per incident. Their claims are paid by in-house adjusters so that the claims process is very expeditious.  The policy covers losses due to theft, fire, flood, natural disasters, vandalism and accidental damage.  The policy premium ranges between $55 and $79 per year depending on the model of iPhone that you own.  The Worth Avenue Group policy is underwritten by Hanover Insurance Group, which has a superior A rating by AM Best Rating system.

Iphone Maps app

I’m always downloading new apps for my iPhone but I’ve gotten to the point where I have so may apps on my phone it’s a hassle to weed through them all.

Last week I decided to clean house!   I started thinking about which apps I really use and which ones are just taking up space.  It’s a lot like trying to clean out your closet and get rid of old clothes.  You may not have worn that old shirt in 3 years but you might wear it again someday.  You just never know.  Luckily, I don’t have quite the same allegiance to some of my iphone apps.

I did however realize just how much I depend on some of them.  Google Maps is the perfect example.  I use my google maps app at least once a day, sometimes probably 10 times a day.  It’s not so much for directions, but phone numbers.  It’s a lot easier to open google maps and type in “pizza hut” to get the phone number of the closest pizza hut than it is to type “Pizza Hut in Edmond, Oklahoma” into google search and hope google local results come up first, and then hope you chose the closest location.  And it’s dang sure faster than going to pizzahut.com and typing in your zip code and then selecting the closest store and getting the number that way.

If you are out of town for the weekend and are looking for a good mexican restaurant, typing mexican food into the maps app pulls up all the ones in the area.  If you see one you like, hit the “directions to” link and you are on your way.

IMO, it’s the best app on the iphone and it comes with it…

Ever noticed there’s always that one word you can never type correctly the first time?  You’d think working in insurance for the last 5 years my word wouldn’t in fact be insurance …no such luck.  For example I’ll catch myself having typed iphone insurace, iphone insuance and iphone insruance.  Bad, I know.  But this is nothing compared to the numerous different ways I found it misspelled.

Checking my traffic stats today and I realized I’m not the only one.  I was blown away with the misspellings I found.  My favorites were iphone insurenace, ipjone insurance and iphone insturance…just to name a few.

Have we really been THAT pampered by spell check and what did we do before it?

For your enjoyment purposes, here are the rest of the commonly misspelled iPhone insurance terms:

Based on insurance for a 16GB 3GS iPhone

Insurers	Worth Ave Group	Safeware	Square Trade
Price	Domestic & International-$63	Domestic & International-$99 Domestic only-$79	Domestic only – $120
Term	1 Year	1 Year	2 Year
Requirement to Purchase	None	None	Within 30 days of purchase
Deductible	$50 per incident	$50 per incident domestic $200 per incident international	$50 per incident
Occurrence Limit	None	None	1 Replacement only during 2 year period
Worldwide Coverage	Yes	Optional-Premium upcharge for Worldwide	No
Claims Waiting Period	None	None	30 days
Insurance Coverage	Yes	Yes	No
Repairs void Apple Warranty	No	No	Yes
Accidental Damage Coverage	Yes	Yes	Yes
Liquid Spill Coverage	Yes	Yes	Yes
Power Surge Coverage	Yes	Yes	Yes
Theft Coverage	Yes	Yes	No
Fire Coverage	Yes	Yes	No
Flood Coverage	Yes	Yes	No
Vandalism Coverage	Yes	Yes	No

** Please note: AppleCare doesn’t cover drops or spills. It only covers product failures through normal wear and tear. 80% of iPhone product failures are from accidental damage.

How many of us safely assume our homeowners insurance covers our electronics?  Well, they do…kinda.  Every year we receive our 4 inch thick policy booklet in the mail pledging to ourselves that this year we WILL read it…two weeks later it has become our coffee table coaster, three weeks later it is thrown into the black hole some call a closet.  Bare with me, I do have a point here.  The next time you receive your coffee coaster/insurance policy take a look at your personal property coverage.  Now remember, it will be confusing and probably mind numbing but just do your best.  A couple things will probably pop out at you:

1) It will have funny abbreviations like RC, ACV and words like depreciation.  Let me help you out here.  Some homeowner’s policies can have RC coverage, Replacement Cost (what your property will cost to replace). Most homeowner policies are ACV, Actual Cash Value (what your property will actually cost to replace less depreciation).  Depreciation is the percentage the insurance companies will subtract based on the age of your laptop, iPhone, etc.

2) There will be a lot of stipulations you weren’t aware of and

3) your deductible (usually $500 – $1000) is going to be deducted.

So, let’s say you’re charging your laptop. Your buddy comes skipping into the room, runs right into the cord sending your laptop screaming against the wall and you end up with a broken screen on your laptop and a buddy with a black eye.  Here’s your problem…you can turn in a claim with your homeowners insurance but after your deductible is taken out you’ll probably get less than $100…especially if you have an ACV policy AND you’ll have a point on your policy because you turned in a claim.

Ready for a bright side?  Here it is:  Laptop Insurance (which also covers all of your electronics…including iPhones, iPods, kindles, etc.).  The premium is a yearly payment and your deductible would be $0 to $100.  There you go…a policy that covers all of your electronics, a yearly payment and you won’t have to mess with your homeowner’s policy! Easy right?!