Insuring your Apple products
One common mistake people make is not having their kit insured. Here are our recommendations:
Desktop Macs: make sure that you check your home contents insurance for cover. Some insurance companies like to sidestep their obligations by claiming that such items should be specifically listed. Although it’s unlikely to add much to your premium it does provide a get-out for them. Often there’s a £1000 or £1500 limit on valuable items that don’t leave the home so if you’ve spent the thick end of £2000 on a high spec iMac or a Mac Pro you should take special care to ensure that you are covered in the event of a claim needing to be made.
Macbooks of all flavours: If it’s going to be taken out of the house, on holiday or for work, then you especially need to ensure it’s covered for accidental damage. Again, you need to check to see whether they need to be listed as individual items or whether there’s a blanket coverage for items up to the value of £xxxx.
iPhones and iPads: you can do this through your household policy or you could find that you are covered through your bank account. Most, if not all, banks offer premium accounts that come with a range of benefits, usually including travel insurance, car breakdown cover and mobile phones. There will be an excess on the phone, often £50, but that’s a small price to pay if they give you a new phone in exchange for the one you ran over after it fell out of your pocket when getting into your car – yes, it has happened many times.
We don’t generally recommend buy insurance from companies such as www.protectyourbubble.com as it’s expensive and the exclusions can mean you don’t get paid out. For example, they allow you to make “unlimited claims” except that the phone has to be less than 3 years old and you can’t make more than 2 a year for loss… so there’s a limit of 6 on that part.
For the “damage part” you will have a £75 excess so you are insuring very little indeed as that’s the cost of a replacement screen on a 6, more on a 6S or 7 though. Paying £9.49 a month is a big price to pay for the very small saving you’re going to make.
Other exclusions, such as taking reasonable precautions… so leaving it in the back of a taxi, or on a bar while you go to the loo… is going to be denied.
There’s no limit to how many times you can claim for damage, but you are limited to two (2) theft/loss claims per year, per gadget.
We expect you to take reasonable precautions to keep your gadget safe from theft or damage. If you fail to do so, your claim may not be paid.
What about Apple’s 3 year extended warranties? As a rule of thumb, I would take it out for anything costing over £1000, but cheaper would be to buy it from John Lewis as they’ll always give you a two year warranty and often they will bump that to three years for free. This doesn’t cover you for accidental damage but it will cover you for defects after the first year.
Whatever you buy, you need to do your homework to make sure you’re covered and find the best solution for your circumstances.