With twice the amount of glass surface on your iPhone 4, your chances of shattering any side of your device are twice as high. Insurance company Asurion figured this out and decided to offer protection plans for the iPhone 4.
For $12/month this company will insure your spanking new iPhone against every possible event: theft, loss, hurricane, oil spill, broken screen, screen cancer, you name it.
That sounds great, doesn’t it? Wait to read the fine prints then because there is a $200 deductible on this plan and replacing a phone can be costly. Although the iPhone 4 costs $199 or $299 with a two-year contract with AT&T, customers would need to pay the full retail price of $599 or $699 to replace a phone in the middle of the contract.
An insured owner who loses a phone after a year of use would have paid $144 in fees on top of the $199 deductible. That would be a total of $343, about half the price of a new phone. But the chances of losing or breaking a phone are far below 50 percent, making the price for the policy too high for the risk. And according to Asurion, the replacement phone might be a refurbished model.
Unless you drop your iPhone every other day, I think such a plan is useless and will cost you more in the end. If you break your iPhone in the first year, simply have it fixed by a repair shop, not by Apple as their prices are usually much higher than independent repair shops.
If you lose or get your iPhone stolen, simply look for an unlocked one on eBay or Craigslist. In the end, it will most likely cost you less than if you purchased this insurance plan.
That’s my 2 cents. What do you think?
[via Yahoo via Todd]