After a couple of close calls, I’ll never be without insurance for my favorite gadgets again
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Jeff Dunn / Business InsiderYou may have heard recently that electricity and I sometimes don't get along, or, at the very least, it doesn't get along with my gadgets.
I'm pretty meticulous with my belongings, but sometimes things happen. A phone slips, a tablet falls, or an iPod gets dropped into the ocean.
Gravity and water conspire against all gadgets. Until recently I was a little iffy when it came to recommending insurance on gadgets. My view has always been that if you take care of your things, they should last a long time. But on a couple of occasions its come in real handy.
With the iMac I mentioned in my last piece, the Genius Bar Representative that served me replaced my iMac. You might be thinking "Yeah, well, you had insurance." Electrical problems aren't explicitly covered by Apple's Apple Care policy, so they did me a major favor. Another time, I tripped while holding my iPhone, which fell screen-side down onto hardwood. Somehow it survived. I didn't have any sort of insurance on my phone, so getting the screen replaced would have been a total out-of-pocket expense. One I realized I could have avoided.
Because of that second incident, I made two decisions: The first is that the next time I buy an iPhone, I'll do it through Apple's official upgrade program. That program bundles Apple Care insurance in with the monthly payments on the phone, and subsidizes the price of repairs when you damage your phone. The second decision is to recommend gadget insurance. To everyone.
There are a bunch of different ways to get protection plans on your gadgets: through the manufacturer, through the store you bought it from, and through a third party. Go with whichever one makes you feel more comfortable, or with whomever has given you great service in the past.
I'm recommending plans from SquareTrade.
Jeff Dunn / Business Insider
I like SquareTrade's policies because they're follow some pretty straightforward logic and rules. Choose the type of product you'd like to protect, choose the value of the product you'd like to protect, choose how many years you'd like the protection plan to last and, well, that's it.
If anything happens to that gadget over the course of 1-3 years (except for theft, loss, or intentional damage), you send it to them and it gets fixed. If it can't be fixed, you get a brand-new gadget in its place. What's nice about these plans is they do cover water and fall damage, the two most common ways gadgets get damaged.
To be eligible for a SquareTrade protection plan, the gadget you buy has to have been bought new from Amazon within 30 days of you signing up for the plan. Once you buy the plan, you're all set. There aren't any fees or deductibles when you send your device in for repair. They even pay for shipping. Gadgets are expensive, and adding the price of insurance on top of the price of a high-end item can make the initial purchase more difficult to make. But, in the long run, it's way better to have a protection plan.
Think of the worst case scenario: You never have to actually use the plan, and so you've had a perfectly functioning electronic for years. That's great, but if something does happen it's nice to have someone to fix the problem, instead of worrying about repair costs, or hoping you get lucky like I did.