Would you get insurance for your smartphone?

Rufaro Madamombe Avatar
a phone with whatsapp open

To understand why you might need insurance for your smartphone, let’s take a look at a scenario. So picture this, you’re lying on the sofa, holding your phone up and chatting with some friends on WhatsApp. Then all of a sudden your phone hits your face, you know how much that sucks right. Well, this time it doesn’t just end there but it starts a journey to the floor and the moment it hits it, your heart skips a beat.

In a panic, you quickly pick up your phone and cling to the hope that no damage has been done to your precious device. Upon investigation, you discover the dreaded spider web like cracks covering your smartphone’s device. Normally, in such a situation, you’d have one of two options: just live with the cracks for a while until you get enough money to fix it or fix the phone immediately by breaking your budget because you can’t stand the cracks.

Insurance could come save the day

I’m still yet to come across someone who has a budget for fixing a smartphone when such an event occurs. Now, maybe insurance for smartphone’s could become that budget for people. As people, we’ve gotten used to insurance for cars, houses and for ourselves. So what would insurance for a smartphone look like?

Maybe you’d pay $5-10 per month and then once your phone has suffered an unexpected injury then you could claim that insurance and get it fixed. The insurance issuer could then assess the extent of damage on your smartphone and depending on how serious it is, you might have to pay a little extra to get it fixed otherwise they’d take care of everything.

Ultimately, it could end being less than what you’d pay for if you did it yourself. This is an open opportunity for those mobile network operators who sell smartphones and other devices to be able to package smartphone insurance with those devices. If it was that obvious to them then probably they’d be offering that already but there are some reasons why it’s not already there.

The problem with smartphone insurance

Earlier, we mentioned some of the other things in life that people get insurance for e.g cars, houses and for themselves. All those things are very big things that mean a lot to people. At the end of the day, a smartphone to many people is not as important as the others that they get insurance for e.g health insurance.

Apart from smartphones not being the most important, they can be really low-cost devices. You’re probably not going to insure your low-end device that you can fix with the same $10 per month charge. Even though there are high-end devices out there, not everyone has one as is in the case of cars, you’re guaranteed that a person with a car will have a car starting at a certain price range which is high enough to justify the cost of insuring it.

Due to that nature of pricing, it makes it a bit difficult for an insurance company to offer packages for smartphones that make them money and at the same time offer good value to people. Sometimes they might be tempted to end up bundling up with insurance for your car or house but the problem with that is that that excludes the person who just wants insurance for their phone only.

So would you get insurance for your smartphone?

For me, I probably wouldn’t insure my smartphone unless if the benefits were so great that it’d be irresponsible for me to get it at the required monthly price. If you live in an area where the risk of your smartphone getting stolen then it’s probably something to consider. The current problem is that not that many companies if any are offering products for you to insure your smartphone.

Assuming it was accessible to you locally, we’d really like to hear your thoughts on insuring your smartphone. What exactly would you want to be offered to you for you to insure it? Would you get it if it was affordable?

5 comments

  1. Wekwa

    I work in construction. At one time I got 2 new replacements within 24 months because of damage to my phones. I would recommend insurance because the cost of a screen replacement is about twice what you would pay in premiums in a year

  2. mukoma

    Cellphones are already covered under Household Contents cover available at most Insurance companies. Would have been nice if this was included in the article. Anyway the issue of including tgem.under household cover helps lower premiums due to collectively insuring items.This has been happening in Zimbabwe for a very long time. Considering all the things you can get insured it might not be a bad idea after all.

  3. Beatnyama

    For me this goes without saying. Always insure any high value item you own. So my smart phone is one such item and therefore is insured

  4. #NdiniNdadaro

    Google,FB or Insta something called Samsure chief coz its already done…

  5. Michael Sibanda

    we have it in Bulawayo …its called the ScreenSaver club for more info app 0773432837

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