Rating: Essential if you are planning a trip to a business conference like MWC
In a few days, GoMobile News will be off to attend the key mobile industry conference – MACH Insights 2012, in Prague, Czech Republic. Given that we know how thieves target business conferences – the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is a prime example, GoMobile News thought it would be a jolly good idea to insure our mobile phone – a Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango handset. At the same time, we reasoned that it would also be sensible to protect our notebook computer – a Samsung NC10. Now we don’t think we are unique in carry both devices abroad to a ITC (Information Technology & Communications) style conference. But when we asked a leading supplier of such insurance, we were effectively told no such beast exists. Why*?Nowadays, there are price comparison sites for almost everything. There’s probably one for price comparison sites, too.
Anyway, we decided to visit a mobile phone insurance site – mppi, which we previously mentioned here.
Previously, GoMobile News had been impressed by the service offered by insurance2go, so we decided to ask the company’s help desk if joint laptop/smartphone insurance was available.
This was the reply … “Please be advised that we are only able to offer cover for one item per policy.” So that’s a No, then.
We were also worried about how far the insurance covered us when travelling abroad.
We asked. “Do your policies cover business trips abroad not just holidays? Is that coverage up to a maximum of 30 days out of the country in a year? Or one maximum overseas stay of 30 days?”
The reply was, “Per the Terms and Conditions, your handset will be covered abroad for a maximum of 30 days in one year.
Unfortunately, we are unable to extend the 30 days overseas cover as this is an underwriter decision.”
That’s interesting because we noted from the mppi site that protectyourbubble can offer up to 60 days.
Sadly, we don’t do that amount of travelling in one year here at GoMobile Towers, so we don’t need that option.
If you read the small print quite closely you should find that paying the whole year’s premium in one fell swoop reduces the cost.
We also noticed that insurance2go points out that you are covered immediately whereas some rivals won’t accept a claim made within the first 14 days of opening the policy.
Another interesting discovery is that insurance2go actually calculates how much it reckons you would have paid if you’d taken out the insurance with a rival broker.
The list includes: – Talkcover, Insure Your Mobile, Barclaycard, Vodafone and O2. But crucially it also included Protect Your Bubble, too.
All we can do is urge readers before they next travel to MWC, Barcelona in 2013, that they seriously consider taking out insurance on their mobile handset for loss or theft.
Ours cost us approximately £35 for one year. Compare that to the £230 cost of replace the Lumia 800.
*UPDATE: Actually protectyourbubble does offer this facility. See our follow-up article here.
