Mobile Insurance after breakage

beduffrich

Can anyone tell me? I have a Barclays account that gives me "free" mobile insurance. Apparently you have to register the phone with barclays.

Well I have not registered my new phone and managed to get it water damaged the other day.

Is there any way that I can register it and then claim a couple of days later or anything like that? It'll cost me £385 if i want to replace it myself, which frankly I can't afford.

Cheers

Guys_Dad

Your question was most clear and explicit. Thank you.

I would suggest that posting your intent to defraud Barclays and asking for MSE members' collusion in this potential fraud must rank as being eligible for TV's Dumbest Criminals show if you go though with it.

beduffrich

Is it defrauding them? They offer the insurance as a benefit of the account?

So thanks for your useful constructive help.

mluton

beduffrich wrote: »

Is it defrauding them? They offer the insurance as a benefit of the account?

Upon registering your phone.

Jon_01

Applying after the fact is fraud, sorry.

jonathon

its fraud but thats what i would do

Guys_Dad

beduffrich wrote: »

Is it defrauding them? They offer the insurance as a benefit of the account?

So thanks for your useful constructive help.

There is one way to find out - give them the full facts as you laid out here - you will not then be committing any fraud - and see if they pay out. I suspect that you probably guessed what the answer would be and that is why you posted a question on the forum, saying "I have a Barclays account that gives me "free" mobile insurance"

Wikipedia :- Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss.

The insurance kicks in when you complete your part of the contract, which, in your own words, is when you register the phone. This could guard against anyone buying a knackered top of the range phone for a pittance from Ebay and then trying to get Barclays to replace that with one that was in full working order.

You are, in fact, asking for retrospective cover for a damaged phone. Now if Barclays are aware that the damage occurred before you registered it but after you had opened the account, then they might be prepared to waive the registration point - but don't hold your breath.

If you don't tell them, then register a phone that is damaged and claim that it was damaged subsequent to the registration - which would be a lie - then that is - as Jon01 said succintly, fraud.

Shiny.Side.Up

Indeed, others are right; Applying with the intent of getting a previous fault repaired is fraud, yes.

Equally, a lot of insurers don't pay out for water damage anyway. I've had hell trying to get mine repaired and it's not even water damaged - There's a SLIGHT spot on the water mark of the battery (literally only takes up about a 1/5th of the whole mark) and the water mark inside the phone has not been activated, yet they still said it was water damamge and refused to repair until I kicked up a huge fuss!

EDIT: Just checked Baclays website and it does appear they do cover water damage, so ignore that above comment. On the other hand, I did enjoy the rant that went with it, made me feel better!

Shiny.Side.Up

Also, in the policy documents http://www.personal.barclays.co.uk/PFS/A/Content/Files/9904458_Aug08_v2.pdf here, it does state that your cover will not start for 21 days, so you'll have to go an additional three weeks without your phone working. It's whether you can live with that. :P

Jon_01

The other problem you might have would be if you've reported it broken to the network? The insurer may check with them.
They might also check the last time the phone was used (the network logs the IMEI every time the phone come on).
If they see the phone hasn't been used since before you started the policy and hasn't been used at all since they might find that a bit odd. . . .

HopeAndDriftWood

All of that information is available by looking through your old posts etc anyway, if you don't want people to be able to get it, I'd be more careful with what you post, as even deleting what you've written now will leave an internet trail that will still leave it readable.

Be more careful what you post!