Mobile Phone Insurance - lifestyle group

rstevenson94

I have my current account with Barclays and one of the features I get is the mobile phone insurance. I had to make a claim at the start of September paying a £75 excess for them to repair my broken iPhone 4S. The screen had been damaged and this was the only issue. I received the phone back after about two weeks. Recently I have been bombarded with issues such as random crashing, battery level snowing full charge then just dying, connectivity issues, messages won't send, the list is endless. I brought the phone back to apple and the guy in the Genuis bar examined it. He then asked had the phone had any work done and I said yes by my insurance company so he took it into the back to examine it. He then returned and told me of the list of issues that was wrong with my phone because of the work done by this Lifestyle Group insurance.
He said that the screen is loose and is coming of at the top,
There is parts missing from inside the device,
Bits have been screwed in randomly,
And a third party screen has been used in the phone instead of a genuine part.
He said my warranty would have been still intact but because they used third party parts and have completed the work to a terrible quality they would not be honouring it.
Basically, I have been left with a £400+ phone, paying £6.50 a month for insurance and a £75 excess and have nothing to show for it. My phone is unusable due to the unpredictability of the battery problems (died 4 times yesterday). I contacted lifestyle group yesterday and they said its not their policy to use genuine parts. I thought it you had a high quality car such as a BMW and you left it to a mechanics they would use the genuine parts in the vehicle? Especially if you are paying a high fee for the service? Anyways, they have sent out another Jiffy bag for me to return the phone to them for them to see what they can do. Quite frankly I am disgusted by what they have done and ill be without my expensive phone that I worked hard for to buy for them to ruin it.
A friend told me to go to Apple and get a report of all of these issues and submit it too the insurance company and state I want a replacement or ill use legal action. I am unsure of what to do and would be grateful of any advice.
Thanks.

InsideInsurance

TBH almost all mobile phone insurance is terrible in terms of value/ level of cover.

Your policy is an indemnity basis and not new for old or such and so even if they were to replace the phone it would either be for a reconditioned phone or for a cash settlement it'd be the second hand value (generally they use Amazon Market place - I know as I disputed the cash settlement for my phone under a barclays policy)

If you are alleging the have damaged your phone whilst doing the replacement of the screen then they are entitled to see it and have an opportunity to repair it. It would certainly help your case if you had something from Apple stating that the repairs had caused the subsequent damage but tbh I would be highly surprised if the in store guy was technically proficient enough to explain why the battery is reporting full but cutting out simply from a visual inspection