Advice required to get my PC insured please

geek84

Hi Folks

I am thinking of getting my desk top, printer, and 2 lap tops insured for hardware repairs and maintenance.

Is anybody aware of any good deals?

Thank U

somersethillbilly

I'd recommend self insurance..ie put a little money aside at regular intervals to use for any necessary repairs and then if unused put it towards upgrades or a new machine. just my opinion but any money paid in an insurance/ maintenance policy is money down the drain.

geek84

Hi there

Yes, I agree with you to a certain extent regarding money going down the drain, but some repairs could be costly, so wouldn't I benefit in the long run?

somersethillbilly

Who can tell insurance is a gamble and your premium is your stake....personally I only insure things that I cannot afford to replace. Tech is relatively cheap and the exclusions in any policy may come back to bite you in the a**! As with all things it's personal choice, all you are buying really is peace of mind?

fwor

geek84 wrote: »

wouldn't I benefit in the long run?

If this were true for the "average" customer then none of the insurance companies would still be in business.

After everything is averaged out, you will always have to pay an insurance company its profit margin. If you self-insure, you won't.

Like the previous poster, I just put funds aside every few months to cater for repairs/upgrades. In the last 5 years I've had only 2 components fail across 2PCs and a laptop, and the cost to replace those was far less than I would have paid in insurance for that long.

debitcardmayhem

Hmmm I think fwor is closer to the mark, after all "Life Insurance" is actually death insurance , i.e. pay me £50 per month and I will pay £20,000 when you die, sadly when you have paid in for 20 years then they expect you to pay an extra £45 per month to guarantee the original £20,000 since your life expectancy has changed over that term. BTW that insurance is just for hardware repairs, and take into account the current lifespan and age of what you insure. Trust me they will then try and wriggle out of their responsibilities , insurance is like having a bet at the bookies, except if you win at the bookies they pay up.

John_Gray

Don't forget that much insurance is designed to make it as difficult as possible for the customer to claim on. You'd have to check (for example) that the policy covered things like the laptop being chewed by the dog, dropped on the floor, the keyboard bathed in sticky Coke, the screen hit by a carelessly-thrown wooden building block... And so on.

I agree with previous posters: build up a fund to be able to repair or replace things when they go wrong. (You may even find that your computer bits are covered on your contents insurance policy - with an excess of £100 or more!)

macman

Insuring a printer is just ridiculous. You'd pay far more in premiums than the eventual cost of replacement-and they'd only pay the current value anyway, which would be next to nothing.
You might as well just burn the money...

tom15387202

You don't need to insure your desktops, laptops and especially a printer.

Either use your contents insurance or when something does break just replace the part that's broken (ie RAM or GFX card)

It will work out a lot cheaper in the long run.

geek84

Hi Folks

Thanks so much for your advice.

I think I will put a small sum aside for any possible future repairs.

Jivesinger

Also remember that if you lose your data/ photos/ documents due to theft or serious hardware failure, no amount of money will bring them back.

So the main form of "insurance" I'd recommend is making sure you have a good and frequent backups.