Laptop and house insurance

Singlespeeder

Darling daughter is on a Graphic design Master Degree course and needs & uses a pretty good MacBook. 
She's genuinely split water on it and despite drying in bags of rice etc it's goosed.
She NEEDS it but can't afford to replace it.
She lives with her mum, not me.
I've said to claim on the mums house insurance, the mum is concerned it'll whack up next years premium.
A new one is probably about £2000
Surely this is exactly what house contents insurance is for.

And if the insurance premium went up a lot (57% I read somewhere) surely shopping around for a new insurer would negate this somewhat .?

Should she try and claim or save up ( could take months)?

DullGreyGuy

There is no universal answer to how much a claim costs... some people make a claim and it has a tiny impact, others its much larger (even on a proportional basis). Things tend to be more exponential and so, for example a second claim steps up premiums much more than the first one did but it can be other higher risk items that compound with the claim.

AD claims, which spilt water would be, tend to be on the higher end of impact on premiums. They also need to check 1) what their excess is and 2) what the single article limit is and if the laptop was declared if its above the limit

How old is the laptop? I have no evidence of actual issues but I can very much imagine there are problems claiming for Macs at the moment because of the transition to the new "M" processors if you have an older Intel based laptop. I'm fairly sure most will say the older intel laptops are equivalent to the still available M1 standard laptops whereas you say £2k which would mean you're thinking either of the M1Pro based MBPs or an enhanced spec M2 standard model.

Alderbank

My daughter claimed off her household insurance for a new laptop when hers developed a mysterious cracked screen. It was a much more lowly machine, an HP worth about £800. No problem with claim but her excess brought the sum paid out down considerably. It was a couple of years ago now and no noticeable change to their annual premium as a result.

Was this macbook identified on mum's insurance? Be aware that some household policies have a ceiling for unidentified items of value.

Singlespeeder

I'm not sure tbh, it may have been a named item, I hope so.
If not, she'll have to make a judgement call on whether it's viable to claim. 
I have never claimed on contents insurance so I'm not sure how it'd work. Like for like seems unlike, new for old even more so.
Would they just pay an age related sum, and she'd have to find the difference? I have no idea. 

Alderbank

Before writing it off she should see whether it can be repaired. What do they say at the Genius bar?

You say she NEEDS it but can't afford to replace it. If she carries it to Uni, takes it on the bus, etc. she should get all risks insurance rather than relying on household insurance which (apart from water, coffee or red wine of course) is probably its safest environment.

Singlespeeder

I think she uses an ipad on the few occasions she needs to actually go to uni, she mostly WFH. 
The Genius bar say they won't repair water damage ...
I think she's going to speak to the Insurance company.

[Deleted User]

Genius Bar is a waste of time. Even if they were willing to do anything, it would cost more than a new ones. Macs are designed to be impossible to repair economically.

MovingForwards

Depends if the mom has accidental damage as part of the home insurance, without that claiming is a non-starter. 

Can a local independent computer repair shop fix it cheaper?

Or can she pick up a secondhand one, borrowing some money from you, mom and using whatever savings / student loan / grant she has? 

DullGreyGuy

Singlespeeder said:

I'm not sure tbh, it may have been a named item, I hope so.

It doesn't necessarily need to be, it all depends on the policy. My M&S policy has a £10,000 limit on undeclared single items and so even a maxed out Mac Studio would be covered without having to be declared. 

Other policies have single item limits of £750 or special terms on Laptops and so would need to be declared.

[Deleted User] said:

Genius Bar is a waste of time. Even if they were willing to do anything, it would cost more than a new ones. Macs are designed to be impossible to repair economically.

Have had 2 screen replacements and 1 battery done and it was far from "impossible" and all were vastly cheaper than buying a new device. 

Like ultra thin laptops from other companies, and now even more so with the new "system on a chip" M series, the main issue is that CPU, memory etc is all soldered to the motherboard and so where with a desktop computer you'd just pull out the dead ram module and replace just it with these laptops its the whole board that has to be replaced. This isnt unique to Apple when it comes to laptops! 

Arfa__

If you have no joy with insurance and are stuck forking out for a replacement yourselves, then do look out for cheaper MacBooks from:

1. The Student discount on the Apple Store
2. The refurbished section on the Apple Store
3. Music Magpie have a good rolling stock of older refurbished MacBooks with 3 month warranty

I purchased my last 2014 17" MacBook i7 with Retina screen and 16Gb ram, 500Gb SSD for £650 from Music Magpie a couple of years ago. All decent enough and still going strong as a video editing rig, I just had to purchase a charger separately (£80!).

Also, old MacBooks have good second-hand value, so don't bin the knackered one, you'll likely earn some money back shoving it on eBay.

[Deleted User]

DullGreyGuy said:

Singlespeeder said:

I'm not sure tbh, it may have been a named item, I hope so.

It doesn't necessarily need to be, it all depends on the policy. My M&S policy has a £10,000 limit on undeclared single items and so even a maxed out Mac Studio would be covered without having to be declared. 

Other policies have single item limits of £750 or special terms on Laptops and so would need to be declared.

[Deleted User] said:

Genius Bar is a waste of time. Even if they were willing to do anything, it would cost more than a new ones. Macs are designed to be impossible to repair economically.

Have had 2 screen replacements and 1 battery done and it was far from "impossible" and all were vastly cheaper than buying a new device. 

Like ultra thin laptops from other companies, and now even more so with the new "system on a chip" M series, the main issue is that CPU, memory etc is all soldered to the motherboard and so where with a desktop computer you'd just pull out the dead ram module and replace just it with these laptops its the whole board that has to be replaced. This isnt unique to Apple when it comes to laptops! 

Newer models have the battery as part of the top of the case, along with the keyboard and speakers. It's a terrible design.