MSE Article discussion: Mobile Phone Insurance

I've just looked at idigital, with a money supermarket . One of its exclusions is leaving the phone unattended.

Well, surely that is what losing the phone is? You must have left it somewhere.


Edit: just taken out insurance with betterbuyinsurance. At least the cover starts immediately and includes overseas.

I took the middle range at £49.50

My renewal came through from Liverpool Victoria and the price had gone up. Our car had been involved in four incidents but of them was our fault, three of them while no one was in the car because it was parked. The other was when we got shunted up the rear in a motorway hold up. We have never made a claim with them so why did the price go up?

ellieellieellie wrote: »

I have a handset that I own outright, but I have a SIM only contract. I'm happy and able to self-insure on the handset (it's really not worth that much!), but I'm worried about calls, texts and data charges if my phone was stolen, which I'm not insured for. Does anybody know of an insurance policy that ONLY protects against unauthorised usage, not the handset?

I thought I could lock my SIM so if it were removed from the locked phone, it could not be used in another phone without a PIN or PUK being entered. Found a place in my phone settings to do this and discovered I'd BLOCKED the SIM and had to request the PUK number from the network operator to unblock it!

Is there a way of locking SIMs to phones, Apple or Android, I wonder.

Lifestyle Services Group is the same company used by Nationwide for their MSE "top pick" recommendation.

All I can say is - yes the deal looks very good (£10 a month account fee for multiple phones on joint account holders and family members but with multiple other benefits such as worldwide travel insurance, breakdown cover, etc, etc) but the service is pretty awful if you have to claim.

The staff are generally very helpful, but their systems seem to be snowed under - probably a victim of their own success perhaps. My family has two pending claims at present which just happened to be close together but if you go with them be prepared to phone regularly to chase your claim.

Don't expect a quick replacement either. Both claims have been going on for 4-5 weeks now and only one has been agreed. They will not ask for the various bits of information at the start - they will come up with further hoops to jump through as the weeks progress.

As an aside someone mentioned above that the iPhone 4 has been discontinued but I don't think this is correct. The agreed claim we have with LSG is for one and there were plenty in stock we were told, and both the O2 site and shops are offering them too as of last week on new contracts.

With regard to the previous poster, O2 are quoting a retail price of £600 for an iPhone 5 (16 GB), and the price for the 64 GB will no doubt be on their website somewhere - obviously this will be higher. I would use this as the basis for your claim if I were you. Simply give seven days' notice, then sue them via Money Claim online for the full cost of the unit that O2 or your current provider are claiming it costs plus your contract phone charges you can't utilise and the court fee. The "average" (more like lowest) price on Amazon or whatever is total nonsense and would never be accepted by a court (£700 to £900 looks more like it today from a decently rated seller). I have LSG's Head Office address in Crewe if you need it.

There is no way they will go to court over a couple of hundred quid so you are almost certain to have it settled ASAP once the claim drops on their mat.

If you don't want to do this yet, have you escalated the claim via a manager? I had to push to get this to happen but found the manager to be much more helpful. Often the "front line" team at these organisations is a relatively unhelpful barrier that is simply there to deflect most people who just accept appalling service. Once you escalate, often the experience totally changes. Mentioning that you are thinking of a Money Claim Online action (even before exhausting their so called "complaints procedure") often concentrates minds in my experience.