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The Applecare Hustle

basicappleguy.com

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Re: The Applecare Hustle

#41

Post by Accacin »

crazygringo wrote: post #6
Hamuko wrote: post #2

This seems crazy expensive. $2,097 in the span of three years? My home insurance is merely about 130 € per year and covers all of the accidental damage to all Apple (and all other) products in my home. Granted, the deductible is 150 €, so I'd only be able to get the screen repair of my Apple Watch down to 150 € (instead of $99), but it seems like hell of a lot better option than buying AppleCare.

How on earth is home insurance so cheap in the UK? In the US, the average policy is around $1,500/yr, the deductible is $500-$2,500, and your rates will go up the more claims you make -- so obviously nobody uses it for a damaged phone. I'm baffled by how UK insurers could possibly turn a profit on insurance... if people were filing a claim for every piece of technology they owned every time they accidentally damaged…

Well if what you're saying is true, home insurance is definitely cheaper in the UK.

Here it's split into home insurance and contents insurance, if you rent you only require contents insurance but if you own a house you generally get both combined.

For my house (home and contents), I pay about £250 which is quite a bit higher than usual because this area had a history of flooding (before they put flood defenses) and I insure some high value items extra which increases cost.

My excess (I guess you call it a deductable) is £250.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#42

Post by moksly »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #32
moksly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if this is a Danish thing, but here you can add an electronic appliance insurance to your regular “indboforsikring” which is the policy form that covers your home and all the shit in it. They come in various forms, but mine covers anything from throwing a wii controller into a TV to losing your laptop in a bag or having it stolen. It also covers all family members and is $80 a year. It does require you t…

Also common in Australia, part of what we call Home contents insurance”, which covers all the items in side* your home and is seperate from the building insurance itself. Here, too, some more expensive items and personal electronic devices (phones, laptops) are not part of the basic home contents insurance policy options but can be added for a small additional annual fee similar to what you have indicted, and they’ll…

Hehe, we have something similar did bicycles where insurance gets really expensive if you have a bike valued above $2300.

I sort of get why too. I had an early long distance ebike, that cost me $3000 that I didn’t buy the extra insurance for because I always locked it in the basement. The one afternoon I didn’t, it got stolen. Right outside our apartment building in plain view of like 120 apartments, and basically in the middle of the university of Aarhus where we have security patrolling the roads every 30 minutes, a 23kg bike got stolen. :p

Anyway, the police and insurance process was basically a webworm that told me directly that the police wouldn’t spend time on it and then paid me my insurance money right away after I signed in with our national ID. When it’s sort of a free crime to steal bikes, it makes sense that insurance is hefty. On the flip side, I guess expensive MacBooks are stolen less often in Denmark than in Australia.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#43

Post by lamnk »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #15

> 2021: Dropped, broken screen (365$ repair down to $0 under AppleCare) iPhone screen repairs cost almost $400??

News at 11: Apple aftersale parts are extremely expensive. Be prepared to pay for two third of a new iPhone or Macbook if their mainboards go south in the case they do not fall under Apple warranty program.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#44

Post by Hamuko »

cr1895 wrote: post #33
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth is home insurance so cheap in the UK? In the US, the average policy is around $1,500/yr, the deductible is $500-$2,500, and your rates will go up the more claims you make -- so obviously nobody uses it for a damaged phone. I'm baffled by how UK insurers could possibly turn a profit on insurance... if people were filing a claim for every piece of technology they owned every time they accidentally damaged…

I doubt they’re in the UK…they mentioned euros and not pounds. Perhaps it is renter’s insurance? For me in the Netherlands that’s only €12 or something per month.

Yup, not in the UK. And nope, home insurance for an owner-occupied apartment.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#45

Post by Animats »

beagle3 wrote: post #22
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What apple charges for repairs almost definitely has markup, so it's possible that they can provide insurance that averages out below the expected "cost" of repairs but still makes apple money. For them to make money from offering the insurance, it would have to be a gain over their alternative of you not having the insurance and then paying them to repair the device if it breaks. They also have to be making enough…

But when your iDevice breaks, you don’t necessarily go to Apple to fix it. Increasingly more, yes, but iPhone screen and battery replacements on the cheap are common where I live (compared to Apple costs). Mac repairs aren’t anymore, but non-Applecared people might switch off the Apple platform if the cost to repair is too high. It’s possible that AppleCare is a win for both Apple (customer retention) and the custome…

But when your iDevice breaks

Why should it break? These things have been out for a while now. They should be bulletproof by now. As in MIL-SPEC 810G. You can certainly buy phones that are.[1] They're less bulky than iPhones in cases.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#46

Post by r00fus »

xvector wrote: post #37
lilyball wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget insurance prices are also tailored to your particular risk as much as the insurance company can figure out how. Meanwhile, AppleCare is the same fee for everyone. So for you, your risk model might say that AppleCare isn’t worth it. But for someone else who has a much higher risk of accidental damage (for example, parents of young kids) AppleCare might be a far better value proposition.

I just view AppleCare as the price of using my phone without a case, the way it was meant to be used.

As a tangential counterpoint, my series-0 Apple Watch lived to a ripe age of 4 and survived many ocean swims, pools and showers (and was still usable when I retired it). My coworker's watch died a year earlier during his first swim with it; he had a case (yes some folks did that) while I didn't.

Some cases are more trouble than they're worth.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#47

Post by saagarjha »

Animats wrote: post #45
beagle3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when your iDevice breaks, you don’t necessarily go to Apple to fix it. Increasingly more, yes, but iPhone screen and battery replacements on the cheap are common where I live (compared to Apple costs). Mac repairs aren’t anymore, but non-Applecared people might switch off the Apple platform if the cost to repair is too high. It’s possible that AppleCare is a win for both Apple (customer retention) and the custome…

But when your iDevice breaks Why should it break? These things have been out for a while now. They should be bulletproof by now. As in MIL-SPEC 810G. You can certainly buy phones that are.[1] They're less bulky than iPhones in cases. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8

I don't know what kind of case you're putting your iPhone into, but those phones are far bulkier than even the bulkiest OtterBoxes that I've seen. Plus, I have a suspicion that my iPhone even without a case would probably survive being stepped on by a boot and dropped into water.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#48

Post by vurpo »

Semaphor wrote: post #28
doublepg23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a cult around thinkpads, but even those have gone to the wayside in recent years.

The ThinkPads lost their reputation shortly after the sale to Lenovo.

Some of the most popular ThinkPads, even among diehard ThinkPad fanatics, are from well into the Lenovo era. Say, for example, the X220, X300, T420. They came out several years after IBM stopped having anything to do with ThinkPads, and they are exactly as durable and easily repairable as the old reputation of ThinkPads say they are.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#49

Post by blitzar »

choeger wrote: post #27
lobochrome wrote: post #11

I remember a course on game theory at business school where we proved all insurance to be non-optimal. There were two ways to deal with catastrophic risk if I recall correctly, depending on the gain function: a) if catastrophic risk is infinite - no premium will be acceptable due to price. b) if catastrophic risk is discrete - it is optimal not to insure since the expected loss is ruinous anyways. Led me to be highly…

There are certain risks you simply cannot pay out-of-pocket: Car accidents (my car is insured to 20M in damages p.p.), house destruction (you usually already have one mortgage), or inability to work in your profession (e.g., by becoming blind). The former cases are so expensive you cannot expect to save money or take a loan and pay off the damages. The latter case impacts your ability to earn money in the first place…

Also a pretty big difference between the payout/claim for my phone - capped at the price of a new phone, vs health, chronic condition, pain etc - unlimited.

Or you do what I do and live with the cracked back screen on your phone, because it is under a case anyway.

Re: The Applecare Hustle

#50

Post by vurpo »

lobochrome wrote: post #11

I remember a course on game theory at business school where we proved all insurance to be non-optimal. There were two ways to deal with catastrophic risk if I recall correctly, depending on the gain function: a) if catastrophic risk is infinite - no premium will be acceptable due to price. b) if catastrophic risk is discrete - it is optimal not to insure since the expected loss is ruinous anyways. Led me to be highly…

There are issues that game theory can't solve. Take for example the St. Petersburg paradox. From Wikipedia:

"A casino offers a game of chance for a single player in which a fair coin is tossed at each stage. The initial stake begins at 2 dollars and is doubled every time heads appears. The first time tails appears, the game ends and the player wins whatever is in the pot. Thus the player wins 2 dollars if tails appears on the first toss, 4 dollars if heads appears on the first toss and tails on the second, 8 dollars if heads appears on the first two tosses and tails on the third, and so on. Mathematically, the player wins 2^(k+1) dollars, where k is the number of consecutive head tosses. What would be a fair price to pay the casino for entering the game?"

The expectation value for how much you'll win from this game is infinite, so a naive game theory assessment might conclude that it's worth paying up to an infinite amount of money to play this game.

Of course, the issue is that nobody has an infinite amount of dollars in their pocket. That, incidentally, is also the issue with your naive assessment of insurance policies.

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