PhoneOnline.ie phone insurance - suspicious?

Newaglish

I recently bought the Galaxy S2 from Vodafone on pay-as-you-go for 480 quid, which seems expensive but I did the maths and it works out cheaper than bill-pay assuming I hold on to the phone for at least 20 months.

The only annoying thing is that Vodafone doesn't offer phone insurance if you are on PAYG. So, I need to sort out alternative insurance. I found these guys, www.phonesonline.ie, through Google and they seem to have good insurance plans but there are one or two things that seem "fishy".

First, they offer 6 different plans, and the "Smartphone Plus" plan seems perfect for me (€12/month, €70 excess, covered up to €600). However, when you click through to the terms and conditions, they lump all the different smartphone plans into one group, "Insurance Premium", with the same conditions (€75 excess, cover up to €750). It does't make a huge difference but still seems misleading and unprofessional.

Then about halfway down the terms and conditions start talking about the UK, UK mobile providers, the UK regulator and UK law, almost as if the terms were copied and pasted from a British policy.

All a bit suspicious.

So has anyone had any dealings with these people? Especially tried to make a claim? Alternatively, is anyone aware of another reliable, competitive phone insurer for PAYG phone peeps?

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TL;DR: Online phone insurers phonesonline.ie seem competitive but some suspicious terms: have you dealt with them? Or have you come across another good insurer for PAYG phones?

Zab

I'm going to be kind of unhelpful here, but I have to say that unless your usage is pretty low it's unlikely that you couldn't have gotten a better deal on bill pay. Unless Vodafone was a must that is, they're a complete rip-off. Seems you could have got insurance via meteor too (I don't know anything about their policy, indeed perhaps they'll insure phones off their network although I don't know how likely that is).

Are you really considering paying €144 a year to insure a €480 phone? Unless you're a mobile phone disaster zone that seems like a really bad deal. That site you've linked seems to be just reselling fonesure, who have webpage here, although the state of it doesn't inspire confidence. I note that their Ts&Cs don't mention Ageas Insurance Limited line the PhoneOnline one though so I'm not sure what's going on there.

ShaShaBear

For the record, Vodafone offered me insurance on my Galaxy S2 PAYG phone. I refused because the company they work with is notorious for sending out refurbished sub-standard phones with a 3-month warranty that the "new" phone will never see
My advice is to buy a nice hard-case for it that doesn't make the phone any chunkier or more difficult to use, and don't do anything silly like leave it in the bathroom when you're having a shower or try to send texts when it's raining cats and dogs.

dudara

Moved to Banking & Insurance & Pensions

dudara