The iphone insurance is a scam - please be advised

They do lie, I paid my insurance for one month short of two years oon my LG $600 phone on contract, that is when the microphone stopped working. I was told i have a $200 deductable to get this phone fixed. After two years of insurance? I just said no, stopped using the LG, and SWORE TO NEVER BUY AN ATNT PHONE AGAIN. (For some reason this decision to not do it really exasperated a couple of the employees there -- do they get commissions on phone insurance exchanges?)

The microphone started working again BTW, but it was a very buggy device and no good as a phone anymore anywway. I could have bought six good phones for whatt that thing cost me in my ignorance.

(I meant to say 'three'. Three good phones. At $200 apiece.)

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@drjorg wrote:
So I am not to trust the employee who sold me the plan? I think there is a difference from me never looking and the salesman's false claims.

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What exactly do you think they lied about? Were you specifically told there are no deductables or was that fact just not disclosed? I've gotten the insurance pitch many times. They tell you insurance will replace the phone for just about any reason, which is true. I don't remember, though, anyone ever telling me about the deductable, I just knew it existed. Does that make it a lie or is that just a salesman making a product sound better than it really is? Does any salesman reveal all of the fine print? Ever had a car salesman try to sell you an extended warranty?

@little birdy

While I could buy 3 "good phones" for $200, you could not replace your LG phone with a like new AT&T phone, even 2 years after the purchase date.  

Phones sold by AT&T are sold at full retail cost with $650 being a typical median price.

Your Insurnace is NOT from the cell carrier.  AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-mobile all pass the coverage through Asurion.  READ the policy they send you in the mail  and save it for when you need to make a claim.

to most people, all insurance is a form of a "scam".  You pay premiums monthly, semi-annually, or annually, and you get nothing for the premiums you pay.  In the event that you need to submit a claim, the insurance company will do what every they can to keep as much of the money you have given them as they can, otherwise they don't make a profit (and all insurance companies are businesses out to make a profit).

The reason we pay for insurance is because we feel the cost of the monthly premiums plus the cost of the deductible will be a smaller burden on us, than the cost of replacing the insured item at it's full cost.  FOr house it's easy to see how annual premiums of $500-1000 would make since if it would cost you $250,000 to replace your house on your own if you didn't have that insurance.  For your cell phone,  the $10/month premiums plus the $200 deductible would work out to about $440 to cover a smartphone for 2 years with one replacement.  Withthe cost of mst smartphones being over $500, then for most of us, the insurance is cheaper than having to spent the full price to replace a smartphone.  Of course, the insurance company hopes that there are more people who pay the premiums and never submit a claim than there are people who submit claims.  As more people submit claims, the premiums and/or deductible start to go up.

@GeekBoy.  Well said.

If the insured phone is $900 and one month old, one $8 premium paid, a $225 deductible is a bargain for a stolen, lost, or destroyed phone.  If a screen repair is less than the deductible, it is always better to pay out of pocket.

The best "insurance" is a very good case and screen protector.  It baffles me why anyone would walk around with a naked phone.  

Insurance isn't required and can be canceled at any time.  

It is not any wireless carriers fault if you don't know what you are paying for when you add insurance, then fail to read the brochure 

You are correct.  That is also a large part of the reason why I have not subscribed to the cell phone insurance through AT&T for many, many years.  I purchase a good case, I purchase AppleCare+ for my Apple devices, and I use common sense to help keep my phones from getting stolen.  I can't imagine "losing" a $700-900 device that has become an integral part of my daily routine.

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@drjorg wrote:
Explain how taking more money as a deductible than the cost of replacing a screen is not a scam?

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If your car has $1000 deductable and you have $400 in damage would you actually turn in the claim to the insurance company?  Of course not....

If you can repair it for less, don't turn in the claim.

They possibly (probably?) have a fixed amount since they're might be just replacing your phone.

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@drjorg wrote:
Never received any documentation. 

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So I'm guessing you didn't go looking for it either. 

Did you look at anything about what you were paying them money for?

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@drjorg wrote:
So I am not to trust the employee who sold me the plan? I think there is a difference from me never looking and the salesman's false claims.

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Trusting the insuarance salesman and

not reading the fine print (or even the big print).  

Not sure how to respond to that...

Yes, I am giving you a little bit of a hard time.  But you're trying to make it completely not your fault. You did no checking on what you were spending your money on and now it's a "scam". Plus, you're sending out "warnings" and if people here aren't reading their documentation, why/how would they be proactivly reading your warning??? 

I would like to know where to find a copy of the Mobile Insurance Plan. I want to read it. If I am going to trade in my phone yearly, does it pay to even have this insurance since the phone would be under warranty. Also, they never ask you if you want it. I discovered it on my other two phones last year and had it removed, because I had Apple Care. I should review my bill line by line, but it's a busy world. When I did, I had it removed. Now I notice they quietly added it to my new phone.

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@msufan wrote:

I would like to know where to find a copy of the Mobile Insurance Plan. I want to read it.

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It's at the very top in the first post 

https://www.att.com/shopcms/media/att/2016/shop/wireless/documents/Mobile-Insurance-Brochure-En.pdf

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@msufan wrote:

If I am going to trade in my phone yearly, does it pay to even have this insurance since the phone would be under warranty. 

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Warranty doesn't help you if you drop it, if it's stolen, or if you accidentally run it through the washer...