Losing your phone or damaging it when you travel or even just on a daily basis is always a possibility. With the amount of money that phones are going for this day, a simple need for a repair could set you back a ton of cash! That where getting insurance for T-Mobile phones can come in handy. As with any type of insurance, the biggest benefit that you’re going to have is that repairs and replacements are going to be cheaper for you. Now, the thing with phones is that you have different companies that are willing to provide insurance for your device. If you have an iPhone for example, Apple Care is a popular program.
In this article what we want to do is go over how insurance for T-Mobile phones works. To ultimately help you decide whether or not it’s a good idea for you. One of the main problems that we see with this type of insurance is that it’s usually not included in the cost of your plan. The cost for this type of insurance is going to depend on the phone that you have. Ultimately T-Mobile personnel will determine what the cost per device is going to be for you. Having so many numbers in your head could be a bit confusing. That’s why we are going to make an effort to make things as simple as possible. Here are the topics that we are going to be covering in this article!
- The Type of Device That You Have Is Typically What Will Determine Whether Insurance Is Worth It
- Insurance For T-Mobile Phones Cost
- Is Applecare A Better Option?
- What Will Happen To My Phone Data If I Lose My Phone?
- Is Getting A Phone From T-Mobile Worth It?
The Type of Device That You Have Is Typically What Will Determine Whether Insurance Is Worth It
This is the first thing that we wanted to get into, and we don’t want people to feel offended by what we’re going to say. The reality of the situation though is that if you have a device that is worth a ton of cash it probably doesn’t make too much sense to get it insured. We’re going to be giving away some data that we were going to look into a little later in the article, but oh well. The bottom end of the pay scale in Insurance for T-Mobile phones is 7 dollars per month. If you have a Samsung A32 that you bought for 229 in two years on the program you’ll have spent ⅔ of the phone’s value in insurance payments. What’s worse is that the model isn’t so old. At least at the time of writing for this article.
What could happen is that you don’t even get the lowest rate on the insurance pay scale. Obviously, that would mean that you could potentially be paying close to the total value of the phone itself in insurance payments over 2 years. Now, if you have the newest iPhone to ever see the face of the earth, then you really should be thinking about insurance. Even though, you’re definitely going to get the maximum monthly fee possible attached to your policy. Just like with any type of insurance that you want to attach yourself to there are a ton of things to consider.
The last thing that we want to talk about before we get to the entire rate conversation, is that the payments are going to be per device. That means that for your family plan you’re going to have to add at least 7 dollars to each monthly fee. When you’re a family of four you can end up paying another line just in insurance payments! Again, if you all have the latest device known to man it could be worth it. In those cases though, take into account the fact that you may even be paying more in insurance for T-Mobile phones than you will be for one line in your plan, maybe even more lines!
Insurance For T-Mobile Phones Cost
We already talked about the low end of the pay scale. Here’s the full pay scale though. The protection 360 program from T-Mobile though is priced at $7 (+ tax) per month depending on your device. Pricing from $7-$18/mo. You can imagine that the bills for those at the high end of the pay scale can get pretty big. What’s this about “depending on your device”. So from what we’ve been able to gather, if you buy a phone from T-Mobile and then you let them know that you want “insurance for T-Mobile phones” they’ll have a set price that they slap on the type of phone that you buy.
That idea isn’t that bad, because you could go to the store and look into different phones. You can directly ask the folks there what kind of monthly fee you would be looking at for insurance on a particular model. Really the benefit of this outside of whether you think something is expensive or not is that you know what you can expect to pay from the start. That’s not going to be the case if you bring your phone or you buy an insurance policy after you’ve been with a device for a while.
From what we know in those situations your phone has to be evaluated at a T-Mobile store. They’ll let you know then and there what you can expect to pay. We’re not sure if the process has changed through COVID. Since you can actually buy insurance for T-Mobile phones straight from your app. There’s a chance that T-Mobile has relaxed a bit on these checkups. Then again, if you have a very beat up newer model phone that can play against you a little bit. As with any type of insurance though some people are going to feel robbed others are going to feel like they got a good deal. It’s part of the dance with these types of things.
Is Applecare A Better Option?
Price-wise it could be a better option depending on your device. They don’t have such a strict policy or extensive pay scale. Essentially AppleCare runs on two different types of plans. One that offers you coverage for 199 a year, and another that offers coverage for 299 a year. Monthly fees on both are 9.99 plus tax, and 14.99 plus tax. At the end of the day you could end up paying pretty much the same for any of these plans. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to check with T-Mobile first. Particularly if you have an older phone. Ironically if you have a newer phone you’re potentially going to get a better rate directly from Apple.
There was one thing that really caught our eye with both options. If you get insurance for T-Mobile phones directly from them or if you do so with Apple you’re still only going to be entitled to two claims per year. That essentially means that minor damages are probably going to be things that you’re going to have to live with or pay to get repaired on the side. To try and keep at least one claim open to use in the event that you lose the phone altogether, or you drop it in the pool or something like this.
It’s really hard to pick out a winner between the two. It really depends on the type of phone that you have. If you have an older phone that T-Mobile is going to insure for the 7 dollar fee you could be better off with them. Newer phones typically will be cheaper to insure directly from AppleCare. There’s also an option that T-Mobile has where they are essentially in partnership with Apple. You can look into that as well. We just don’t want to get into all of the little details that could certainly affect some people’s decision making. It would take us through ten pages!
What Will Happen To My Phone Data If I Lose My Phone?
This is a question that a lot of people have when they lose their phones. Really the answer doesn’t necessarily depend on the insurance company that you’re with. It depends on where you save your data! The problem is people pay the hefty insurance fees and they think they are paying for data storage. That’s not the case. We have a couple of articles on this data issue that we’re going to link to here. Still, we want to cover the topic in a way that is super easy to understand. There’s essentially only one way to be able to get the data that was on your phone back if you lose the actual device. We are talking about pictures, videos, documents, whatever you may have saved on your phone.
If the data is in some type of cloud storage server you’re going to be fine. All that you’re going to need to do is log into your iCloud account for example in your new device. All of the data that you have saved there is going to be able to be transferred to your new phone. That’s why this form of storage is gaining a ton of ground on older forms of storage. Services like iCloud though are going to charge you a monthly fee to keep your data. Granted, the fee is lower than what you can expect to pay for insurance. It’s still a fee though!
When you keep your data on your SD card that was in the phone, the device itself or even on your SIM card you’re pretty much toast! All of the data that was exclusively saved on specific devices that you no longer have access to is going to be lost. You can go to your service provider, in this case T-Mobile and see if they can’t get you, your contacts and things like that back. More often than not though, you’re going to have to say goodbye to all of those things on your devices that were not in the cloud.
Is Getting A Phone From T-Mobile Worth It?
With all of this talk about insurance for T-Mobile phones it’s only right that we ask this question. Is getting a phone directly from T-Mobile really worth it? In other articles on the site, we’ve always leaned towards getting phones from outside of your service provider. Simply because we feel that getting a phone from your service provider especially through a credit system where you’re paying for the device and your line every month means your service provider owns you! For years, this has been a gimmick that companies use to tie down customers.
Now, if you’re completely happy being tied down to one service provider it may not be such a bad idea. If, and only if you’re still able to unlock the phone. Preferably also, if you’re given a good rate on insurance for T-Mobile phones. The problem with buying from any service provider directly is that it usually limits your options. Particularly when you want to move to another company or change devices even. They can literally tell you that you’re not done paying for the device that you currently have. That would mean they can’t give you credit for a new device. Buying devices directly from manufacturers is typically going to give you more freedom.
Insurance for T-Mobile Phones Conclusion
When it comes to insuring anything you really need to make sure that you contemplate all of the variables in the contract. Now, being completely real, lower-end phones are probably not worth insuring at all! The best thing that you can do is make sure that you are saving data correctly, particularly in some type of cloud storage. That way you can switch out devices without too much trouble. There’s also an argument to be made that if you want to spend less money on your phone in general you should just get a lower-tier phone. Yes, you’re going to miss out on some of the new developments. You won’t have a major investment literally sitting in your pocket every day.
A lot of things that we talk about in this article could apply to phones from other service providers as well. To be honest, we’ve usually been very pro-T-Mobile on the site. For the most part, we feel that it’s the company that provides some of the best rates in the United States. When it comes to insurance for T-Mobile phones it’s a tougher call to make!