MACFORMAT INVESTIGATES
Protecting a new iPhone X with AppleCare+ cover seems like a given – but is it the best option?
AppleCare: protecting your Apple investments
AppleCare+ includes a lot, but it won’t cover you in all eventualities
The iPhone X is incredible in a great many ways. Incredibly advanced. Incredibly sexy.
Incredibly expensive. If you’ve bought one, you’ll want to protect your shiny new gadget, so AppleCare+ seems like a natural choice. However, is it the best way to give you peace of mind if something goes wrong? Over the next few pages, we’ll take a look at the options available so you know the best way to protect your costly investment.
Firstly, let’s take a quick look at what rights are guaranteed to every citizen thanks to UK legislation. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, you have up to six years to return an item that was faulty when you bought it (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; you get five years in Scotland), although after the first six months the onus is on you to prove that it was faulty at the time of purchase. Incidentally, that six-year (or five-year) period is much more generous than the two-year return period guaranteed by the EU.
The criteria for return are that the iPhone had to have been faulty or damaged when you received it, or wasn’t fit for purpose, or was not as described. If you return it within the first 30 days after buying the device, you are legally entitled to a full refund. If you do so within the first six months, you’ve got to give Apple a chance to repair or replace the faulty product (if that’s unsuccessful, you can then get a full refund).
Of course, this all applies to damage that was already present in the iPhone X when you bought it, so doesn’t cover you for anything that happens to it once it’s in your possession. For that, you’ll need AppleCare+ or thirdparty insurance. Let’s start with AppleCare+.
AppleCare+ coverage
AppleCare+ is Apple’s own insurance cover for its products. You can purchase it when you initially buy an Apple product, or within 60 days of the date of purchase. For iPhone X, it costs £199 for two years of coverage, and covers you for up to two instances of accidental damage within that period. Each claim has an excess: £25 for screen repairs, or £79 for anything else. You also get two years of priority support from Apple. On top, you get coverage for batteries that retain less than 80% of their original capacity, plus coverage for earphones and accessories that were included as part of your iPhone X purchase.
AppleCare+ includes a lot then, but won’t cover you in all eventualities. It does not cover you if you lose your iPhone or it gets stolen, and you need to take factors like that into consideration when weighing up whether to buy an AppleCare+ plan. UK plans exclude the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
Apple wants you to buy AppleCare+ – that much is clear from the repair prices it charges if you don’t have AppleCare+ cover. At the time of writing, repairing the screen of the
iPhone X will set you back £286.44 if you don’t have coverage (compared to £25 if you do). Other damage, such as cracking the glass back of the device, will cost a galling £556.44. For comparison, those same repairs will cost £156.44 and £356.44 respectively if you have an iPhone 8, so there’s a large premium for owning an iPhone X. Even worse, those UK prices for iPhone X repairs are actually more
expensive than Apple charges in the US: $279 and $549, respectively.
With prices like that, AppleCare+ can save you some serious cash. Assuming you bought AppleCare+ for iPhone X and needed the glass back of the phone to be repaired, you’d pay £278 in total (£199 for AppleCare+ coverage and the £79 excess for ‘other damage’). Getting the screen repaired would cost you £224. Those are savings of £62.44 for a screen repair and £278.44 for other damage. That means anything that falls under the ‘other damage’ category will basically save you 50% if you have AppleCare+ compared to not having it – a huge saving considering how expensive iPhone X repairs are.
Of course, if you have to get the screen repaired twice you’ll save £323.88 with AppleCare+ coverage, and you’ll save an eye-watering £755.88 on two instances of ‘other damage’. Food for thought.
Other benefits
AppleCare+ isn’t just about repairs – you also get 24/7 priority access to Apple support via phone calls or over web chat for the two-year length of AppleCare+. Without that, you only get 90 days of telephone support from Apple, starting on the date you bought the iPhone. As well as help for iPhone, AppleCare+ also includes troubleshooting for iOS, iCloud, wireless networks and Apple’s own iOS apps (such as Safari, FaceTime and Mail).
With AppleCare+, there’s also an Express Replacement Service, plus the ability to get your device repaired at a local Apple Store when travelling in Europe. The Express Replacement Service will be particularly attractive to many people, and it’s something that you can’t get without AppleCare+. This is where Apple will send you a replacement device before you’ve returned the faulty one. Apple includes packaging that you can use to return the damaged iPhone to the company. The replacement device will either be new or ‘equivalent to new’, according to Apple. It essentially means that you can get back to using an iPhone as quickly as possible.
There’s a one-off fee of £79 to have Apple send you a replacement device, which is quite reasonable considering you’re getting a new (or ‘equivalent to new’) device. Note that even if you have AppleCare+ coverage, you’ll still have to pay the out-of-warranty fee of £556.44 if you’ve already used up your two instances of accidental damage coverage, as well as a £7.44 shipping fee. That’s where AppleCare+’s two-claim limit could be an issue. If you’re accident prone and think you might exceed two damage claims, you may want thirdparty insurance; we’ll discuss that shortly.
If you don’t send Apple your faulty iPhone within 10 business days, you’ll be charged a replacement fee for Apple to send you a new iPhone X. That’s £999 for the 64GB model, and £1,149 for the 256GB one. If your faulty phone arrives late with Apple, the company will remove the replacement fee but will still charge you a late fee of £225 for the 64GB iPhone X and £300 for the 256GB model. Apple determines that an iPhone X is late if it arrives between 10 and 20 business days after the replacement is shipped to you. That’s a strong incentive to send your faulty phone to Apple as quickly as possible – even paying a late fee on top of the AppleCare+ charges is expensive, never mind the replacement fee!
Third-party insurance
While AppleCare+ can be a whole lot cheaper than getting Apple to repair your iPhone X if you don’t have coverage, you may still be able to get a better deal elsewhere.
For example, we found that insurance
Paying a late return fee on top of the AppleCare+ charges is expensive
firm Insurance2Go offers a specific iPhone X policy that costs £109.99 a year at the time of writing. That puts it at £219.98 for two years of coverage, a little over the £199 that AppleCare+ costs for the same length of time. However, for that extra £20.98 you’ll be covered if the phone is lost or stolen, and you’re covered for up to £1,000 of unauthorised phone calls (none of which are covered by AppleCare+). Accidental damage is also included, as it is with AppleCare+, except that there’s no limit on the number of claims you can make during your coverage period; AppleCare+ limits you to two claims. The excess fee is £50 with Insurance2Go’s plan – if you’ve broken the iPhone X’s screen, the excess with AppleCare+ is lower, but Insurance2Go’s excess is cheaper than the £79 you pay under AppleCare+ if you’ve done any other damage to your phone.
Ultimately, you need to decide whether the extra £20 (in this example) is worth the extra coverage. But if you’ve already shelled out a grand or more on a shiny new iPhone X, that probably doesn’t seem like very much for the extra peace of mind it’ll give you.
Of course, it’s not a cut-and-dried situation; there are other things to consider. Most third- party insurance companies won’t offer instant replacement of a broken iPhone X in the same way that Apple does. Mobile networks often do include this benefit as part of their own insurance packages, but at a steeper cost than AppleCare+; EE’s iPhone X insurance will set you back £288 for two years, for example. AppleCare+ also gets you priority access to Apple’s support staff, giving you a level of expert knowledge that an insurance company won’t be able to provide. If you want that kind of access and support, or simply can’t bear to be without an iPhone X for long after it breaks and want it to be replaced almost instantly, AppleCare+ may be the best option for you.
If you already have contents insurance, you should check whether you can include an iPhone X on your policy. If you can, that may simply be the best option of all.
Conclusion
Any insurance is better than no insurance, especially when it comes to the painfully expensive repair costs of the iPhone X. AppleCare+ offers a lot, but it may not be the best option if you want coverage for a lost or stolen phone, for example. Conversely, if you value getting a quick replacement for a broken iPhone or want to get priority access to Apple support, you should give it some thought. The worst thing you can do is not get any cover at all; a device as expensive as the iPhone X needs to be protected one way or another.