Smartphone insurance: No cover if you misplace or damage it

Picture this: It’s been a month since you bought your new Nexus 5. You are running late for an important meeting and finally manage to hail a cab. But in a hurry to find the exact change for the cab ride, you end up leaving your phone behind. But you aren’t worried because your cell phone is covered.

And this is when reality hits. For a mobile insurance may covera variety of risks like fire, theft, riots, strike, accidents andfortuitous circumstances but does not covermysterious disappearances or theft from unattended vehicles. In legal terms, this means the loss of an insured object is an unexplained manner or where there is no direct evidence as to how the object disappeared or where the cause of disappearance cannot be identified. In other words, if you leave your phone attended or in a public place, insurance companies are not going to compensate.

A report in The Times of India saysmany customers have successfully made claims under their insurance policy for accidentally dropping the phone or finding it stolen, while customers who have reported their phone as misplaced have received nothing.

So the next time you buy an insurance cover for handset, keep these exclusions in mind:

•Theft from vehicles which are unattended are not covered

•Theft or damage to phones when the phone is in the possession of a third party.

•The policy cannot be claimed when the phone disappears under mysterious circumstances.

•Electronic or mechanical breakdown of phone.

•Experimentation or overloading of the phone by the users.

•Damage or loss of the phone due to war, nuclear perils, water or water-borne vehicle or due toatmospheric conditions, wear and tear, gradual deterioration

Compensation: According to the New India Assurance policy, the insurance cover provides compensation equivalent to the the cost of replacement of the instrument by a new instrument of the same specification and same capacity, including all taxes and duties.