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Comment by Tabular-Iceberg | Hacker News Reader

> you know something about yourself that they don’t

Don’t most insurance T&Cs require you to disclose known risks like having “butter fingers”? I was going to say I was playing the devil’s advocate, but really I’m not, since I’m personally on the hook for other people’s undisclosed risk through my own insurance.

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Will your AppleCare rate change if you answer the question "Would you like to buy AppleCare+ with your new iPhone?" with "Yeah, I'm very clumsy"?

Surely not? I’ve never heard of anything like that for consumer insurance plans like AppleCare.

I’m no expert but AppleCare seems priced highly enough that they cover butterfingers too. I’d expect regular insurances to charge much less for a similar service (except definitely not as convenient)

How many regular insurances offer just phone insurance?

I don’t know. My bank offers smartphone accidental damage, theft, liquid damage insurance at about €100/year.

AppleCare+ costs the same per year but requires an additional €230 for the base AppleCare coverage.

If I wanted one I’m sure I could find for less too. Smartphone insurance is not something new or rare.

Yes. IIRC AppleCare+ for my Macbook for 3 years costs about 1/3 of the original price.

I’ve parted out my last 2 MacBook Airs for ~2/3rds of their retail value, after 4 years of use.

From that, all I can say is don’t break your LCD or logic board. Coffee on your keyboard or touchpad aren’t so bad.

You might have to disclose: I broke X phones in the last 12 months, but most likely the insurance already knows really well how often a phone screen breaks and you're not that special. I think those kinds of insurance calculate with "when" instead of "if". So if I pay $10 a month for phone-screen insurance, it costs $100 to replace it (after X months) and the screen breaks on average after 20 months, the insurance has a nice profit.

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