When you come home with a new expensive device, you are more careful with it than you ever will be again. The simple reality is that we don’t have the patience to handle all our tech with cotton gloves. We use it every day, and there is always the possibility it will break no matter what we do.
If you’re paranoid about this kind of thing, you may not know how to mitigate the risk. If you look at what homeowners insurance covers, you’ll see that the contents of your home are protected. This includes electronics. Unless that is, they are particularly expensive electronics. In other words, your phone and laptop should be covered, but an expensive gaming setup may not.
What can you do to prepare for the potential that your expensive tech will break? Here’s what you need to know.
Scheduled Insurance
Ask your insurer which electronics are covered in your homeowner’s insurance policy. Those that are not included can be added as scheduled insurance. This simply means that you specify these items as extras on your policy at an extra monthly cost. You may have to specify how big you want your deductible to be.
This can give you the peace of mind that you can claim if your tech is stolen. You will also be covered if it is destroyed in an accident. However, what happens if it just… breaks.
Warranties
This is where warranties come in. Many people are confused as to how a warranty differs from insurance. A warranty is not there to cover you if your expensive device is stolen or broken in an accident. Rather, a warranty covers manufacturer faults. In other words, if your device stopped working for no reason other than a part breaking on its own or software malfunctioning, they will repair it at no cost.
How do you know if it is a manufacturer’s fault? There is no simple way to determine this in most cases. Retailers, therefore, provide a warranty that covers a certain number of years. This is a period of time during which any manufacturing faults should come to light. Anything that happens after this time is considered unrelated.
Insurance does not cover this kind of thing. It is only there to protect you from theft and accidental damage.
Everything In Between
This may not reassure you that much, especially if you are particularly paranoid about your tech breaking. After all, there is a lot that neither warranties nor insurance covers. Generally, your own carelessness is excluded. So, if you accidentally pour coffee all over your laptop, that’s on you.
There are, however, steps you can take in order to prevent these mistakes from happening. Follow these tips:
- Always put devices away. You may not think that leaving your device on a table somewhere is risky. However, as long as you have not specifically chosen the place where you keep it, there is a chance accident will happen. Someone in your family might act carelessly around it, or you yourself may forget it’s there and damage it.
- Don’t eat or drink around your tech. This is something we all do, but if you really are paranoid about your tech, you won’t want to risk getting food or drink all over it. No matter how careful you are, there’s always the chance that you’ll knock over your coffee and destroy your own tech. This is especially true if it’s your first cup of coffee.
- Hide it from kids. Kids are able to destroy things in ways you hadn’t even considered. If you don’t have kids and a family member is coming with their children, hide your tech before they get there. They’ll be drawn to it, and it’s best that they don’t know it exists. Keep it out of reach and out of sight.
There is no foolproof way to protect your expensive tech from getting destroyed. But with a little caution, you can ensure that any issues that do come about are covered by insurance or a warranty.
