New devices can cost a lot of money, ranging anywhere from $100 or so for a super basic phone or smartphone, all the way up to $1,000 or more for the premium high-end models. Many customers like to ensure their purchase will be around for a long time, even if they drop the phone or something else happens to it, and that’s why they buy handset insurance. What more convenient way to do this than through your carrier? That’s certainly what T-Mobile tries to sell their customers on, and like any insurance policy the prices are likely to change over time as market conditions change. T-Mobile loves controversy and while this isn’t quite like the recent YouTube “optimizing”, it’s still going to raise eyebrows.
Currently customers who opt for T-Mobile’s Premium Handset Protection plans all pay a flat $10 per month fee to insure their device regardless of the original device’s cost, and the only difference in price they’ll ever see is when something happens to that phone. Assurant, who offers the insurance through T-Mobile, has five different tiers for phones depending on their original price and this affects the amount of money you’ll pay at the register to get the device replaced. Phones in tier 1, which encompasses the least expensive phones, only pay a $20 deductible, while phones in tier 5 must pay a $175 deductible. While this price isn’t changing March 1st, 2016, the monthly cost is.
Starting in March customers on a JUMP! plan with insurance will see a change on their bill to the tune of $9 per month for tiers 1-3, a nice little $1 savings for those customers who opt for less expensive phones. High-end users in tier 4 and 5 will unfortunately see this price jump from $10 to $12 at the same time. Users who only opt for insurance and not for the JUMP! program will see their price drop to $7 in tiers 1-3, while tier 4 and 5 will see an increase to $10. This is obviously a positive thing for users of less expensive phones, as it’s now becoming even less expensive to keep owning and insuring those phones, but the vast chasm in price between those and the Galaxy S6 Edge+’s of the world has just widened a tiny bit. A dollar or two a month may not affect you too much, but the changing prices are always good to know about ahead of time.