3 mobile phone insurance – just dont bother

Hello everyone!

Well, I havent posted for ages, so sorry to both of you that read this, and today marks a new dawn in the life if TheBoyMitchell.com – its a serious post!

I thought long and hard about whether I should write what you are about to read, but I think that its serious enough to be brought into the wider domain, so that others know about it.

Here’s the story…

8 weeks ago I bought a new phone on a shiny upgrade from the 3 store in London town. It was a Nokia N8 (which I love(d)), and the nice lady asked me if I wanted to continue the insurance. I said “OK”, and she carried on the insurance.

5 weeks ago, I lost my shiny new phone. A sad sad day in the Mitchell household but a veritable walk in the park compared to what happened next. I phoned the 3 call centre out in India, and they cancelled the SIM straight away and gave me a number to call to claim on the insurance. All well and good. Except that it turns out that 3 dont do their insurance themselves – they outsource it to a company called Lifestyle Services Group, or LSG. Anyway, I complete the forms and filled in all in and after a load of to-ing and fro-ing (mainly because LSG couldnt process the form properly), the claim was approved.

What happened next was in my mind, quite extraordinary. LSG told me that my Nokia N8 wasnt in stock so could I wait 3 working days to see if one came in. I said “sure”. 4 days passed and I heard nothing, so I called them up, only to be told that “we dont have a Nokia N8 and we have nothing that is comparable so we are going to send you a cash sum of £248.”

I was online at the same time as being on the phone so I looked up how much a non Sim Nokia N8 is – its anywhere from £330 – £350. So I pointed out to the lady at LSG that not only was this not enough to replace my phone, but that they had also taken a £25 excess from my account. As far as I was concerned the whole POINT of having insurance is to replace your phone with the same model if something happens – apprently, this is not so.

The lady at LSG pointed out that the amount they would send was the value of a “second hand Nokia N8 and the price was worked out by using Amazon Marketplace”. Well, this was news to me.

After a lot of conversation which she politely deflected at all opportunities I was told to “take the £248 or we will not be able to process the claim” – meaning, take the money or fuck off.

Now, what gets me is the following;

1. If they had the phone in stock they would have sent it to me. As they didnt they would send me about 60% of the value of the phone, calculated by that most technical of means – amazon.com (I mean, why not use three.com for fucks sake as they are the company that I was dealing with for the value?) – so if I wanted to replace my Nokia N8 I would have to pay an ADDITIONAL £100 on top of the insurance premiums I aready paid, plus my excess

2. If they are the outsourced arm of 3 mobile, why do they need to carry their own stock of phones? Surely it would make more sense to process the claim and then contact 3 to get them to send me a new phone.

3. Why am I having to buy a non SIM version of the phone – surely as I am on a contract with them, they make their money from the contract. Buying a non SIM, or PAYG version of the phone is ALWAYS going to be more expensive because it is not attached to a contract and so the vendor has to make the money on the markup of the product sale.

4. Why should it be up to me to chase this shambolic company up, and then be told a dogmatic solution to the problem, be made to feel it is my fault, and then have to hawk myself about at considerable time and expense to get a new phone – isnt the point of insurance that THEY sort the issues out?

5. Why was I never told by 3 at the time I took out the insurance that this was an outsourced company?

In my mind, the behaviour of Lifestyle Services Group amounts to – at the very best – insurance mis-selling, as I am not getting what I was told I was getting by 3 (and to be fair to them, everyone I have spoken to at 3 since this problem started didnt know that their insurance was outsourced) and at worst it is fraud (selling insurance for something that they willingly apparently point out in their terms and conditions that you WONT get a new replacement phone if you make a claim and they dont have it in stock).

So I am now in a position where I am locked into a 2 year contract with 3 mobile that has 20 months to run, and have no phone to use *and* if I want to replace my phone, I actually have to pay out more money myself.

Through this entire process (and I have spoken to 5 separate people at LSG, all who were very nice and helpful – its not the staffs fault is it – its the company itself, and I bet that the staff dont know how shabbily their customers are treated), I have been made to feel unwanted, unnecessary and under valued. For the sake of £100 – the difference between what they made me accept as a settlement and the cost of me buying a new phone – LSG were willing to let me walk away from them annoyed, unhappy with the service yet stuck with them. And sans phone.

Well, LSG and 3 mobile, thats what made me write this. I’m going to email it to you now so you can have a read, and then you can add that to the 2 facebook profiles I have, plus the other online UK forums that I have written about this problem on. I’m also going to put this on Twitter and encourage retweets, until someone, somewhere decides that its really not worth having this kind of publicity about what I condsider to be a substandard service that has cost me money spread out to thousands of people online and either change the policy and make it clear at the time that you dont pay for a replacement phone if you dont have one in stock (and lets be fair – all your have to do is not stock *any* phones and then all your claims are settled at 60% of the face value), or I get a shiny NEW Nokia N8, or someone from whichever regulatory body reads this and does something about it.

And I really hope that someone at LSG takes this seriously and replies. I’ll be happy to put any replies up here as an update and let everyone know the outcome. After all, I am nothing if not fair. Unlike you.