Mobile phone insurance: is your number up?

The numbers up for millions when a mobile phone is lost or stolen, because many of us have no clue how to contact friends or family without them.

More than 23 million people cannot remember important phone numbers – like those for their partner, parents, or best friend – because they are keyed in to the SIM card and never dialled, says new research.

In addition, a memory test showed four out of five people forgot the number they had just dialled within five seconds.

Surprisingly, almost everyone could remember their home landline number and two out of three could recall their parents’ landline number as well.

A company providing card and mobile insurance cover carried out the research.

The big problem for many mobile users is whether to take out specific insurance for their phone.

Of course, insurance protects the mobile but cannot replace that all-important data on the SIM card.

For most user’s, it is better to add  ’all risks’ cover to a home contents policy and back up your SIM card.

An ‘all risks’ option costs an extra £25 or so a year for most home insurance policies and covers belongings likes phones, music players, and laptops for loss, theft, or damage away from where you live.

Drivers may also find they are protected if their phone is stolen from their car by their motor policy.

If you have two policies covering phone loss, don’t claim on both because this may flag up as a fraud alert to the insurers.

The policy details to check for mobile phone insurance cover are:

Cost – Compare home insurance costs with a network provider’s charge
Replacement times - will the insurer give out a new phone quicker than a network provider
Excess payments – is the cost of a home insurer cheaper than a network provider
Few policies are likely to pay out for a fraudulent calls claim, so even owners insured for a missing phone can still face a big bill from the network provider for hours of expensive calls.

The only options here are pay-as-you-go cards that limit the cost of calls or putting some cash aside to cover an emergency.