As I’m starting to take my laptop out to more places, I’m becoming conscious of wanting to insure it, mostly in case of theft.
I’m struggling to find any viable insurance in the UK. The terms and conditions of many providers seem to suggest if they cannot replace directly then they offer similarly priced alternatives (ie non-framework) rather than giving an amount to repurchase. The lack of Framework laptops when searching their device databases makes me concerned equally.
Does anybody have any experience insuring their Framework?
Maybe trying checking with your renters or home insurance provider? They usually have capability for riders, or even just general “electronics” or “computers”.
And I think the “cannot replace directly” means Framework doesn’t exist, which means you wouldn’t either. IANAL though, you’d have to check with one to be sure.
Not for a computer, but for a drone I had a while back I got a “personal item” policy from my homeowner’s insurance company. It covered theft and damage and while I never had to file a claim, when I set up the policy they told me they would just cut me a check for the amount of the policy if it was lost or stolen. Hopefully you can find something similar.
The Post Office/Taurus Insurance in the UK have replied with this:
Blockquote
Thank you for contacting Post Office Gadget Insurance
I can see that you have purchased the “DIY” option upon purchasing. Unfortunately, once a laptop’s internals have been handled by a person who is not an authorized repairer of the device which is insured then we are not able to cover said device.
I do apologize for this. If you have any further queries please do get in contact.
Seems may be difficult to get a claim processed through insurance.
Wow, even insurance insists only “authorized” people “handle” the internals? That’s bizarre. It’s almost like they are treating an insurance policy like a warranty. Why would they care if you assembled and/or repaired it yourself at some point? Was their policy also sort of like an “extended warranty” type of insurance?
“Hello, my insurance company. Someone stole my laptop and I want to file a claim.”
“Sorry to hear that. Just a few questions to get started. First, did you ever handle the internals of the laptop yourself?”
“Uh, I mean, I assembled it myself when I got it. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Sorry, theft isn’t covered in cases where non-authorized people have handled the device’s internals. Have a nice day.”
So bizarre to me. It just goes to show how foreign “right to repair” still is in the minds of the corporate world.
Imagine if people couldn’t get auto insurance unless they only ever had their car serviced by the dealership. “Oh, sorry, you bought a car from one of the companies that still allows the owner to service it themselves. We can’t insure you.”
Sorry you are having such trouble with this. Hopefully, you can find something that will work for you (and not cost a fortune).
I fear this spreading to other types of insurance.
“I’m sorry Sir, your auto-insurance has been canceled. We’ve discovered you have been adding windshield washer fluid yourself. You were not authorized.”
“I’m sorry, we’ve declined payment on your cholesterol lowering medication. You have been eating bacon. This was not approved by a licensed doctor or nutritionist.”
There is no way that somebody who built e.g. an expensive gaming rig, with water-cooled GPU and threadripper CPU etc, could not call an insurer and protect it against risks of theft or accident (fire, water tap left open by the neighbour…).
I mean, I’m sure that it happens all the time that self-assembled rigs are insured all over the world.
So just take your business to a competitor, and you should be good.
But it’s the insurer that has decided to limit who is “authorized”. Framework could try to say that the Laptop was made to be easy to build by most people. But the insurer can still do whatever they please.
But there isn’t “Framework Authorized” like there is “Dell Authorized” or “Apple Authorized”. So who exactly is “authorized” in the mind of the insurance company? Nobody?
Maybe Framework needs a short webinar/multiple choice “exam” to “certify” people as “Framework Authorized Repair Technicians” to appease a certain segment of society that isn’t used to people actually fixing their own stuff.
“Authorized” by the insurance company, for the purpose of minimizing their risk as low as absolutely possible, without blatantly violating the law.
They have decided that computers are just too hard. So if anyone other than a trained person touches it, then there is an increased risk of it getting damaged. We’re lucky they even let us plug things into the ports. No one tell them that Framework ports can be moved around!
I like this!
I don’t know if it would help with particularly difficult insurance companies, but it wouldn’t hurt.
I disagree. I know this is a simple idea to get around an issue people seem to be having, and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, per se. Maybe something like that is the best option at the moment. But it got me thinking. I don’t feel this is the direction Framework, or any right-to-repair oriented company should take.
We should be standing up for the idea that it shouldn’t require some kind of “authorization” from the manufacturer in order to work on/repair a product in the first place. Obviously, with your example, pretty much anyone could become authorized, which is far better than most companies do. But rather than making it easier to become “authorized,” I think we should be working to do away with a that idea all together.
Rather than legitimizing an insurance company’s idea that they were right to not insure something worked on by non-authorized people (by having Framework come up with a way to authorize people), I think we should instead be working to make the insurance company understand that they are the ones that need to change. We should be helping to change the mindset of the industry to understand that it shouldn’t be up to the manufacturer (or an insurance company) to decide whether a customer is allowed to work on a product they own. I understand that’s a tough hill to climb, especially with an insurance company where liability is often the concern, and it’s easier to just say “we did our due diligence by requiring only authorized service.” But as has been brought up in this thread already, if you follow that idea too far, eventually cars would be uninsurable if they were ever serviced outside of a dealership.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a place for “factory certified,” or whatever you want to call it. And that’s warranty work. If the manufacturer is paying for the repair, it makes sense if they want to choose who does the repair. They may not, and that’s fine too. But if they are footing the bill, I think it only makes sense that they can choose to pay only their own, “authorized” people do to so. For instance, if you need a warranty repair on a Ford automobile, I think it only makes sense that Ford says you have to bring it to one of their dealerships if you want that repair done for free. But to say a warranty is void or a product is uninsurable simply because a non-factory-authorized person “handled” internal parts or did their own repairs at some point is a mindset that I feel should go away. The trick will be to get people to associate “factory authorized” with “paid by the manufacturer,” rather than necessarily better. In some cases/industries, the factory “authorized” folks may be the most capable. But they certainly aren’t always.
