3rd Party Insurance for iPad's

[danshaw]

I realize that this is not necessarily a Casper question, but I am hoping to harness the power of JAMF Nation and get some feedback on how you all are dealing with iPad repairs/warranties/insurance.

I work for a company who is about to pull the trigger on 2,000 iPads and we need to look at how to best cover repairs. We envision that we'll have anywhere from 5%-15% in a state of repair at any given time.

We need the coverage to include accidental damage (water, impact, etc) and because of the how crucial these will be for us we'd like to see a fast (under 5 day) turnaround.

So far we talked with Apple and they don't have much to offer when it comes to Enterprise Insurance. The coverage that they do have doesn't fit us perfectly and is pretty expensive.

We also are looking at SquareTrade right now also as they seem to be the biggest 3rd party out there.

Curious if anyone has used anyone else and liked the service. Thanks!

[gachowski]

Dan,

I think some of the bigger schools are seeing less than 3% failures ... and I that I have read here that some of them don't even get Apple Care and are just eating the cost of failed iPads.

We are looking at moving to that with Macs... and the math is looking like we can buy a lot of replacement Mac for the amount of money we spend on Apple...

I know it's not really helping you.. but I would guess that the ROI on Insurance is even worse than Appel Care...unless you are going to use the iPad in a toxic environment.

C

[danshaw]

Thanks @gachowski . In our corporate environment we have stopped paying for Apple Care because of that same reason. It was cheaper to just pay for repairs.

But these iPad's will be out in the field. And while I wouldn't call it toxic, we are estimating that these iPads will get damaged more than in an office setting. With that in mind it might be pretty expensive to repair them all.

[mattware]

Specialty Underwriters is a company I've got experience with, you might look into them. I don't believe it's cheap though.

My choice would be to save the money on insurance, purchase a few spares, and use AG iRepair (agirepair.com) for them when they're damaged.

[koalatee]

At my last job (school district), for the first two years (initial 1-to-1 rollout) there was optional insurance, and it was alright. Many did not get insurance, and even then repairs were sometimes shoddy and had to be sent back. Another thing to be aware of is that the insurance company would initially sometimes refurbish an iPad and as we got into DEP that causes all sorts of issues. We had another company used for repairs (oh so many destroyed screens) and in both cases, students were given temporary iPads.

As we rolled out to other grade levels, mandatory cases (eventually provided by the school), stricter rules on breakage and temp iPad usage, and other rules became the norm. You probably want to go hard on that. The students where it didn't really matter if they broke/lost theirs they treated them like crap (highschoolers) - also led to a good number that students just didn't pay for and graduated. Once restrictions started being set, they treated them more seriously, and they also implemented 'you have a fine, you don't get your degree' so that helped. Basically, start tough on those rules.

Now (I left that job last summer) I believe they have mandatory 'insurance' that is paid to the school and the school takes care of all repairs. I'm not sure the $ (to students, or what it ends up being to the school) so I can't speak to the effectiveness of it. But this basically allowed the school to handle all repairs (you don't want them handling their own repairs) and keep the process moving along - no waiting for parents to pay, finding S/N, etc... and everyone had insurance. Insurance was always cheaper than paying for a screen repair.

I think that 15% is high too... but I don't know your users :)

[danny33c]

We are a fairly small K-12 district with just over 3000 student iPads and have a 3.9% breakage rate. We do not use a third party insurance provider, our iPads are self-insured. The student pays $25 to the district for "optional" insurance, quotes because they are highly encouraged to purchase it. If they break their iPad they have to pay $25, if they lose it or get it stolen it's $40 for the replacement. We send all of our iPads back to Apple, no fixing in house. If student does not pay the deductible, they can't take their replacement iPad home until it is paid.

We have a turnaround time of usually less than two days. Often they are replaced the same day the deductible is paid as we have spare iPads on hand.

As jjourney stated above, a third party vendor destroyed about 50 of our iPads trying to replace screens and voided the warranty.

[tvagle]

We are finishing year 3 of our K-12 1:1 program
1400 iPads
720 MacBook Air 11"
120 MacBook Air 13"

We have used CPS http://www.cpscentral.com/ for all of our devices and have been pleased with the results

Cables, cords, power adapters and daily life are covered (loss or theft is not with our coverage but I do believe it's available for a higher premium)

If you are on the East coast I would guess you'd get returns a little faster than us in Minnesota (typically 7-10 days especially during school season) we have zero deductible and if our (SHAMELESS CASPER IMAGING PLUG HERE) 4 minute re-image doesn't do the trick we ship it off for repair...limits the number of/time it takes Tech's to solve any problem

Would be glad to share more if you're interested

Thanks and have a Great Day!