Is Asurion Cell Phone Insurance Worth It?
By Brad Stone and Olga Kharif – Bloomberg/Businessweek The little-known Tennessee company insures the handsets of more than 100 million cell phone owners globally. Consumer advocates say the policies are a poor value Verizon Wireless calls its mobile phone insurance program Total Equipment Coverage. Sprint Nextel (S) has Total Equipment Protection. T-Mobile USA: Premium Handset Protection. The names are barely distinguishable, and the insurance all comes from the same place: Asurion, a 16-year-old company in Nashville that would prefer you never heard of it. Asurion, which has 5,000 employees in more than two dozen offices around the world, is the quiet giant of the mobile phone industry. The four top U.S. wireless carriers offer its insurance exclusively, and more than 20 percent of the 293 million mobile customers in the U.S. pay Asurion to protect their handsets, according to the company. Asurion charges policyholders between $5 and $12 a month, depending on the model and type of co
