The window to buy into AppleCare+ breakage insurance is reportedly expanding enormously. Purchasing this service adds accidental damage coverage to an iPhone, Mac or other Apple product. The deadline after buying a new device is currently 60 days, but that’s apparently lengthening to up to a year.
The announcement came quietly, in a memo to retail and support employees, according to Bloomberg. “This gives customers another opportunity to protect their device and have access to all the AppleCare+ benefits,” Apple wrote in the memo.
The offer is only available in the US and Canada, however. And it requires people to pay for multi-year coverage at once, and not a month-by-month plan.
The advantages of AppleCare+
When buying a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch or a range of other products, the purchaser has the option to add AppleCare+. For a 16-inch MacBook Pro, this costs $379 but includes repairs for up to two incidents of accidental damage to the screen over a 3-year period. And each repair costs $99.
While that’s not cheap, a repair to this laptop, with labor, can come in as much as $800.
With a 12-month sign-up window, Apple is aware that people might wait until they’ve broken their device to try to sign up. That’s why anyone who waited to buy an AppleCare+ plan after the purchase has to have their device inspected by an Apple employee first.
