Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Hollyn Keen, 14, Roanoke, reacts to a voicemail in the living room of her home Wednesday June 7. She has gone through four phones in the past two years.

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Poll

• Is cell phone insurance worth it?

It's a junk pile out there for cellphones.

At least one in four of the wandering, wireless wonders are destined to get broken or lost during their typical two-year life span.

Whether dropped in toilets or run over by cars, cellphones cling to a shaky existence from the moment they're secured to belt loops or slipped into purses or pockets. To learn the odds against a cellphone's survival, just ask an insurance actuary, or a teen's mom.

Thanks largely to parents and their ham-fisted kids, cellphone insurance is booming. Threats during the summer abound, including sand, swimming pools and extra time for skateboarding.

Consider the trials visited on a phone owned by 17-year-old John Lindsey of Roanoke.

"It has been thrown out of a car window. It has been flushed down a toilet," he said.

Some accidents are inexplicable, like the time John's friend chomped on his cell. "He just bit off the antenna for no reason."

Such incidents make some parents consider phone insurance.

"It's like one of those things that if you have it, you don't need it, but if you need it, you don't have it," said Jeri Keen Schapiro, whose 14-year-old daughter, Hollyn, has had her cellphone stolen, lost, and damaged from sand and suntan lotion at the beach.

Given that these little pieces of plastic and metal can cost more than $300, depending on Internet capabilities and camera quality, an insurance policy often seems a worthy gamble.

"It's very popular, and it gets more popular the more expensive the device is," said John Johnson, spokesman for Verizon Wireless. "We try very hard on every transaction to remind people they can insure their phones."

Although phone companies often sharply discount buyers' first phones, they usually don't subsidize replacements.

So if the original phone, as in the case of 15-year-old Brett DeMole's, is washed and dried with a load of clothes, don't look for another special deal -- from the store or from an insurer.

The premiums are high in relation to the product being insured. Typically, average cellphone insurance costs about $60 a year, with a $50 deductible. A new Samsung phone from Verizon Wireless costs about $200, making the ratio of product value to insurance price roughly 3-to-1. (The price for teens and adults is the same.)

Compare that with the $582 a year it takes to insure a $25,000 Ford Expedition for a stay-at-home mom, according to Brian Evans, a State Farm Insurance agent in Roanoke. That's a 43-to-1 ratio. (Of course insuring cars driven by teens is more expensive.)

And for $500 or so in homeowner's insurance, a Roanoke house valued at $187,000 can be protected. That's 374 times the insurance price.

But the cost of insuring cellphones reflects the relative risk category they're in, according to insurers. "The problem is when you look at other forms of insurance, you don't have the same incident rate," said Bob McGuire, executive vice president of business development for eSecuritel, a small handset insurance company that provides services to roughly 20 carriers nationwide.

"Handset insurance is priced by the underwriter and considers factors such as number of claims processed; the cost of those claims; past and future trends," added Bettie Colombo, spokeswoman for Asurion.

The bottom line? Insurance is high because many phones are doomed.

Still, some consumers argue that the phone policies aren't fair.

A group of residents of Dade County, Fla., are seeking class action status for their pending lawsuit against phone insurance companies, including Asurion Insurance Services, lock/line LLC and Signal Holdings, accusing them of furnishing cheap replacements and inflicting outrageous deductibles.

For their part, insurance underwriters are hedging their bets on cellphones. Most policies include detailed exclusionary rules. For example, don't count on reimbursement for damage caused by rodents, insects, vermin or other wild animals. Consider that next time you go camping.

Other breakdowns that are frequently not covered include those resulting from normal wear and tear, gradual deterioration and the dreaded so-called "inherent vice."

Inherent vice? The term is left for buyers to ponder, but refers to hidden defects by the manufacturer.

And while President Bush may be ready to confront the threat of nuclear terrorism, cellphone insurers aren't. The rules exclude damage from atomic weapons.

The high rates of loss and damaged phones have even caused some companies, such as State Farm, to stop or cut back on offering the protection.

"We've had such a bad experience," Evans said.

It's a feeling that parents and their teens know all too well, making insurance on cellphones a way to buoy that sinking sensation when one gets flushed.