Solon seeks for mobile phone insurance policy

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MANILA — To address the prevailing mobile phone robberies, Paranaque City Rep. Eric Olivarez recently proposed a bill requiring mobile companies to offer insurance coverage.

House Bill 2303 or the “Mobile Phone Insurance Act” aims to cover the mechanical breakdown, loss and theft which includes snatching, robbery and any other act of force and “unlawful taking” of all kinds of mobile phones including tablets, iPads and any other device used to receive and send calls and text messages.

“Mobile phone insurance may seem trivial at first, but considering the prevalence of snatching, robbery and theft in the country, especially in Metro Manila where almost all people own mobile phones and majority of said owners have high end models, surely mobile phone insurance can be a good cost-saving solution for the public,” Olivarez said in a press release.

National Telecommunications Communications records show that from January to November 2009, it received a total of 813 actual cases of missing cellular phones.

“The said statistics have been constantly increasing as the years went by, reaching more than 1,500 cases of reported missing phones for the year 2013, with Metro Manila still being the area with the highest cases considering its population and the lifestyle of the people,” Olivarez added.

Section 3 of the bill mandates all companies to inform and offer the insurance to mobile phone buyers by the time of the purchase of the device.

The bill, however specifies that before an insurance is made, the buyer must have agreed with the companies’ insurance option and that the buyer’s credit card details be included within the insurance coverage if the buyer desires to make automatic payment of the insurance policy.

Under the bill, phone users are also given options to pay the insurance policy on cash and installment basis with premium on monthly installments where the cost of the insurance premium is included in the installment of the phone’s purchase price.

Consumers who already own phones prior to the bill’s passage may go to the carrier company and purchase the insurance policy.

Details taken from official press release of Olivarez and main text of the bill published in the Philippine Congress website