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Comment by ericabiz | Hacker News Reader

FTA: "and other things to and from stores (eg, getting your broken iPhone to a Postmates-using repair shop)."

Yeah, about that. We run repair shops, and were approached by Favor (Postmates competitor) about doing this. We love Favor; they are local to us in Austin and we'd like to do more business with them.

The problem was insurance. Our insurance refused to cover it as the phone wouldn't be in our possession. And (at least at the time) Favor's insurance also was not covering if a phone was lost or stolen during a "run."

When it's a small food order (most of the food orders they run are around $20-$30, or even less), it's not the end of the world if something gets lost or stolen. It's a lot bigger deal if it's a $969 iPhone 7+. Even with a broken screen and iCloud locked, they're still (unfortunately) worth significant money on the black market.

As far as I know, no delivery company has overcome this hurdle.

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Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but can't they just act as their own insurance? Reimburse customers themselves? As I understand it, insurance costs more than expected payouts (or the insurance company wouldn't make money), and is purchased only to amortize cost spikes too large to handle. So it doesn't make sense when the spikes are small (on the company's scale) and semi-regular.

Maybe the actual expected loss from theft is too high?

Insurance pools you with other people so it could make sense to buy protection if you think you're getting a deal.

We've solved this hurdle at Dolly, but our entire business is built around having solved this exact problem — so it's part of our core strategy.

I've always wanted to to use Favor or Postmastes to deliver packages to UPS, but it never ends up being worth the risk. It's interesting to hear that insurance ends up being the issue. Presumably UPS and Fedex have insurance for this, I wonder if they'd ever partner, and use their insurance.

> I've always wanted to to use Favor or Postmastes to deliver packages to UPS

Why? You can schedule pickups for Fedex and UPS for no fee, and have same-day pickup in some areas.

http://www.fedex.com/us/fcl/pckgenvlp/pickup/ https://wwwapps.ups.com/pickup/schedule?loc=en_US

UPS and Fedex don't pickup on the weekends. In the past when I looked, you couldn't specify a time with very much granularity, but it looks like that is an option now, so I'll have to try it out.

https://www.shyp.com/

Unfortunately it doesn't work in my city, and requires you to buy the label from them as far as I can tell. I am shipping to Amazon FBA, so they provide the label (at a large discount).

Yes unfortunately. People often forget this. A friend had his latest iPhone stolen by a prostitute one night walking home from a bar. He wasn't too concerned, and eventually his insurance paid out and he didnt care about being robbed as his thinking was it was locked and then disabled by an Apple store so 'she got nowt'. But I'd wager that it was sold immediately for parts for say $100 at a local independent repair store who probably made another $200 out of it for parts, I daren't tell him as the issue has pasted given his thinking.

I am part of a group of independent repair shops (see http://repair.org ) and most of us are quite vocal about our policy of not buying iCloud-locked phones.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't make it easy to see whether a phone is iCloud locked. They used to have a convenient online tool for this, but took it down. So a lot of folks, repair shops or not, get suckered into buying one.

From my perspective as someone who owns several stores, the majority of them get sold to people who don't know any better through platforms like Craigslist or Facebook marketplace.

A lot of repair shop owners do lurk on, say, FB Marketplace and comment on posts where people are obviously trying to sell stolen goods, but there will unfortunately always be someone willing to buy something because they got "such a good deal."

Typically repair shops aren't going to put used parts in a customer phone, so an iCloud locked phone isn't much use "for parts."

Can you explain why you wouldnt put working used parts in a customers phone (excluding time degrading parts like a battery I guess). I'm sure in Asia all little 1-2 people phone and laptop stores (which are very popular - in some cases whole shopping centres floors dedicated to such repeated stalls) do? If I need a new headphone jack in an out of warranty phone I guess a second hand part is probably much cheaper for everyone? Ignoring the stolen issue (and morality around stolen) for a second. Same reason independent mechanics will often source from a scrap yard where appropriate - say a cheap phone $150 (like my y6-ii) with one thing broken?

Using used parts might be twice as much labor for one thing, you have to remove the part carefully from one phone and then install it into another one. Another is that you can't always guarantee the repair is done well if it's done with used parts as you can't really be certain what kind of conditions they were subjected to over time. Also, as you have to charge less for used parts, you might not have as good of a margin on the repair. I don't work in phone repair, but I used to work as a bicycle mechanic, and sourcing used parts for repairs was generally not considered worthwhile in most shops I've worked in.

>I'm sure in Asia all little 1-2 people phone and laptop stores do?

Can't speak for all of them, but one that I visited in Hong Kong to do a screen replacement definitely had a guy sitting at a counter breaking down a stack of used iPhones for parts.

> Unfortunately, Apple doesn't make it easy to see whether a phone is iCloud locked. They used to have a convenient online tool for this, but took it down.

Huh, that seems like an obvious thing for Apple to not just provide, but to make extremely easy to use and actually promote. Run a simple stolen/not stolen check from NFC by tapping another phone, or something like that. Perhaps be able to put a message on the check from iCloud to enable easy positive proof of ownership.

I think there were some issues that robbers would be checking it, so demanded passwords etc. in the robbery to prevent it from being locked. So Apple made it harder to access to the public.

If the robbers were willing to go to that much trouble, they could just ask the victims to wipe the phone on the spot to remove the activation lock. It'll work either way, no need to know in advance whether it's locked or not.

This is the best explanation I could find.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/31/apple-probably-took-...

"walking home from a bar" Sure he was ;)

Ha, in this incident he was. I was actually there when we were approach by two Uganda prostitutes after several or more beers, he was in his talky / huggy mood, where you from? blah blah blah.. I was tired and thought f'this see you later. Now was he robbed there or not that's unknown I grant.

That sounds 'unable to provided informed consent' drunk.

What insurance covers robbing?

Most holiday insurance. Most direct mobile phone insurance too from UK. I think many decent UK house insurance does for personal possessions away from home too. Id hazard a guess he was triple covered but that would complicate things on sub $1000 item. Is US really different?

I doubt most folks take out holiday insurance. Typically it's sold in a fairly scammy way similar to how ski pass insurance is sold -- "protect your trip!!" all for a ripoff fee with tons of exclusions. Mobile phone carrier insurance you would also have to elect to pay for and also has a negative expected value.

Homeowner's insurance/renter's insurance would likely cover it. I'm not sure I'd want to make a claim against my homeowner's policy for such a small amount though. I've fortunately never had to rely on it but i've heard rumor of not using it on small ticket items.

IMO, trip insurance mostly makes sense if you have a large non-refundable pre-pay in which case the insurance is also covering you if you have some injury or other covered reason for not being able to go. There are also some trips that have a greater probability of injury and expensive evacuation, e.g. treks in remote areas.

Some argue that you should always buy it because there's always the possibility of bad things happening that could be very expensive. But personally I (like I assume most people) am very selective.

Right, I tend to avoid any non-required warranty or insurance due to expected value of the coverage being negative.

That said, if you've been planning an African Safari for a decade, and everything is pre-paid to the tune of $20k, the $100 on trip insurance is probably money well-spent! For example, I did a long motorcycle trip where I paid $250 for a year's worth of medical evacuation coverage, which was nice peace of mind.

Of course, the more "stuff" a policy covers, the more expensive it is, but you bring up a good point about pre-paid expenses. My last trip was on airline miles, with $25/night AirBnBs that could be cancelled the day before.. train tickets weren't bought until I was in-country, and naturally no food/drink/museum entry/subway passes were prepurchased.

Location dependent. I hazard a guess 80% of UK people going on holiday take out travel insurance, it's practically pushed down your throat at every turn and in the media too about dangers of being medically insured abroad without insurance. The airline travel insurance for lost baggage and delay is pretty scummily pushed and generally doesnt cover medical. Luckily it is usually only 5-20GBP per person per trip or 50gbp-100gbp for an annual policy (with max time out of country limited to X months usually 6). I suspect this is because we dont generally have medical insurance in the UK due to the NHS where as I guess your $$$pm medical insurance covers you abroad so primary reason for holiday insurance doesnt exist.

The first two are not things I generally purchase. My home insurance does not cover personal possessions away from home. So yes, it's a bit different here.

It's usually called "off premises theft" coverage. It's a somewhat expensive option for most homeowner's policies. (Some policies include it by default, and some don't.)

In the US most Renter's or Homeowner's Insurance covers "off premises" theft too. Though depending on your deductible it might not be worth making a claim.

How is there a market for this?

If my phone is broken, how will I even use the Postmates app?

website

Most traditional shipping companies do have shipping insurance.

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