More specifically 300+ (and growing laptops)

In the past few months we've experienced a rash of damages, losses and theft with our fleet of laptops. The coordinator here before me opted to not have these insured or have the factory warranty extenstions purchased.

So far we have over $20,000 in losses.

Does anyone know what insurance options exist for our (purchased, not leased) hardware? Or have any input?

People are telling me that alot of times insurance will not cover a damaged/destroyed LCD screen. (Which accounts for a large part of our losses)

TIA

We came across a somewhat similar issue a few years ago, and iirc, we were pretty much screwed with our previously purchased assets. You might be able to file the losses under your company insurance policy, but dont count on it.

If you really want to get those assets under some sort of coverage, you might want to go through your corporate insurance company and see what kind of coverage you can purchase from them. Expect it to hurt ye old checkbook though.

Lessons learned going forward is going to be your best bet, get the 3 year warranty, or two year if thats how often you refresh.

Another issue is that 85% of the laptops are already 4-5 years into their lifecycle. They are due for replacement in the future. All of the newer machines that I purchased are covered by a 5 year repair or replace warranty.

I think I am going file this in the "previous management fucked us over, I told you so" drawer and keep on my current practice of making sure all new purchases are covered properly.

Holy shit, if its a laptop and its 4-5 years old, yea, forget getting any sort of coverage on them. I'm amazed youre still using laptops that old. Most of my users drop them too often to last that long :)

Sorry you got burned by previous management though, thats a large chunk of capital to throw away.

You might be able to donate of those laptops to a school or non-profit organization and write it off to at least save part of the money. Not sure how feasible that is, but needy recipients would no doubt appreciate it.

Heh....are your users purposefully damaging those units so they will be replaced? That's old! Best of luck to you though, and I'd definitely say hind sight is 20/20.

Depends on the school system actually, around here in northern Virginia, the schools wont take them if they are older than three years. Since there are so many high tech firms around here, they can pretty much pick and choose what donations they accept. But I would imagine a less affluent area would still be willing to take them.

It is common for larger corporations to self insure. I mean, obviously the insurance company is making profit in the (perhaps not so) narrow margin between your premium and the probability that there is an accident * the cost of replacement. Having thousands of computers tends to lower one's overall variance in accidents, and enables the risk neutral, large corporation to recapture the insurers profit.

This the the general principle that insurance companies use. A home destroyed for one person is a high variance, extreme outcome game. People tend to be risk averse, and insurance makes a lot of sense because it lowers the variance in outcomes. But from the insurance company's perspective, who knows that of all the homes they are insuring some of them will burn down, it is a (not so) simple matter of figuring out the probability of the accident and determining a premium that gives them a fair return. Because there are so many homes, the insurance company knows with good probability that the total number of accidents will rarely diverge from the average, and thus insurers really aren't risking much.

So consider how large your company is. It may turn out that your old boss made a good decision. I'd wager he or she did.