The cost of losing things, and the cover you have

The cost of losing things is almost never the number on the price tag. It is the replacement, plus the excess, plus the premium you pay for years afterwards, plus a morning you will not get back. That gap between the sticker and the real bill came up again on 9 September 2026, when Go.Compare published advice for anyone buying Apple's newest and, by its reckoning, most expensive handset yet.

What was said on 9 September

The comparison site's mobile expert, Catherine Hiley, made a point that has nothing to do with phones specifically and everything to do with how British households insure the things they carry. Before you buy gadget cover for an expensive new device, check whether you are already paying for it.

With the new devices being of such high value, you might be tempted to get gadget insurance to cover it. But, if your home contents insurance includes personal possessions cover, it may already be covered by this.

That is a duller headline than the launch it was written for, and a more useful one. Plenty of people carry three overlapping promises on the same object: a standalone gadget policy, personal possessions cover on the household policy, and whatever their packaged bank account throws in. Only one of them will ever pay out.

The three bills one lost item produces

Work out your own figure rather than trusting a national average. Almost everything that goes missing generates the same three costs, in the same order.

The second row is where the arithmetic surprises people. Claiming on a policy that carries a £250 excess for an item worth £300 buys you fifty pounds and a claims record. Insurers price the record, not the payout, and they price it at every renewal until it drops off. A small claim is frequently the expensive option.

The third row never appears on any statement and is usually the largest. A lock change is an afternoon. A cancelled card is a week of borrowing someone else's. A missed train is a ticket bought twice.

Where the cover quietly overlaps

Three questions settle most of it, and all three take about ten minutes with your policy documents open.

1. Does the contents policy include personal possessions? Contents cover, on its own, tends to stop at the front door. Personal possessions, sometimes labelled all risks or away from home cover, is the extension that follows your things out into the world. It is very often optional and very often unticked.
2. What is the single item limit? A policy can carry a generous overall total and still refuse to pay more than a few hundred pounds for any one thing unless it was specified by name when you took it out. That limit is what quietly excludes the expensive item you bought the cover for.
3. What does the bank account already give you? Packaged current accounts commonly bundle mobile phone cover and sometimes travel cover. People pay a monthly fee for it, forget about it, and then buy the same protection again at a till.

Keys sit slightly apart from all of this, because cover for them is nearly always sold as an add on rather than included. We went through what that add on does and does not pay for in does home insurance cover lost keys.

The cheapest insurance is not insurance

There is a line below which no policy is worth involving, and for most households it sits somewhere around the excess. Beneath it you are self insuring whether you meant to or not, which makes prevention the only lever left.

That is not a moral point about being more organised. It is that the cheap interventions genuinely work on the recurring losses: one fixed hook well inside the hall, a set pocket for the wallet, a spare key left with a neighbour, and an alert that tells you before you have walked out of the café rather than after. We set out the free version of that in habits that actually work.

None of that helps with the flood, the fire or the burglary. That is what the policy is for, and it is why the sensible arrangement is decent cover for the disasters and cheap prevention for the everyday.

How Air Tracker helps

Air Tracker belongs firmly in the prevention column rather than the insurance one, and it earns its keep on exactly the losses a policy would never entertain.

Setup runs through the Find My app your iPhone already carries, so nothing extra gets installed, no account is created and no fee recurs. The requirement is Apple hardware on iOS 14.5 or later; an Android handset cannot pair with it at all. Play Sound makes the tag chirp at 80 to 100 decibels within roughly sixty metres, enough to reach the far end of a hallway or the boot of a car parked outside. Beyond that radius, other Apple devices passing by quietly update its last position, and those sightings travel encrypted end to end.

Turn on the left behind warning and the sums above stop applying altogether, because the item never left without you. Set against an excess you would rather not disturb, a box of two tags is an unusually cheap way to retire a recurring bill.

What it will not do is find something a thief has carried off, replace a cancelled card, or stand in for cover on anything valuable. It is a coin sized tag rated IP67, running up to two years on a CR2032 you can swap yourself, sold two to a box with a key ring each for under fifteen pounds and free UK delivery. see what is in the box.

Sources

• Go.Compare, "iPhone 18 range: Expert shares top savings tips as Apple launches most expensive device to date", 9 September 2026
• Citizens Advice, "Household contents insurance", accessed 2026
• Association of British Insurers, "Theft", accessed 2026
• Master Locksmiths Association, "Lost house keys: what to do", accessed 2026