Operator phone insurance: €312 over 24 months

The phone insurance the salesperson adds when you sign is not an option of the subscription. It is a second contract, concluded with an insurer, and it costs €311.76 over twenty-four months at Proximus at the rate recorded on 6 October 2026. It stops automatically the day you leave the operator. The balance on the phone does not.

Two contracts on the same counter

I sold this insurance for seven years.

In Namur, between 2013 and 2020, the scene lasted thirty seconds. The customer had just picked a phone at €800 or €900, the box was still in his hands, and the question came at that exact moment: "Shall we insure it against breakage and theft?" Nobody asked who the insurer was. Yet the answer is written on the first page of the terms, and it is never the operator.

At Proximus, the insurer behind Smartphone Omnium is Ethias, in Liège. At Orange Belgium, the one behind Insurance for Mobile is AIG Europe, a company under Luxembourg law. The Telenet extended warranty terms I was able to read name Fidelidade, through its French branch. In all three cases, claims are handled by the same Antwerp company, SPB. The operator sells, collects the premium on its bill and passes it on. The day the phone hits the floor, the operator no longer decides.

A public complaint filed with Test-Achats (the Belgian consumer association) on 13 June 2023 tells the rest. A Proximus customer, insured for some fifteen months, drops his Galaxy Z Flip3. Claim refused: the device had allegedly not been used regularly with the Proximus SIM card during the fifteen preceding days. The customer disputes it. Proximus replies that the insurance is managed separately and refers him to the claims handler's number. Case closed.

So you sign twice, for two things, with two companies. The shop shows only one.

How much does the insurance cost over 24 months?

Between €144 and €384 in premiums depending on the plan, excess not included.

The amounts below were recorded on 6 October 2026 in the operators' public documents. For Proximus, the prices come from the Smartphone Omnium page aimed at the self-employed, and the excess per bracket from an undated copy of the general terms: the current page announces a range of €10 to €200, to be confirmed before signing. For Orange Belgium, everything comes from the general terms of October 2024, the most recent I found online.

I take the site's reference device: €599, of which €598 financed over twenty-four months. At Proximus, €311.76 in premiums amount to 52% of the price of the phone, paid without anything happening. With a broken screen in month ten, add €30: €341.76. At Orange Belgium, the same device falls into the €12 plan, which means €288 in premiums and €338 after one claim.

Go up to €1,000, the case of the buyer to whom the insurance is pushed hardest. Proximus does not change its premium, but the excess rises to €90: €401.76 over two years with one claim. Orange Belgium stays at €338. At €1,300, Orange tips into the €16 plan and the order almost reverses: €434 against €431.76.

The monthly amount is small, and that is why it goes through.

At €501, the Orange premium goes from €8 to €12

Orange Belgium's plans are cut by purchase price of the device: €200, €500, €1,200, €2,500. A phone at €499 is insured for €192 over two years. At €501, it is €288.

Ninety-six euros of difference for two euros of phone.

Theft, breakage, liquid damage: loss is covered nowhere

This is the line customers discovered after the fact, at the cancellations desk of the virtual operator where I worked next. They called to stop an insurance that had just refused them a phone left behind on a train.

The three contracts read say the same thing in different words. Orange Belgium excludes the loss or disappearance of the insured device. Telenet excludes simple theft, loss, disappearance and misappropriation. Proximus covers theft only with break-in, with assault or by pickpocketing. A phone put down on a café table and gone fits none of these boxes, and neither does a theft with no police report.

The other limits sit in the same articles:

• two claims per insurance year at most, at Proximus (article 4.4), at Orange Belgium (article 3) and at Telenet (article 6);
• the insured person's negligence, excluded everywhere, and whose definition belongs to the claims handler;
• battery wear, scratches and cosmetic damage;
• accessories, case and charger included;
• at Telenet, oxidation and damage caused by a third party, along with an insured value that drops to 75% of the purchase price between the twelfth and the twenty-fourth month, or €449.25 for the €599 device.

The replacement phone is not necessarily new. Orange Belgium writes it in order: an identical refurbished device first, an equivalent refurbished one next, a new one only after that. Proximus speaks of a device "as new" or overhauled, with a three-month warranty. And the claim has to be reported fast: forty-eight hours at Proximus and at Telenet.

Can you cancel the insurance whenever you like?

Not during the first six months.

Proximus writes it on its page: monthly payments you can stop in writing at any time, except during the first six months. Article 6.3 of the terms spells out the penalty, a charge equal to the premiums still to run until the sixth month. Orange Belgium concludes the policy for one year, renewed tacitly, and opens cancellation at no charge once six months have elapsed, effective on the first day of the following month. The floor is therefore €77.94 at Proximus and €72 at Orange on the €12 plan, even if you change your mind after three weeks.

Two doors stay open before that point. The first is the fourteen calendar day period, provided in article 10 at Proximus and in article 16 at Orange Belgium for a policy taken out at a distance. The second is statutory: since 1 October 2024, Belgian insurance law in principle lets a consumer cancel at any time from the second year, with two months' notice. The operators' contracts are more flexible than the law on this point, which is rare.

The road runs the other way too. Ethias can cancel at any time with two months' notice, and AIG after a claim. A policyholder who reports two broken screens in the same year should not be surprised to receive a letter.

A piece of history, to close this point. On 4 November 2022, the State Secretary for Consumer Protection announced a royal decree requiring equal premiums over the whole term of the contract. It targeted insurance sold with first months at €0, after the case of the Switch shops, which the FSMA (the Belgian financial regulator) had banned from selling insurance. If a salesperson still offers you trial months with no premium, ask to read the contract before saying yes.

The insurance stops with the subscription, the phone balance does not

No insurance comparison covers this point, because it can only be seen from the telephony contract.

Article 6.3 of Smartphone Omnium is unambiguous: if the Proximus subscription is cancelled, "le contrat prend fin automatiquement" (the contract ends automatically). Article 8.3 of Orange Belgium says the same: the policy ends if the insured person's Orange Belgium subscription is cancelled. The insurance is therefore tied to the line, not to the phone. You switch operator and keep your number, number porting cancels the old subscription, and the insurance falls with it without your having asked for anything.

Put that next to the repayment schedule. At month nine, on the €599 device, €373.75 remains to be paid, due in one go if you leave. The six-month rule spares you the early termination charge on the service, not this balance: I set it out in the article on the €1 phone and its 24-month credit and in the one on cancelling without fees. On the day you leave, you therefore pay €373.75 for a phone that, on the same day, stops being insured. And you will have paid €116.91 in premiums at Proximus for nine months of cover.

The insurance thus works as one more reason to stay. It appears in no calculation of the cost of leaving, and it weighs all the same: someone afraid of breaking a phone that is still half unpaid hesitates to leave the operator that insures it.

A trade-in changes nothing in this mechanism. A device taken back by the operator is paid for with a voucher or by bank transfer, it does not reduce the balance, and the insurance that covered it does not carry over by itself to the next one: see trade-in at Proximus and Orange.

Should you insure a phone above €800?

Only if you cannot replace it out of your own pocket, and after reading three lines.

The reasoning fits in one figure. On a €1,000 device, two years of insurance and one claim cost between €338 and €401.76. A screen replacement without insurance on a high-end phone is paid in one go, but it is rarely paid twice in two years. The insurance only pays off in the event of qualified theft or complete destruction, that is, in the cases where the exclusions are tightest.

Before signing at the counter, look elsewhere. Apple sells AppleCare+ and Samsung sells Samsung Care+: these are manufacturer contracts, tied to the device and not to the line, which therefore do not depend on your subscription. I recorded neither their prices nor their excesses, so I do not compare them here. Check your home insurance too: some policies cover theft with break-in at home, which you would then be paying for twice.

And there is the case where you should buy nothing at all. A phone bought for less than €300, a fifteen-euro case and an automatic photo backup: over two years, the premiums would exceed half the price of the device.

If the claim is refused, the telecom ombudsman is the wrong desk

The premium appears on the operator's bill, and the reflex is to write to the Telecommunications Ombudsman Service. It deals with the bill, the subscription, the cancellation of the line. A refused claim is a matter for the insurer, and so for the Insurance Ombudsman, after a written complaint to the claims handler. The FSMA supervises the intermediaries that sell these contracts.

The rule is federal: it is the same in Namur, in Brussels and in Ghent.

Sources

• Proximus, Smartphone Omnium page (self-employed and small companies version): premiums of €12.99 and €6.99, excess ranges, cancellation, consulted on 6 October 2026.
• Proximus, Smartphone Omnium general terms (in French), undated copy showing a €12 premium: articles 1.1, 1.6, 3.1, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, 6.2, 6.3, 7.1 and 10, consulted on 6 October 2026. The excess per bracket is to be confirmed against the version in force.
• Orange Belgium, general terms and information document for Insurance for Mobile 6, 8, 12 and 16 (in French), October 2024: articles 1.2, 1.3, 1.7, 2, 3, 5.1, 6, 8.2, 8.3, 9 and 16, consulted on 6 October 2026.
• Telenet, general terms of the extended warranty insurance, undated copy: articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8, consulted on 6 October 2026. Premiums and excess not published in this document.
• Test-Achats, public complaint of 13 June 2023 concerning Smartphone Omnium; article on the insurance cancellation rules applicable since 1 October 2024, consulted on 6 October 2026.
• La Libre, article of 4 November 2022 on the royal decree targeting phone insurance with first months at no premium.
• The site's reference device: €599, €1 upfront, €598 financed in equal instalments over 24 months, or €24.92 a month.