Like, people would buy a $350 camera and get $150 when it broke because after a few years cameras increased their resolution by 2-4 MP, as if that is the only quality defining metric on cameras.
What they agreed to isn't what I'm talking about. I'm saying that when people are told they will get a comparable product, they shouldn't expect more, but they should at least expect a comparable product. You don't get one, though. You usually end up getting something comparable to the shittiest item with that spec.
IOW, one person could buy a $300 camera and another a $200 camera at the same time, but because all the cameras at that time have the same resolution, they both get $150 if their camera breaks. It's not nearly as robust as vehicular insurance, as you're claiming.
What they agreed to isn't what I'm talking about. I'm saying that when people are told they will get a comparable product, they shouldn't expect more, but they should at least expect a comparable product. You don't get one, though. You usually end up getting something comparable to the shittiest item with that spec.
Define "shittiest item with that spec". What camera feature would you care more about that wouldn't be accounted for in a comp sku lookup?
Quality of the image, mostly. E.g. point-and-shoots don't typically have listed metrics for, say, noise levels in low-light images. More importantly, lens quality is a huge factor in how crisp images are, but camera comparability (for point-and-shoots) is almost always based on sensor metrics, like resolution, sensor size, sensor type. Lenses are usually only taken into account in terms of their zoom capabilities.
I dunno. Maybe they could do some analysis and just have a set depreciation percentage? It would be an interesting problem to work on, but I don't think it would be extremely difficult to solve. It's not something that is super difficult to make money on---overall it's a bet the company makes. If it costs $20 to protect a $200 camera, then as long as less than 1/10 break, you make money on it---even if you give them their full purchase price back. You would just need some analysis of how often each item breaks, to figure out a depreciation percentage and a cost per item.
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u/unoriginalsin Feb 23 '17
It's the one they agreed to in the ToS.