What's On Your Mind? Apple, Nationwide, The Hartford

The Apple iPhone is a great little gadget, capable of doing a lot of amazing things. Michael, of Senatobia, Miss., concedes all of that. He just wishes it were better at being a phone.

“Holding the phone causes it to activate any of the numerous keys and functions on the touch pad with it next to your face,” Michael told ConsumerAffairs.com. “It does not have a lockout function that prevents it from doing anything from trying to call someone else and linking the two calls to mute, speaker, facetime, number keys.”

If the folks at Apple are reading this, Michael has a few suggestions.

“The iPhone could be fixed by programing a lock out screen,” Michael said. “Also if you receive text while on a call, all texts must be addressed before you can hang up on your call because they window priority over the end call window. Someone texting me when I am on a phone talking is not more important and will be addressed after I hang up, not before.

Michael makes some good points, but we're not so sure anyone uses their phone as a phone anymore.

The real cost

In today's competitive environment, businesses want to advertise the lowest price possible to get your business. For consumers, that makes it harder to understand just exactly what you're buying. People who buy airline tickets, for example, have now learned that the fare isn't the total cost of the flight – there are baggage fees and other costs. The same is true in insurance.

“I bought a new car and put Nationwide insurance on it,” Tammy, of Pittsburgh, Pa., said. Thought I had the best of the best on it.”

But Tammy said she was in a minor one-car accident and then learned something about her insurance policy: it required used or after-market replacement parts.

“On a new car with very low miles on it, I'm not wanting used or after-market parts on it,” Tammy said. “When I called and asked what was going on with this whole parts thing, I was told it is an 'endorsement' to have original manufacturer's parts put back on it. And of course, there was additional fees for that endorsement.”

In the long run, businesses would probably be better off if they made clear the true costs of a product or service, and consumers would probably be better served by not falling into the trap of judging a product or service by price alone.

Home value vs. replacement cost

While we're on the subject of insurance, consider this new quandary for homeowners. Because of the collapse of the housing bubble, there's a disconnect these days between what a house is worth if you were to sell it, and what it would cost to rebuild it if it should burn to the ground. Barbara, of San Antonio, understandably doesn't want to over-insure her home.

“My house insurance with The Hartford was due to be renewed and it had increased coverage,” Barbara told ConsumerAffairs.com. “I contacted them to reduce the coverage to last year's numbers. I was told that the coverage was based on house value and if I gave her permission to access a program that dealt with home replacement costs, she would see what she could do. She came back with the fact that my cost replacement was at $229,000 which is almost double of its value and that now I would have to pay $200 more. I was not asking for replacement, I simply wanted to be covered for a little over the mortgage amount.”

Different insurance companies have different policies, but all strongly advocate insuring at replacement value, because of the way the system is set up. As insurance professionals explain it, if your policy’s coverage is less than 90 percent of replacement cost, then the loss payment will have depreciation, co-insurance penalties, and possible carrier-specific fees taken out, yielding you only a fraction of the policy face value.