Now that the door’s been slammed shut on my credit card hack, you might think it’s a no brainer to just let T-Mobile auto-draft my debit card next month so I can get the discount back. After all, the rewards I earn on my bill payments won’t even come close to making up for that lost $15.
But there’s more to consider than just rewards. The credit card I use to pay my bill, the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, includes cellphone protection when I pay my wireless bill with the card⁺. That’s a huge perk.
Because of that protection, I was able to skip out on paying for insurance plans like T-Mobile’s Protection 360™ or AppleCare. Protection360 costs anywhere from $7 to $25 per month per device, while AppleCare costs $ 9.99 to $13.99 per month per iPhone (or $99.99 to $139.99 per year). AppleCare One offers a discount for covering multiple devices, but it wouldn’t work for us since our devices are all signed into different Apple IDs.
For three phones, this means I’d pay $30 to $42 each month for AppleCare or $21 to $75 per month for Protection360. So even though I’m “losing” $15 a month by using my Venture X instead of an eligible autopay method, I’m still coming ahead by getting my cellphone insurance included.