This past week, insurance giant AllState subsidiary SquareTrade announced that it has acquired phone repair company iCracked. iCracked provides on-demand repair of phones and tablets across 60 cities in the U.S. and Canada.
SquareTrade’s device protection program generally requires you to ship broke devices to the company so you could go several days without your device.
By acquiring iCracked, SquareTrade could potentially set up a plan where you could bring in broken devices to iCracked locations. And so through a SquareTrade plan, you could potentially have your device repaired within a day.
Currently, SquareTrade has more than 50 million customers. And the company also runs a service called SquareTrade Go, which allows you to fix devices in 30 minutes or less with the help of certified local technicians.
“We are excited to join SquareTrade, a company that shares our commitment to delivering high-quality on-demand service to customers,” said iCracked CEO A.J. Forsythe in a statement.
Allstate bought SquareTrade for $1.4 billion in 2016, but the terms for the iCracked deal were undisclosed. Back in November, SquareTrade also acquired a leading provider of cloud and technical support services for consumers and small businesses called PlumChoice in a deal vallued at $30 million.
“Today’s consumers rely on connectivity to run their lives, and they can’t afford to wait for device repairs,” added SquareTrade president and co-founder Ahmed Khaishgi. “With our recent acquisition of PlumChoice, SquareTrade is uniquely positioned to protect the hardware and software that power our customers’ connected devices.”
SquareTrade also offers protection plans for laptops, TVs, appliances, smartwatches, cameras, fitness trackers, gaming devices, etc. And it covers issues like cracked screens, spills and liquid damage, mechanical/electrical failures, speaker/sound failure, screen failure, power burnouts, and remote control failures.
