Apple Reportedly Removing One-Time AppleCare+ Purchase Option
Mark Gurman, of Bloomberg, on Twitter:
A notable change coming to AppleCare+ next week: Apple is dropping the 2-3 year pay in advance option at physical retail stores and on devices and will only offer monthly and annual subscriptions. You’ll still be able to get those multi-year plans on the online store.
If true, this is just one of the many services out there that will have gone to a subscription model. I do wonder, though, if users will be able to purchase an Apple product at a physical retail store and then make a one-time AppleCare+ purchase online, after-the-fact, like users can currently do.
As it stands today, if a user wanted to purchase AppleCare+ for an iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max, the one-time purchase price would be $199 for two years of coverage. The monthly option for the same coverage would cost $9.99/month, which would renew until cancelled. Assuming the user kept paying for monthly coverage for at least two years, they would end up spending $239.76, which ends up being $40.76 more expensive than purchasing the one-time plan for two years of coverage.
Whether or not Apple will update their pricing remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out and what users think of the changes.
