Seagate unveils risk cover with PCs

Seagate Technology India has announced a three-year insurance package for personal computers.

The scheme, called Peace of Mind, comes with a one-time insurance premium charge of Rs 399 for PCs costing less than Rs 30,000 and Rs 599 for PCs between Rs 30,001 and Rs 50,000.

The insurance policy will cover all the parts in the PC box and monitor. It does not cover plastic casings, mouse, keyboard and other external peripherals.

The turnaround time for the claims would be around 10 working days if processed through Seagate Accredited partners and 60 days if handled directly by the consumer. The cost of the replaced part will be reimbursed to the claimant.

If the same part is not available, next higher level model will be considered for replacement and the cost of the earlier model or new model, which ever is lower, will be paid to the claimant.

Sharad Srivastava, country manager, said, "The scheme will cover only the PC box (CPU) and the monitor. The coverage, again will include only new PCs and all hard-disk drives in the PC must be Seagate."

Discussing the plans for the current financial year, Srivastava said, Seagate is also planning to introduce its HDD for notebook computers.

The warranty support offered by the company through its service outlet tie-up with Accel ICIM will be expanded to 31 centres spread across the country by end of September.

Quoting IDC statistics, Srivastava said during the year ending March 2003, the number of PCs sold in India was 2.2 million.

IDC has estimated a growth of 15 per cent to 18 per cent for the current year.

Srivastava also said the share of Seagate in the HDD market in India is around 60 per cent.

"PC penetration in India still does not match up to the 10 million PCs sold in China last year," he added.

He further said that close to 65 per cent of PCs sold in India comes from the assembled market.