Do you have a cat or dog? If so, you might have more to worry
about than your own clumsiness breaking your stuff. A new survey
conducted by the SquareTrade insurance company suggests that our
four-legged friends are responsible for the destruction of over 8
million devices, totaling more than $3 billion in repair and replacement
costs.
Ty Shay, the chief marketing officer for SquareTrade,
said that the inspiration behind the survey came from the various types
of claims SquareTrade got from its own customers. "We were getting a lot
of calls from customers with broken devices saying, 'My dog chewed my
tablet,' or 'My cat knocked my soda onto my laptop.' We found that
almost 1 in 5 pet owners have had this problem," Shay told ABC News.
Some
of the survey's observations seem obvious. Smartphones top the list of
gadgets to break, accounting for approximately 30 percent of all
reported accidents. Dogs are twice as likely to cause an accident than
cats. Two thirds of the accidents occur when the pets are left
unattended.
But there are also some subtle differences
among pets that can ultimately determine whether your electronics will
make it in the long run, such as:
Male pets were 50 percent more likely to damage the devices than female pets. Overweight pets were 72 percent more likely to be involved in damaging a device. People
that allowed their pet to sleep in the same bed or ride in their lap
while driving were two to three times more likely to have a problem with
their gadgets that could be traced back to their pet.
Pet owners
need not abandon all hope though. SquareTrade offers some suggestions
to keep your electronics working despite your chaos-causing companions.
The company's blog suggests putting the devices in areas out of their reach and avoid putting them near exposed liquids.
Source: Yahoo News
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