To protect the buyer, and give them a little more comfort behind the fairly toothless ‘caveat emptor’, it’s customary for the buyer to have a cooling off notice, or period, usually of 14 days.
Common in industries like financial services, it’s the 2 weeks’ grace during which we can consider our purchase, read the small print if we’re interested, and duck out of the contract if we felt unduly pressured into the sale.
The other day I was negotiating new mobile telephony contracts for my wife and I. This involved us upgrading both our package and our devices. I wanted to insure our swanky new devices – well, they are new devices and new to us, but not the latest models, as we’re perfectly happy being a release or 2 behind the bleeding edge – and was surprised to know that even though the start date of the insurance was day 1, I wasn’t covered and so wouldn’t be able to make any claim until day 15.
This is effectively the seller’s cooling off notice. It was also a major inconvenience to me as I was about to go on an international trip and didn’t want to make it, uninsured, with my new phone. I left the new phone at home.
The seller’s cooling off notice is the caveat vendor to our caveat emptor, but with more teeth I think.
Paul Dilger's blog 
I once came across a different-but-similar ‘cover gap’, and had such a bad experience that I vowed never to buy phone insurance ever again.
I’d had a new phone on trial for a week, decided against it, and asked for another to try. The day I swapped over I was at work, and left the FIRST one all boxed-up, sealed & labelled as instructed, on my desk and ready to be collected next morning, taking my NEW new phone home for the evening.
That night, as a complete coincidence, our offices were burgled and the FIRST phone was a gonner.
The phone company were unsympathetic and claimed that my new phone WAS insured from Day 1, but whilst I had 2 phones NEITHER of them were insured!!!
At that time the bill was £350, but it ultimately cost them my custom; I left that provider at the next opportunity and never went back. My employer gallantly picked up the tab, as it goes.
So, vendors, apply a Caveat Vendor if you like, but beware of the consequences…
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Thanks for your comment Andy. Yes, unfortunately fraud levels are always high, and margins are quite tight in insurance so they will wriggle out of everything single claim if they possibly can.
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