UK options for extending warranty on refurb iPhone?

[JulianL]

I'm considering picking up an "as new" iPhone 5 and quite a few of the units on sale have 3 months of Apple warranty left to run. My investigations lead me to believe that these will be refurb units given out by Apple as replacements for an existing handset that was 9 to 12 months old since Apple's warranty policy for refurbs is to leave the warranty end date unchanged if it had at least 3 months left on it when the refurb was issued or to reset the end date to 3 months after the issue of the replacement refurb unit if it was swapped out within the last 3 months of the original warranty.

My question is, is there any way to extend the warranty for another year? All I want is cover for malfunctions, I don't need accidental damage coverage although some of the plans have to include accidental damage cover as well. From what I've found out so far it doesn't look possible in the UK.

My reading of the Applecare+ terms is that Applecare+ needs to be purchased within 30 days of the original iPhone purchase so this doesn't seem to be an option. The other well-known alternative is SquareTrade but, although SquareTrade has an option in the US to cover older phones, the UK has the same restriction as Applecare and can only be bought for a phone that is 30 days old or less.

Do I have any options here or will I have to take the risk that any big problem (overheating, bad screen or battery, etc) will come to light within 30 days?

 

[Mercenary]

You can still buy and activate regular AppleCare for another year of warranty. O2 sell it.

 

[Gav2k]

As above you can purchase AppleCare during the first 12 months if you actually go into an apple store so they see the device.

 

[JulianL]

Thanks Mercenary & Gav2k. That's great to know because it's not at all clear from the description on the web site.

I also noticed since my OP that eBay gives the option of adding SquareTrade cover to a winning big on most new and nearly new devices even the ones that are technically over 30 days old so that's another option. It means that I can be slightly less afraid of buying something that doesn't have much or any warranty included in the sale price.

 

[DannyDrama]

From my understanding you can call apple and get AppleCare+, they will run some kind of remote debug. Not done it myself but it says that on the AppleCare+ page.