@RedLeicester said:
That's why you have car insurance - if someone steals your car, and you own the original sales invoice, get a police report, and then get all the CCTV footage of it being stolen, will Ford give you a new car....???
This is, I think, apples and oranges comparison. A car is a large, complex physical object costing a great deal more to produce than a USB key.
The logical issue is that VSL will replace, at nominal charge, a damaged USB key after examining the damaged key but apparently will not accept a certified police report of the theft of a USB key. However an official police report is the criteria that an insurance company would use to justify reimbursement of an insured item that was stolen.
While it is true that a person could,fraudulently, claim that their USB key was lost or stolen, no one need accept such an unsupported claim - - certainly no insurance company would. Only if there is an official police report of a theft that supports the claim will an insurance company reimburse the claim.
In other words, an official police report is legally viewed as factual evidence that the claim is true in the same sense that examining a damaged object is evidence of it being damaged. VSL implicitly recognizes the fact that what is being replaced is a small, inexpensive, physical object by offering replacement of a damaged key for a nominal charge (a car company does not offer a replacement car for a nominal fee after you've smashed it up - - although they can examine it in detail), but apparently refuses to accept as factual evidence an official police investigation and report that declare the object to have been stolen. This does not quite make sense. To differentiate between these two circumstances would require believing in a possible conspiracy involving members of police anti-burglary units around the world and VSL users - - a conspiracy aimed at creating an illicit market in Vienna Keys. Of course anything is possible, but the statistical probability of such a conspiracy would, I think, be similar to that of being hit on the head by a meteorite. (It could happen!!)