Tile Premium Protect subscription to reimburse lost items you can't find

It's a fact of life that things get lost, whether under the couch, left at Starbucks, or, worse, taken by someone. Technologies have been developed to help remind you when you and your stuff stray too far from each other or even help you locate these things when the inevitable does happen. Not all lost things get found, even with things like Tile trackers but the company is willing to reimburse what you lost, presuming you agree to pay an annual fee.

Starting out as simple Bluetooth-enabled trackers, Tile's business has grown to include new features like crowdsourced search for lost or stolen items and an annual subscription for exclusive perks. Called Tile Premium, the subscription offers free battery replacements every year and a 30-day location history. Tile seems confident enough that you'll be able to find any item with a Tile that it's willing to reimburse you in case you can't.

This new subscription tier, called Tile Premium Protect, is pretty much an insurance policy and is in fact done with Cover Genius. It won't replace your lost item, which means you will still have to go through the trouble of securing or recreating files and the like. What you will get, instead, is the monetary equivalent of the lost item, but at a cap of $1,000 per year.

The subscription does cover most of Tile's trackers, including those that already come built into other products. That means some PCs, headphones like Skullcandy's, and even some umbrellas are covered by the insurance. Presuming they fall below that $1,000 mark, of course.

The timing of Tile's new subscription tier is rather interesting. The company, after all, is no longer the only game in town and even Apple is rumored to be taking a huge bite out of that market with its upcoming AirTags later this year. Perks like these could make Tile more interesting again though the Apple crowd could prefer Cupertino's own spin on things anyway.