Please help me with a dilema

Good afternoon you good people.
I would be extremeyl grateful if you were to help me with a dilema. As some of you might have read in another post, I dropped and broke my DA* 16-50 lens a few days back - I had bought it from SRS a few months ago and the extended warranty will run till March 2013. My insurance company are happy to replace the lens for me but I would have to pay £250 excess. I therefore sent the lens to JPSS and they have given me an estimate of £120 for repair, which would suggest that I should go with this second option.
My question is: What will happen to the extended warranty by Pentax? Say if something went wrong next year, would Pentax cover it or would they say that since the lens was broken, it is out of warranty. I spoke to a lady at JPSS, who said mechanics would still be covered by Pentax.
If you were in my shoes, would you go for a new lens or have this repaired. The optics of the lens, BTW, were excellent.

I would go for the repair and if I was very lucky they might have to replace it with a new lens anyway.

Ideally I would go for the other option and have the new lens, but only if I could keep the broken one. Then that could be repaired as well and put onto eBay later to offset the costs a bit.

JPSS are Pentax's service provider so you should have no problem with the warranty
For a dropped lens, that repair price sounds reasonable! Don't forget that Pentax User Members get a discount from JPSS - you need to mention your PU#

Matt

Thanks John. This is what I had thought of initially and it still remains an option. The insurance company are not interested in the old lens (I think).
Matt - thanks for the tip. I rang JPSS and they will give me a 20% discount, which is excellent news. The only problem is I don't know what my membership number is Can someone tell me where to find it?
Thanks.

I'm not sure we have numbers any more, so your username must be the key to this.

There's a special form here that has to be used:

http://www2.pentaxuser.co.uk/static_files/PUservice.pdf

I would put your username as memb no, but PentaxDan will be the one to confirm this - why not drop him a PM?

I wonder...

If you were to take the insurance money you will get the cost of the lens (normally from Comet/Currys) less £250. They wouldn't normally ask for the old lens back as it has no value to them.

You sell the old lens as is (faulty) on eBay.

So the cost of a new one is £250 less than what you get from eBay. The cost of a repaired lens is £120.

I'd be tempted to take the money!

And dont forget the insurance company will very likely hike up your premuim the following years, further adding to the £250 excess

Tempting, but would it affect future premiums?

I have to admit a certain degree of cynnicism towards such things, but I can't help feeling that despite all the 'protected no claims bonus' marketing, the insurer will end up getting their money back somehow. There appears to be enough of a lack of transparency in how they actually calculate premiums to take accounts of such factors.

One of my pet peeves is how, on my motor insurance renewal every year, my renewal quote mysteriously drops by £80-100 if I phoe up and threaten to move to another insurer...

You could always ask the insurance company how much they would add to the premium next year if you take them up on the offer. That would at least enable you to roughly calculate the overall costs.

But also bear in mind that as you have reported an incident they may increase anyway even though they haven't paid out, but are aware of a loss.

Bernard