Having trouble enrolling your Galaxy S9 or S9+ in Samsung Premium Care? You're not alone - but fear not: Samsung says post-purchase enrollment is opening in the coming weeks, and that you'll be notified once it's available.

Samsung Premium Care is one of the better extended warranty programs out there for smartphones in the US, and Samsung made it available starting with the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Basically, you pay Samsung $12 a month for an extended warranty - including accidental damage protection - and Samsung makes the process of replacing a damaged or inoperable phone a lot easier.

The biggest benefit? After performing a remote assessment of your device and approving the protection claim, Samsung will send a courier directly to you to perform an in-person swap of your damaged or broken device for a new one. (And that's seven days a week, assuming you live in a region where all this is available).

It also covers a lot of the other standard stuff you'd expect, and the $99 deductible and three-claim-per-year limit are pretty generous - especially considering the cost of the phone you're insuring. Understandably, Premium Care compares quite favorably to a lot of the carrier-run insurance programs here in the US, and Samsung makes signing up pretty easy for those with an eligible phone.

Right now, Samsung continues to allow Galaxy S8, S8+, and Note8 owners to enroll in Premium Care ("aftermarket Premium Care enrollment") - no matter when their device was purchased. You just run a diagnostic app, upload photos showing the front and back of your phone (using a mirror - clever), and you're set to go. As long as your phone meets the criteria (US model, passes diagnostic, isn't cracked), you can sign up for Premium Care whenever you want.

No aftermarket enrollment on the S9 and S9+ - for now

If you read the terms and conditions for Samsung Premium Care on the Samsung website, you'll find the section describing enrollment eligibility, shown below. Notice anything?

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ only appear on the point of purchase enrollment list, not the aftermarket one. That means you can only purchase Samsung Premium Care at the time of purchase for those phones. But, that's changing soon - here's the statement we received from Samsung.

Currently Premium Care is only available on Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ devices at the time of purchase on Samsung.com. In the coming weeks, we are launching the ability to sign up for Premium Care to all customers, regardless of where they purchased their Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. We will be alerting Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ owners as soon as it is available for purchase and look forward to continuing to provide Samsung customers with in-person support at their location of choice.

The discrepancy was first spotted by Piunika Web, and you can see in that post that customer responses to the change have been ones of surprise and frustration. At this time, Samsung support is often telling customers who bought their Galaxy S9 or S9+ from Samsung's site but failed to add Premium Care at checkout to return their phones and re-order them with Premium Care. Don't do that. You'll soon be able to add Premium Care to your US-model Galaxy S9 and S9+ regardless of where it was purchased.

Anyway, given that many of these people traded in old smartphones to receive a discount on their S9 or S9+, initiating a return could be a huge headache. It's unclear how a refund would be handled in such cases, especially as these devices are often purchased on the payment plans Samsung offers. Regardless, that's not a great situation, and one that would probably require escalation of the customer service case.

As to why Samsung didn't launch sales with post-purchase enrollment available? My guess is it gives carriers and retailers a chance to push their own insurance plans during the peak sales period. After all, phone insurance is a big business.