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Warranties sold by retailers.

E

Eric62

Senior member
Does anyone buy into these warranties?
I just bought a HP G70-250us at Fry's for $700 out the door, before $50 rebate. Fry's put the hard sell on a 2 year in house warranty for $140! WTF? HP offers a free 1 year warranty, and it's my belief that if an electronic is going to fail, it'll fail soon after purchase, or be good for many years. One, or the other.
The exception being the hard drive, which I'd replace myself before sending my personal data in to be repaired and/or stolen.
Any thoughts on extended warranties by my more experienced brothers?
 
they are universally regarded as bad purchases except in rare situations where the cost/risk is worth it.
 
Depends on what the item is but I always buy them on laptops, televisions, and cars. Hell, the screen on my toshiba 42" lcd went out and it was not covered under manufacturer warranty. However, I had purchased the service plan and their contracted service guy came out to my house and replaced the whole panel.
 
Originally posted by: Eric62
Does anyone buy into these warranties?
I just bought a HP G70-250us at Fry's for $700 out the door, before $50 rebate. Fry's put the hard sell on a 2 year in house warranty for $140! WTF? HP offers a free 1 year warranty, and it's my belief that if an electronic is going to fail, it'll fail soon after purchase, or be good for many years. One, or the other.
The exception being the hard drive, which I'd replace myself before sending my personal data in to be repaired and/or stolen.

Any thoughts on extended warranties by my more experienced brothers?
Click to expand...
The only extended care I've ever purchased is AppleCare for my laptop. Other than that, I pay w/ my Amex which doubles warranties (so 2 yrs for most electronics). I'm of the same mind, if it's going to fail, it'll do it sooner rather than later.
 
Originally posted by: sactoking
Auto warranties are a bad buy. As someone whose company underwrites them, trust me on this.
Click to expand...

How so? Purchased one with my Durango and when the transmission went out all I paid for a brand new transmission was $100 (my deductible).
 
Right, but that's like buying a health insurance policy and getting a ruptured appendix the next day. It's financially great if you're the one with the bad appendix. It financially terrible if you're one of the thousands that don't need it.

The company we contract with makes money hand over fist. It's gotta be coming from SOMEWHERE.

Auto warranties are a bad bet. You're better off putting the $$$ into an investment. If nothing happens, you have money for a lark. If something does happen, the money you set aside can (help) pay to fix it.

i don't advocate this approach with things like health insurance or auto insurance, but the majority of people would be better off without an extended warranty.
 
I won't get caught up in this debate, but here is my experience.

I sold electronics for 8 years and was a manager for the majority of that time. If something went wrong, the first question I asked was "Do you have the warranty?" Not because I didn't want to help people out but I couldn't if they didn't have our warranty. That manufacturer's warranty is not through the place you bought it. So if your big TV breaks, don't call the store expecting them to come out to your house and fix it...even within the first year.

And no, things don't always go wrong within the first year. That's a line that someone came up with and others choose to believe.
 
Most of the nicer TV manufacturers will service large TVs in house under their warranty. HP may require you to return the computer to them for service though so keep the boxes for it. If you really want a warranty I would contact HP directly and ask them to extend the manufacturer's warranty. Many will let you pay them directly for it.
 
The easiest thing to do is purchase with an AMEX or other Visa/MC that offers a free 1 year warranty extension.
 
I just had an abit Motherboard go out on me (not completly, just 2/3 usb headers are fried) and I have to pay $7 for cross ship plus shipping costs (prob around $15 bucks) and Abit, who doesn't even make motherboards anymore, has a deposit of $180 held on my debit card.


I should have just sprung for the $20 in store warranty and gotten a new motherboard on the same freaking day, I probably would have gone with an X58 and new Proc/RAM instead of the refurbished 975X abit is bound to send me.
 
Reply to minendo:
Anything with moving parts is a whole different story. Especially if it's UAW made...

I'm relatively new to computers. The only issues I've ever had in 6 years is one optical drive and 3 hard drive failures.
Oh. And the backlight on my Acer laptop went dimmed 3 1/2 years after purchase. I've since enabled auto shut off of display after 20 minutes of non use with all my monitors.
 
I bought it on my plasma TV because it includes 5 years of "In Home" care. Don't have to lug it any where.
 
I'd have to agree a purchased extended car warranty typically wont come out. My wife bought one for her Malibu. The cost was 1200 bucks and it had a 150 dollar deductible. She had a single issue that was covered and the total cost to repair was about 600 bucks, which she paid 150. She paid 1350 bucks to get 450 bucks worth of service. Wont do that again.
 
Originally posted by: Genx87
I'd have to agree a purchased extended car warranty typically wont come out. My wife bought one for her Malibu. The cost was 1200 bucks and it had a 150 dollar deductible. She had a single issue that was covered and the total cost to repair was about 600 bucks, which she paid 150. She paid 1350 bucks to get 450 bucks worth of service. Wont do that again.
Click to expand...
A lot of the car warranties are so narrowly written that is sometimes hard to get something covered.

 
I got the extended warranty through B&H with my camera and MP3 player. The reason being is it was cheap (like $20 for 2 years including accidental damage) and these are items i'm likely to drop a lot.
 
Originally posted by: Eric62
Does anyone buy into these warranties?
I just bought a HP G70-250us at Fry's for $700 out the door, before $50 rebate. Fry's put the hard sell on a 2 year in house warranty for $140! WTF? HP offers a free 1 year warranty, and it's my belief that if an electronic is going to fail, it'll fail soon after purchase, or be good for many years. One, or the other.
The exception being the hard drive, which I'd replace myself before sending my personal data in to be repaired and/or stolen.
Any thoughts on extended warranties by my more experienced brothers?
Click to expand...

You are dead on. Theoretically if an electronic device is going to fail, it will fail very soon at the beginning of the manufacturer warrenty provided days or it will fail very late in it's lifetime. I remember going to school learning about failure rates for electronics and that graph always seemed to be that way. I used to work at fry's and one think I can tell you is that the extended warrenties they offer is 90% profit towards the employee trying to sell it to you. Granted some things may be worth it but most of the time they are not.

Oh, and one more thing. If you are in Fry's, avoid the prices with the green price tags. That means they've been marked up so those on commission can make more money by trying to sell you those items first. Think of their pricing scheme as a backwards stoplight. Green means stop, yellow means proceed with caution/slow down, red means go (red means discontinued so it's marked down as far as it will go).
 
Originally posted by: Eric62
Reply to minendo:
Anything with moving parts is a whole different story. Especially if it's UAW made...

I'm relatively new to computers. The only issues I've ever had in 6 years is one optical drive and 3 hard drive failures.
Oh. And the backlight on my Acer laptop went dimmed 3 1/2 years after purchase. I've since enabled auto shut off of display after 20 minutes of non use with all my monitors.
Click to expand...

Nice bias

Anyways, it also depends on the companies. In the case of cars, I'd be a bit more willing to buy the warrenty on a Chrysler, especially a large one.

The one annoying part of the extended warrenty, even the warrenty itself, as someone who has worked in retail, is it's not through the company. There might be some that are, but they typically are not. People will still give a lot of grief to the retailer, but usually understands it's not through them (they just don't want to handle it on their own). Extended warrenties are a pain though. People don't seem to understand it's through a third party and not handled by the retailer you bought it from.

Also, people are mentioning electronics are going to fail right away or not at all. How many now look for parts that have things like "all solid capacitors" slapped on the box?
 
Originally posted by: Eric62
Reply to RKS:
Is this really true? I bought it with a Visa card?
Click to expand...


True with my AMEX Blue (and all other Amex cards). It's usually true with higher end Visa/MC but I would check with your issuer or check your card terms.

I've returned a laptop, optical drives, LCD tv, and other small electronics. Usually takes a call, and a faxed receipt and AMEX sends me a check, they simply ask me to throw away the item. My laptop was fuctioning except for the audio port so they ended up keeping that at the repair facility.
 
In the long run, you will have more money if you never do those warranties. Besides, you'll be lucky if your PC is worth $140 in 2 years.

The biggest scam is the powertrain warranty on a new vehicle.
 
I rarely buy those. I got one on my Kuro 5080 for a total of 4 years that cost $250. On that it cost me a pretty penny so thought that would be a good idea, just in case. The only other one is my Wii, which I got used. I got a 1 year warranty on it as well, which covers anything. It was only $20 so not a big deal.

Outside of those two though, I don't buy those warranties.
 
I never buy retailer warranties as they are rarely cost effective. I figure that for every 10 purchases I make that are worth having a warranty, maybe one is likely to fail outside of the standard warranty period. Assuming the average extended warranty costs an additional $100, that one product would have to be worth $1000 for it to be cost effective to purchase these warranties. I realize these numbers are made up, but you get the idea. In the end, I'm probably better off just paying to replace any item that breaks.
 
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