My laptop broke last week for at least fifth time since I’ve had it.
Gratefully, I have an extended warranty on it, a backup laptop, and almost all of my business stuff is virtual (not computer-dependent). As you can tell, I’ve been around this track one too many a time to not have a back-up plan in place.
The fix just took one phone call and a short consultation with tech support and in minutes they promised to send a new adapter–all free of charge. Two days later, the adapter arrived on my doorstep and my computer was fixed… yet again.
When I bought the laptop, it was my first laptop to purchase and my first time to decide to fork over the extra money for an extended warranty. Knowing how often I use my computers and knowing my track record with breaking them, my husband and I felt it was a wise choice.
That extra $300 or so for the extended warranty felt like a lot at the time, but it’s paid for itself many times over in the last two years. I’ve had my keyboard replaced, my adapter replaced twice, the motherboard replaced (a tech came to our home to do that; I didn’t know anyone still made "house calls" these days!), and spent more than five hours put together on the phone with tech support.
If I had had to take my computer in and get it fixed each of these times, I do not doubt it would have been quite a bit more than that initial $300 for the extended warranty. And I would have also had to hassle with taking it in and picking it up, not to mention finding a reliable tech store in the first place.
When I bought my second laptop, I didn’t blink twice when the associate asked if I wanted to buy a warranty. He was all prepared to explain the different warranties to me when I blurted out confidently, "I’ll take the three-year extended warranty." And guess what? We’ve already made good use of it on the second laptop.
I’ve come to the conclusion that at least for us, buying an extended warranty on laptops is a no-brainer. It saves headache, it saves time, and it saves money.
Do you buy extended warranties or do you think they are a waste of money?
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We don’t pay extra for extended warranties… EXCEPT on laptops! They’re just easier to break than other electronics and we’re hard on them, and we’ve found the warranties pay for themselves after a few years.
i did on my fridge and stove, but another thing they are great on if you have more than the average size family is a vacuum!!!
I know it sounds crazy, but my mom would buy a vacuum, no matter how expensive and still have replace it yearly. With the extended warranty, she could buy a cheap one, spend an extra 30-50 dollars and have one for three years. It saved her money and oh, boy we used it! She may be the exception tot he rule though…..there was 11 children in the family and we often had extra people, 17 in the household one time for extended periods of time. they got a beating!
I have never owned a lap top computer and probably never will. They are much too expensive and seem to break a lot! I have an old Dell desk top and it works just fine. Otherwise I can go to the library and use a computer if I need too. The only thing we bought an extended warranty on was our van we bought used. It has had some electrical work- so I think it was worth it. I am more likely to just want to save the money though.
Absolute 100% waste for us. But we use Mac’s and seriously have never had any problem with any of them!
We’ll never own a pc again!
Even though Dave Ramsey says they are a complete waste of money, we have really appreciated having one on our mini-van. We live on very rough roads, and have had about $10,000 work done on the car. That $2100 warranty was worth it.
I have never bought an extended warranty on anything. The only thing I can think of that broke early was a portable dvd player that I bought for our car. When the screen went out I just returned it to costco and got a new one no questions asked. I bought a used Honda with 26k miles on it and sold it with 100k miles on it and never had any problems and didn’t buy a warranty? I don’t own a laptop but after reading everything here if I did I just might consider a warranty on that.
I’ve listened to Clark Howard and more recently Dave Ramsey. I’ve also had some experience working for a company which sold extended warranties. As a result, I feel I’ve come up with a fairly good happy medium opinion on them.
What it boils down to is this: Think of an extended warranty as insurance. Buy it like you would any other insurance product. If the cost of insurance is something you can afford where you could not afford the cost of the repair if it breaks, then you consider the insurance. It doesn’t matter what it is (car, computer, house).
In general, all insurance is a waste of money because you are only buying it in case you need to use it and most of the time you will not use it. Over time, statistically, you will have paid more for the insurance than you would have received in benefit claims.
My experience working on the sales end of extended warranties (for computer products specifically) is that if the extended warranty is offered by a company other than the manufacturer of the product, do not buy it. You will more likely run into problems getting your product serviced by a third party company (the recent comment by Jamie regarding a Circuit City warranty is a good example here). If the warranty is by the manufacturer of the product, you should get the same level of service as you would if it was under the out-of-box warranty (AppleCare is probably the best example of this).
Hey Crystal,
IMHO, There are some warranties that are worth it and some that are not. I have had two laptops and you are right they are SO worth it! We also have warranties on our appliances. Hubby can’t fix them and we have had people out to fix our dishwasher 3 times (and it is less than 2 years old!). So that is what we think is worth the warranties on. Appliances and laptops!
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