[SCAM ALERT] Gadget Insurance and Extended Warranties - Comments Page 1

Wells Fargo provides free warranties.....If you pay your entire phone bill every month using a Wells Fargo credit card, they will reimburse up to $600 per incident, with a $25 deductible, up to twice a year. They cover pretty well everything except loss of the device. Repair your device anywhere you want, and follow their claim procedures after that.

https://www.wellsfargo.com/credit-cards/features/cell-phone-protection/

agree with you all are a waste of money

Basic principle:
One should only buy insurance to cover the risks one is unable to cover.
If you have the means to replace the item, or pay the damage, DO NOT INSURE.

I couldn't agree more. I have always thought of them as a huge rip off. Sears has always been especially bad. A few years ago I purchased a glass top kitchen stove and the guy tried to sell me the extended warranty with a scare tactic of, if the top breaks, it's over $300 to repair it. My response was simply if it's any good it won't break and if it's not and you don't fix it, I'll just sue you. End of sales pitch. In general many do not figure yearly cost of ownership in a purchase and as you alluded to in the article, many people are not very good at math.

I have rarely used Extended Warranties, but did some years ago when I bought a 7 inch Android tablet for my wife from Walmart. She later passed it on to our son. He later dropped it, and the Extended Warranty place (used by Walmart at that time) quickly replaced it with a 'comparable' tablet. The replacement tablet did not have a front facing camera and had a lower resolution screen than the original. When I contacted the Extended Warranty company, they agreed with me and sent a better replacement tablet to us while saying we could keep the first replacement.

Out of the three Extended Warranties I've ever purchased, this is the only one that I've had to use to replace the purchased item. I believe the Extended Warranty was a one-time add-on charge of about $15-$20 to the original purchase price.

There is no reason that you could come up with that would cause me to buy an extended warranty whether it be big box items to an automobile. I just plain refuse to waste the money. I get all kinds of mail on my automobiles trying to get me to buy extended warranties of which some these scammers make look official. Just like all the Medicare scammers calling.

Five years ago got a L Boy recliner. Slsman was good and convinced me a $70 warranty covering spillage (coffee for example), mechanism breakdown was a good idea.

Well, the arm cloth wore through after 18 months. What do you expect? It's a chair!

Claim denied --wear and tear. Got a full refund on the extended warranty.

Lesson learned.

My entire kitchen is Kenmore Elite; all my yard stuff is Craftsman. Every item is covered by a service contract. My ride mower is 11 years old, and has had numerous service calls, none of which cost me a cent. My fridge has also had several calls, including one for the main controller board in the back; like the mower, it didn't cost me a penny to get it fixed. My Kenmore coffee grinder/brewer has been replaced, at no expense to me, five times; they cost $99, and the coverage on it is about $8/year. Granted, a lot of those contracts are a rip-off, but it's not fair to just say arbitrarily that NONE of them are worth their cost. None of my computers or other electronics have coverage, but as a retired computer service center manager, I have no problems fixing most of those items. SOME service contracts are, indeed, worth the cost. It's a matter of choosing wisely . . .

The best advice I ever received was from Consumer Reports. Think of cost for all the extended warranties you turned down compared to the replacement cost of that one item that died and would have been covered. You'll find you've saved much more than the replacement cost for the occasional item that breaks in the would-have-been-covered time. (Actually, they suggested creating a savings account and putting in the cost of the extended warranty every time you buy something to cover emergency repairs, but I've got bills to pay).

That said, a few years ago my mother-in-law bought us a new stove and insisted on the EW. Well I'll be darned if the thing didn't die while still covered. It was actually a very good experience. It was purchased from P.C. Richards (a local appliance chain from Long Island, NY), and they do their own repairs (no 3rd party warranty service). No jerking around. They sent out their own repair tech, did what needed to be done and charged me nothing. (They even gave me a $50 gift card because they had to make a couple of return trips due to a part-ordering mix up.) While I still wouldn't buy a EW, I won't hesitate to recommend P.C. Richards if you really want that safety net.

Some retailer "repairs" are fraudulent, too, & they install malware to make you think you need a high priced repair! Just google: "Office Depot and OfficeMax repair services fraud" (without quotes).

Extended warranties have changed over the years.

When we bought our very first VCR (VHS tape player) we bought an extended warranty. Back in those days, (the late 80's), if the device stopped working you got a check in the amount you had paid for it. The VCR stopped working, and we got our check for the full amount we had paid, including the Sales Tax!

We bought another VCR, they were less expensive now, and even with a new extended warranty we had money in our pocket. I think we had four that we claimed on and got the check, and had extra money in our pocket. We actually felt bad and did not buy the warranty on the fifth machine!

Fast forward to a few years ago, and now I agree with Bob, a waste of money. We had a TV that my son had bought from Walmart after standing in line in the cold and rain for hours in the early morning on Black Friday to get a $1000 full feature TV for $400. He bought the extended warranty. The TV stopped working after about 14 months. We had to fight this warranty company for anything off them at all, and finally had to settle for a $400 ("recommended retail price") TV that had zero features "because that was what we paid for our TV we were claiming for". No way to get a Walmart credit we could use toward a better TV. This TV delivered to our home or nothing. We accepted the TV and donated it to a local charity who where very happy.

We got our new TV elsewhere and did not buy an extended warranty .. lesson learned.

I simply tell them that if the product has not failed within the warranty period it is unlikely to.

I agree with you about all purchases except for a computer. I bought my latest Dell laptop at Best Buy two years ago and I purchased a 3-year extended warranty that included virus protection. Well, wouldn't you know it, I got a virus that locked up my computer. Best Buy fixed the problem without a loss to any of my files. Normal warranties that come with computers or credit card warranties do not cover virus problems--at least not to my knowledge.

Just bought a refurbished computer online from a reputable electronics dealer. Their refurbisher did little more than put it on a bench and see if it would boot. It had multiple problems and had to be returned for a refund. Never again. I think the refurb computer was like the iPhone referenced in this article.

We have a company 35 miles away that will do anything from build individual computers, to set up network systems for business and industry. The price is well worth it and I can walk in with my complaints. They built my present desktop and it is fine after 8 years.

I disagree only on home TV's. I purchased a 4G Samsung 55 inch on Black Friday in 2017.with a 3 year extended warrantee in February of 2019, my TV died, Comcast came first, said the TV is bad. Best Buy Geek squad came by and agreed the TV died, you will get a new only. It turns out they credited me with the original full price, which was 400 dollars most then I paid. Best Buy was running a SuperBall special, so for $300 more i now have Samsung best model TV with more features than my new car

My Elan/Visa credit card says it gives me an additional year of warranty on ANYTHING I purchase with it. It's a manufacturer's warranty, so things will have to be sent off for repairs, with a return authorization from the manufacturer. Always scan your receipts and save the files as PDFs.

I have some products that last well beyond any expectations, I bought a desktop PC from a local vendor five years ago, and it came with three years parts-and-labor. NO REPAIRS needed so far. Previously I bought a desktop from the same vendor, and scored a new DVD burner, card reader, and video card.

I bought a Nikon point-and-shoot(P&S) camera from Best Buy with an extended warranty, and they repaired the same defect three times, and it puked again a couple of weeks after the warranty expired! The lens retracting device every time. Bad design, I'm thinking. My next camera was a Canon P&S, and that was three years ago, still needing no service!

It depends...I would never buy a EW for a phone or small electronic device, even a computer. BUT, I did buy one for a new Samsung electric range. It had so many electronics on it, I knew if anything went wrong, the cost of the EW ($100 for 5 years) would pay for itself. Well, the range malfunctioned (self-cleaning oven) and the repair person could not get it to work correctly. After trying three times, the company refunded the full price of the range. I decided to keep the range and clean by hand. So, I essentially got a new range for $100. Also, we bought an extended warranty on our new car, using the same reasoning about the cost of electronics repair/replacement. I do not regret buying it. The BU camera in our old car malfunctioned and Ford wanted $400 to repair. We replaced with a camera from eBay, but we could never get it to work properly. So, buying EW depends on the situation.

The original "90-day warranty" came about, I am told, as the result of reliability studies dating back to pre-WWII, which found that "catastrophic" device failure followed a exponential decreasing curve, with 90% of them occurring within the 1st 90 days of use. In the 60's and 70's manufacturers began to use longer warranties as a selling point, independent of actual failure rates.

Ebay and others are notorious for this. I never buy it as if anything did go wrong you may never see the money. I agree nothing but scams, all of them..

Brookstone massage chair extended warranty easily paid for itself. Repair people had to drive over 200 miles two or three times before offering to replace the chair (discontinued) with the next higher model.

Also Subaru (so much electronic stuff on my 2014 model) extended warranty replaced high end radio/cd/etc. player twice in less than the 100,000 miles coverage. The also replaced the short block when it started using oil, but that was under a factory recall (and a lot harder to collect on than the extended warranty.)

I don't buy them for mobile phones or other appliances.