Aardvarks Aattic Blog

Revenge of the Extended Warranty

Is there anything quite as awful in this world as an Extended Warranty?

While it sounds like this wonderful marketing inspiration is there to give you piece of mind after you have made an expensive purchase, their true goal, their true raison d’être is to make money.

Business' are in business to make money, not to make you life any easier.

In November of '07 I bought a brand spanking new Hewlett Packard Media Edition laptop, 17" screen and all. When I made that purchase from a large big box store (Best Buy) I wanted to protect my investment. After all, I was dropping $1,400 on a new laptop. When the salesman innocently enquired if I wanted to sign up for their extended warranty I thought, shit I had probably better just in case something happened to this bad boy.

Seemed reasonable. $399.99 later I was the proud new owner of a kick ass laptop and peace of mind for the next three years that should anything happen my laptop and I were golden.

Skip forward 22 months. The display on my laptop started acting flakey. Weird patterns would arbitrarily crop up and then just as arbitrarily disappear.

WTF? After a few days the laptop would just boot up to a screen filled with vertical parallel lines and nothing more.

Video card is shot, right?

So, I made my way to the local Best Buy store, located in the Scarborough Town Centre complex. First thing I did was to check to make sure that the laptop was under warranty. Check.

Thus armed I made my way over to the much vaunted Geek Squad. Who ya gonna call? Geek Squad. Doesn’t have the same ring to it though, does it.

I fired my baby up for one of their techs to show the aforementioned behaviour. Sure enough, he concurred, my video card was FUBAR. Still under warranty? You betcha. So, no problems then, right?

Wrong.

After about a week I started getting antsy. The Aardvark without a laptop is not a pretty sight. The Geek Squad dude had given me a website where I might go and check the progress of my order. Which I did. It had been shipped; it had been received; it had been looked at and, wait a minute, that can't be right.

The problem wasn't covered under the extended warranty?

Again I say; WTF?

I checked with the Geek Squad (hitherto fore referred to as GS). You'll hear from someone soon, they assured me.

But what about the message on their website?

You'll hear from someone soon.

So I waited.

Two days later I did, in fact, hear from someone. This someone was telling me that once they popped the lid on my laptop they found extensive water damage.

Extensive water damage? WT... Well, you get the idea.

Plus things were cracked inside and not in generally good repair.

So they were reneging on their warranty. The self same one I dropped $399.99 (plus GST) on in happier, more naive times.

We can still fix it, they insisted, it will cost you $800 (plus GST).

Were they high? $800 to repair something which I had spent $399.99 (plus GST) on to protect against just such an eventuality? To the best of my knowledge I never spilled ANYTHING liquid on my laptop. But since it would only deteriorate to an I said - They said kind of thing I didn't dispute the fact to stridently, other than to say that I never spilt anything on it.

I told them to stuff the $800 (plus GST) where the proverbial sun doesn’t shine and to send it back to the big box store (Best Buy) that I dropped it off in the first place.

Should be there in a day or two they assured me.

At that time I started looking online to see how much a new system board would cost for my laptop. This was the thing that they said was screwed up. $200 give or take (plus GST). Fine, much better than what they were going to charge me.

I am quite comfortable under the hood of a computer so replacing a system board would be a new challenge but not one which I would be uncomfortable with.

Well, their day or two turned out to be a full seven days. When I got my laptop home I tried to fire it up, expecting to see the previously observed horizontal parallel lines. Except pressing the power button did nothing.

Nothing I tells ya.

It wouldn`t even start to boot up. Definitely not the same shape that I dropped the damn thing off in the first place.

The next day I went back to Best Buy (a big box shop) to complain, loudly and robustly) to anyone in a position of power that cared to listen.

All I got for that pain was a not so subtly veiled suggestion that I knew damned well that I had spilled something all over the keyboard but was just trying to put a fast one by them.

Bastards. My hackles still bristle with the memory.

So, I went home, called my insurance company and three days later was in possession of a cheque for $1,199.99 ($1,399.99 less a $200 deductible).

That was Tuesday of this week. My immediate reaction was to run out and buy a new laptop. Yet I hesitated. I didn`t want to buy the first laptop that presented itself and, since I knew that the October 22nd release of Windows 7 was going to bring a veritable flood of new computer hardware I waited a couple of days.

So, after much investigation, I ventured forth to a big box shop (Best Buy, but not the one at STC) and purchased the puppy that I am now typing this entry out on. It has more horsepower than my old laptop did, a larger faster hard drive, Windows 7 Home Premium OS (soon upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate once I got the darned thing home) and so much more. At 15.6 inches the screen is smaller by 1.6 inches, but then again, size doesn’t matter (right ladies?)

The point of this entire diatribe? Well, I hope to warn you off purchasing extended warranties for any of you big budget purchases. It just isn't worth it and, in many ways, is just a money grab from you, the consumer who feels vulnerable after laying down your hard earned cash on a big purchase.

Extended warranties, by and large, are a cash grab. Nothing more and nothing less. If you still feel compelled to go that route... well, question anyone trying to sell you on the concept mercilessly; about every kind of contingency that you can possibly imagine. If they agree that everything is good, get it in writing. If they blanche at any point? Well, you can always thank me latter.

The Aardvark