iCN510 GPS: never used the warranty.

PowerBook G4: never used it but considering the life (and replacement cost of parts ($250 alone for new case) I will buy again.

MacBook Pro: still inside 1 year.

Audi A6: two months after declining an extended warranty priced at $3,000, my torque converter stopped working – dealer cost to repair $3,000 and probably half that elsewhere. My torque converter is still broken right now.

Xbox 360: bought 3 year warranty and inside 1st year the console broke (RROD).

My father bought an AppleCare warranty for his MacBook and about a year into it needed to replace the hard drive.

I rarely buy extended warranties but I’ve had a positive experience thus far.

That said, don’t buy into the popular superstition that not purchasing the extended warranty is asking for trouble. Do the cost-benefit analysis. If a year from now, I drop my $150 cell phone and it dies, I’ll buy a new one. That’s why I put aside money for unexpected expenses (and try not to drop it!). If I bought insurance from my cell phone company, and I dropped my $150 cell phone a year from now, I’d already have paid for a new one – just in installments.

[...] Here’s a great comment from a new reader: I just found this blog today, and I’m really confused. The title seems to suggest that this is a blog of good advice for people trying to save money and be thrifty. Overall, though, it seems the posters just end up in the same pitfalls and unpleasant surprises as anyone else. Viz the recent pair of postings of “don’t get an extended warranty” followed by “crap, my non-extended-warrantied laptop just broke.” Likewise, here we have a story about new homeowners who are intelligent and took the time to do some due diligence and still got screwed in the end. It doesn’t seem that the posters’ own experiences encourage the following of the posted advice here. [...]

Now the warranty on an xbox 360 is $40 (from Microsoft) if I remember right and the cost of getting one repaired is about $120 making the extra $40 you spend a worthwhile investment if such a high defect rate actually is true.

In reality though the 360 comes with a 6 month warranty out of the box which for launch units about 3 weeks ago it was extended to 1 year, which actually probably means you don’t need the extended warranty anymore.

[...] The machine is two years old. I don’t have an extended warranty. Some sort of gasket inside the slot-loading drive seems to have come loose and worked its way inside with the CD that I was using to install a wireless keyboard. Now I may need to have this machine repaired. Will the repairs cost more than the extended warranty would have? Possibly. [...]

This works with cars sometimes too, if you are at all handy and have tools, and a nearby junkyard, and the thing that is broken is something not crucial to the movement of the car (say a broken antenna or whatever)

There’s a surprising amount of things you can fix yourself for cheap if you do a little digging.

Full disclosure: I am handy with computers. With cars…not so much.

Just before the three years was up it started getting cracks in the bezel around the screen. They not only replaced the bezel but also sorted out a couple of other minor problems that had bothered me but not enough to send it in before. Took them a week and at three years old the thing is like new. Really glad I did get that one.

So just keep your eye open for the exception that proves the rule.

My second laptop — a 1999-era Dell Inspiron — works well even to this day.

My next laptop — an Apple iBook — developed a display problem just out of the one-year warranty. I have to open the screen just a little too wide, otherwise it blanks out. Bummer. Also, I’ve had two iBook power adapters fail on me. The first one failed just inside warranty, and was replaced. The second failed outside warranty. I bought a third-party replacement that has lasted much longer.

My current laptop — an Apple Powerbook — has had no problems, other than the fact that I dropped it once and now the finish/trim is bent and wonky.

I’m going to buy a MacBook Pro next year. Will I get an extended warranty? It’s very, very possible.

But I won’t get one when I get my Wii next month!

But laptops are generally rather short-lived and, because they’re portable, not treated so well. For a TV, that I’d be hoping would last me at least ten years, two or three years of additional non-accident protection on an object unlikely to ever move more than three feet in my living room? Probably not worth it, no matter how much the thing cost. Real flaws that’ll be covered by warranty aren’t likely to show up two years in.

This sound rather excessive, but with laptops I would say that it is worth it because the parts are usually proprietary and only available from one source.

In my case it’s already paid for itself as I needed to get the motherboard replaced a few months ago, which is insanely expensive on a laptop.

With a normal desktop PC I would probably not worry about an extended warranty, but with a laptop I always recommend it.

Also, Circuit City has a pretty generous “extended warrantee” package. I’ve bought it to cover damage to digital cameras. The wording states that if the item is no longer in stock, they will replace it with an item of equal value. For digital cameras, this means that in a year (when your camera is no longer in stock), they will give you the orig $ cost of your broken camera towards the purchase of a new model.

And it’s especially cheap for students.

OTOH, I did take the extended warrany on a used car a long time ago. I took that car to the shop for a power window problem. They called with a laundry list of items they wanted to fix. I told them they could do whatever they wanted as long as it was covered by the extended warranty. I think I actually covered the cost of the warranty on that trip, but then all of the other work was really optional in the first place. I just needed my power window to roll up.

But the argument that “only $20 is ever paid toward claims out of $100 worth of premiums” is specious.

Most extended warranties that stores have tried to sell me are as simple as taking the item back to the store from where you bought it, and they give you a new item (or so they claim).

Compare that to trying to pursue a warranty claim through a manufacturer. In the few cases I’ve tried this It’s required hours of phone calls to the manufacturer, several trips to Fed-Ex, and ultimately I end up with a product that may not be repaired to my satisfaction.

That $20 / $100 figure is for the store, who has low-paid help and good communications with manufacturers. I am relatively highly paid, and it is very hard for me to get in touch with the right people at a manufacturer. $20 worth of effort for Best Buy might be $120 worth of effort for me.

All Apple hardware products come with a 1 year warranty. The “90 days support” applies only to software.

You better believe that I got the extended warranty on the new one.