For items that you use everyday like the cooker, fridge or vacuum cleaner is it worth buying an extra warranty? Often once your guarantee has expired they will send an offer to renew it which could be cheaper than taking out the extra two or three years when you buy it. I think these days, even without a warranty if you can show it's defective most companies will swap it within a reasonable length of time, so personally I don't buy them, but if it's really cheap I may think about it.
I just bought a new fridge, stove and dishwasher and bought the extended warranty on them. I don't normally buy extended warranties but I have had several friends whose relatively new fridges have stopped working and had to buy new ones since their warranty had expired and it wasn't worth fixing them. We have a 1.5 year old Samsung tv which we purchased from Costco. Costco will give an extra year on the manufacturers warranty so luckily this tv was covered under warranty when it was damaged by water. We had the most expensive part replaced for free. The service man who repaired the tv told had this not been covered under warranty we would have had to buy a new one since this part costs more than a new tv. Even the repair man told me he buys extended warranties on appliances.
When I sold Real Estate I would have the person selling the home put a warranty on the appliances in the home to give the new buyer peace of mind. I did have a new buyer move into a condo the furnace went out a month after she moved in but she had the warranty on the items which saved her hundreds of dollars.
Most appliances come with a 1-3 year warranty. Some go up to 5 years. Thing is if an appliance works fine for a year and a half then it probably will be OK for a longer period of time. If any appliance is defective then you'll know that within two or three months and get it replaced. Why pay any extra cash for an extended warranty you won't need?
I buy it if the item is big enough. I don't mind paying a little extra for an already expensive item because I might as well for a little peace of mind. Although I don't do it automatically for all items as for some of them I am okay with just paying a small amount for it to get fixed if it ever breaks down after warranty period. For others I prefer to have them be within the bounds of the manufacturer as long as possible and for those items I am okay with paying a bit more.
I too don't think that extended warranties are worth the extra expense these days - as not only are the majority of new electrical goods and appliances more reliable and unlikely to need any kind of repair in the first five years - almost all new energy efficient appliances come with a five year warranty that covers repair costs, parts and labor, Apart from that - as it gets harder and harder to get parts for appliances that are more than five years old - as manufacturers now seem to stop making parts for older models each time they upgrade an appliance - it seems somewhat pointless to pay for an extended warranty - when that money could put towards a new more energy efficient model that is likely to be more cost effective in the long run.
I'm not a fan of extended warranties on the vast majority of products. It's just an added expense that in the main works out far better for the retailer than it does for the consumer. For one thing, product quality these days is decent enough to assume that most goods would last a reasonable length of time beyond normal wear and tear. And depending what the item is you can often find a repair person or a service provider that will repair the product at a decent enough price anyway.
We haven't paid for an extra warranty and we were just content on the warranty that just came with the item. There are times that the item malfunctioned within 7 days, that is the duration that it will be replaced by a brand new one, that happened when we bought a rice cooker, so I don't think that it's worth it to pay for an extra warranty when it already has a 1 year warranty.
I have never fall for buying warranties because whenever an appliance fails to work, it may never be the same after being repaired, so I prefer to save that money to buy a new replacement when needed eventually.
Well, I bought an extended warranty on my dishwasher because I tend to have trouble with dishwashers. Whoever wrote about the 1 to 3 year...(and it is usuallly 1 year) guarantee on major appliances is right. good quality appliances usually last closer to 5 or 10. I had a refrigerator though that broke 3 or 4 times during the course of a year, fortuantely it was new and all covered under the factory warrnaty. The last repairman replaced the control panel and it has been good ever since.
I usually avoid purchasing extended warranties - especially when they offer you them at the register, when you don't really have time to stand there and read through all the fine print to decide if it's worth it or not. Many of these extended warranties are offered by third party companies, who place all sorts of stipulations on what they will and won't cover and limitations you may not be aware of. So you can't really complain to the retail store or the manufacturer in those cases, because they're not the ones offering the warranty to cover the costs of repair. I'm not saying that's always the case, sometimes it is the store or the manufacturer that is providing the extended warranty directly. But it's worth clarifying. I've been burned on extended warranties on my cell phones and computers in the past, which made me apprehensive about purchasing them for appliances. When I tried to use my extended warranty on my cell phone, they not only replaced my phone with a crappier brand and a lower end model, the replacement phone they gave me was used. On top of it all, I had to pay a $35 "processing" fee to even use my extended warranty. For what I paid for that stupid warranty, plus the processing fee, I could have just bought a new phone. With one of my computers, when I tried to use the extended warranty on it, they told me I had to ship it to some company several hours away, and wait several weeks before it would get repaired, then have to pay to have it shipped back to me.
I think it depends on the appliance. For very expensive appliance I usually buy the warranty, especially if it would be very costly 'if the machine broke. However, for smaller appliances I usually don't. I usually try to buying appliances from stores such as Costco and Bed Bath and Beyond because they will take back appliances with in a certain amount of time if they break.
