Retail store extended warranty

[hassen1]

If you're buying direct from a retail store you absolutely will be encouraged to buy a protection plan offered by the store that extends a warranty to 3-years. You'll hear the pitch at least 3-times and be pressured into buying this warranty. You will be made to feel guilty or dumb if you refuse this coverage (see this story). This is because extended warranties are lucrative business for these stores, often with profit margins of 50%. For instance, extended warranty purchases account for about 4% of the entire $10 billion in annual sales of U.S. electronics retailer Circuit City (source).

You should almost always refuse store provided warranty coverage on notebooks. It is just about always cheaper and better to go with a direct manufacturer extended warranty. Notebook parts are often made to fit within a manufacturer's unique case design so they're going to be able to provide the right parts and do the repairs more efficiently. Furthermore, with a manufacturer's warranty, you continue to enjoy access to free tech support. For example, if you buy the Apple Care 3-year coverage for a new MacBook you get 3-years of call-in tech support in addition to repair coverage, you won't get call-in tech support from any retail store.

So when is a retail store coverage plan worth it? I can think of three cases:

I've seen some that offer the accidental break and spill coverage as part of the warranty which would be a nice extra -- this is very rare though.
If you know the laptop you're buying is from a manufacturer with abysmal reputation for repair and fix service, you might consider a retailer that has a reputation for good repair service. However, if you know a manufacturer has terrible support reputation, the question begs why are you even buying that notebook?

If you're a person that just has to deal with people face to face and want to carry your notebook into a store to get it fixed rather than call-in and mail off your notebook to get fixed then you may consider a retail store warranty. Keep in mind, just because you buy a notebook and repair warranty from a store, they still may need to mail it somewhere

[mini_0]

the insurance company will pay for total loss due to accidental damages. If your laptop was stolen from your locked car this means your laptop insurance should cover it. However, if your car was unlocked at the time of the theft it would not be covered. Accidental damage means that you did what you could to protect your laptop, but it was still damaged.