The owners manual only says that if the picture ever darkens substantially, the interior of the cabinet, the screen and guns may need to be cleaned by a qualified technician.
Picture darkening? no way!
What happens is the picture becomes dull and washed out. Blacks become a dingy gray.
Just got off the phone with an extended warranty provider. CHECK YOUR CONTRACT!!!
Most of their warranties have a limitation on repairs. Here is how it works. If your product is replaced at any time under this contract the warranty is terminated. Yes, you read that right. So if you buy a 4 year warranty and 1.5 years later they are forced to replace the product you just lost the rest of your warranty. I suppose you could exercise the manufacturers warranty but those are still 90 days to a year depending on the model.
This is the first time I have ever heard of such a policy.
Over the years, I have made it a personal policy to NEVER buy an extended service plan. I always figured that the odds were in the favor of the insurance company. Plus, most electronics that survived past the manufacturer's warranty period were usually good for many more years of use without any service.
Flash forward to the purchase of an HDTV. This is not a $200-$300 dollar investment. The set I got was $2200 bucks and the in-home extended warranty was $500 for 5 years. Now, to my thinking, that was less than 5% per year for a lot of piece of mind, whether I ever used it or not.
Exactly 13 months after I got the set (one month after the manufacturer's warranty expired), my power supply went out. It was a service call to troubleshoot the problem and remove the power supply. Then another service call, plus the new part, to put it in. I don't know what service costs in your area, but I feel very happy about that $500 purchase right now.
As far as I'm concerned, I've just about broken even and now I still get 4 more years of coverage for free. Plus, I didn't have to lug that 220 pound monster to a service center (we had enough fun just getting it up on the stand).
The way Best Buy service works is they decline any repair that is still under manufacturers warranty and will send you to a local authorized service center because of the low rates our industry pays most self servicing dealers. In other words they do not get paid enough to provide the service themselves and decline manufacturers warranty service even though you are their customer. On the other hand they are more than happy to take on any service that is out of warranty or covered by extended warranty because they get paid more. How nice for them.
You purchase a Best Buy extended warranty. This warranty is exclusive to Best Buy and they are the direct insurance provider. You experience a failure in the first year and call them for service in which case they send you to a factory authorized service center.
If the warranty is for one year parts and labor then when you call your local factory authorized service center you are set to go, no fuss no muss.
The mistake they constantly make though is with those products that carry only a 90 day warranty for labor and one year on parts they remain on auto pilot and tell the customer to take it to the local factory authorized service center because it is less than one year old. Provided your product is less than 90 days old no fuss no muss but what if it is past 90 days? The service center will not be paid for labor and Best Buy does not pay service centers outside of their own service department. The response from the factory authorized service center will be that they cannot repair it at no charge to the customer.
This creates a huge misunderstanding unnecessarily creating an angry customer for the service center because of two things:
1. The customer assumes the extended warranty is covered by the manufacturer
2. They already called Best Buy and were told to call the factory authorized service center
The only solution is to call Best Buy and inform them that the product is outside of the manufacturers warranty for labor and it is under extended warranty for labor requiring them to repair the product.
Your best bet is to NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER buy extended warranties. The money you save overall will be much more than you'll ever have to pay out for repairs that would have otherwise been covered.
You can always come out ahead on one item or even a few, but in the end the law of averages will catch up with you.
The only time it makes sense is if you cannot afford a costly repair (on a vehicle e.g.) and you finance the warranty so you're only paying a few dollars a month.
Extended warranties are just insurance policies and you should only buy insurance on things you cannot afford to replace - like houses and cars.
Generally, I would have to agree with akrby. The problem is that generalizations rarely hold up in every situation. Extended warranties should be shopped carefully like any other product. You have to understand who the underwriter will be, who will be performng the service, and exactly what will and will not be covered. The times that they make sense are on newer technologies that have extremely expensive repair potential and where the warranty is low in cost relative to the repair cost. PDPs are a good example. A bad panel or a problem in the electronics integrated with the panel will be a catastrophic failure. Likewise, many of the LCD, DLP, and LCOS products have expensive light engines that are not serviceable at a component level.
The bottom line is, compare the risk and the cost and understand who provides what. Do the homework and make an informed decision. Use akirby's good advice as an underlying assumption and check it out.
Hi I found this thread in google because I just bought and extended warranty for a really good price, I am looking for any thoughts about this program do you thing it worth it? I just paid $120 for 2 years.
