Edwin Eleazer wrote:
>
>> Service contracts generally seem bad value to me, as price must
>> be based on statistical
>> probabilities + a healthy profit element. My attitude is
>> generally to believe that the
>> company knows what it is doing, therefore I'd be more likely to
>> come out ahead if I
>> don't buy the contract <g>.
>
>
> My five year service contract for the Nikon LS-30 was only $100, which seems
> like a good deal to me. By the time that is up I'll probably be buying a
> better one anyway. They initially wanted $165 for a 3 year contract, and
> when I said I wasn't interested, the seller wanted to negotiate and I ended
> up with a five year for $100. Plus the repair center in right down the road
> in Atlanta, Georgia. Hopefully I'll never need it, but the $100 seemed like
> money well spent at the time.
For one thing, this shows you the mark-up on these service contracts,
that allow for so much "negotiation" space. The truth is some
electronics store make their full profit on the extended warranty sales,
selling equipment at or near cost. I've bought extended warranties
twice. The first time, the item failed within weeks after the
manufacturer's warranty ended, boy was I lucky... until I tried to get
the top of the line VCR fixed. It went to one local repair shop, as
directed by the warranty, and came back in worse shape than it entered,
from there it went to the another local repair shop who further damaged
it, blowing a circuit out, requiring it to need a full factory
realignment and a replacement board. Oh, did I mention I was left
without the VCR for 6 months and this ended up in court because the
extended warranty contractor refused to repair it or to replace it?
During the trial, they tried to imply I went into the unit and tried to
"fix" it myself and mis-aligned it. Luckily, my wife was home when the
unit as returned, and saw the result of the repair at the same time I did.
In the second instance, the warranty underwriter went bankrupt and the
warranty ended up worthless. Yeap, sure like those extended warranties...
Art
