For those who think the extended warranties are "peace-of-mind", consider how many electronic devices you have purchased over the years and how many have gone bad for you. I can guarantee that the extended warranties would have costed significantly more in the long run even the cost of replacing what, if any, electronic devices failed for you over the years.
Basically if the product is a lemon, it will fail while it is still under the manufacturer's warranty. If it gets through the first 90 days, it's pretty likely it will give you years of reliable service after that.
Shhhh! All those folks buying extended warranties allows me to keep purchasing my appliances at razor-thin markups.
I notice that the sales people act really bewildered when I routinely decline those warranties. ("Like, dude, what if, like an, an earthquake breaks your TV in half? You'll be sorry then!")
I will never waste my money on one of those again.
I agree completely, with one exception. The one product that I sometimes recommend to friends that they get an extended warranty for is a notebook computer, especially if they're getting it for one of their kids, e.g. a teenage boy in college. In that scenario the odds of a problem or failure increase significantly.
If I've bought and returned a product because I didn't like the way it worked, I'll sometimes buy one of those warranty things on whatever other product I end up buying instead. If it takes me two returns before I find a product I like, I'll usually buy the warranty on the third. I figure that if I'm costing the retailer something by my return, it's probably fair (and good karma) to give them something back.
I have used one warranty service plan--on a Packard Bell 14" monitor. I actually had thought I had bought a service plan on the DVD player that went bad, but it turned out I hadn't (bummer). Too bad on that one--I liked it in some ways better than its replacement.
Ditto, and the extended warranty companies do their best to declare your warranty void if it is a major repair.
As for service, I hadn't stepped into a CC in over 7 years. Went in today on a whim to see what sort of speakers were available and what they considered top of the line (contrary to them Infinity is not top of the line..). The kid in the sound room didn't know how to turn on the speakers I wanted to listen to, didn't know how to turn off components of the system (once he finally got the right one), and couldn't turn off the surround sound in the room. As a former salesperson and still sort of an audiophile, I was ashamed. I complained to the store manager and he just looked at me blankly. Walked out and will never go back.
Give me a good mom/pop shop for audio equipment anyday over BB, CC, and especially WalMart. I can just imagine one day in the future WalMart selling Cerwin Vegas along with low-end Sony equipment. Yeah that'll work real well....
There's only one situation where I can see the value of something like an extended warranty. That's where the "warranty" covers what the manufacturer might claim is damage due to abuse that wasn't. A few year ago I bought a Casio PDF whose LCD screen promptly broke, although I did not abuse it in any way. Sharp refused to replace it. An organization I belong to just bought a $1,200 video projector and an extended warranty from Office Depot. We decided buying the warranty was a good idea because it also covers physical damage to the projector, thereby avoiding the problem I had with Casio.