Do YOU buy extended warranties?

[Preacher]

When I went to buy my PC there was a lady that didn't know what she was doing so i told her to replace something and then I replaced her whole rig and got a jog offer at the store .

 

[Harper]

What about you? Do you ever invest in them? I talk to some people who are convinced they are a waste of money while others swear by getting the max. I'm sorry but, for my laptop I bought on sale for 550, there's no way I'm paying 400 for a 2 year accidental warranty.

No. I don't. I work in a computer shop and I tend to BS a new customer invoice saying that the goods are still in warranty.
Managed to get a laptop motherboard replaced last year. The notebook was all ready 5 months outside warranty. But I know who to talk to and what to say.

 

[Kharn]

I sell the cover at work, I despise selling it as it is a rip off on some items.

 

[nu2duo]

IMO, it's a waste of money to buy warranties of any kind. Last year I bought my 56" DLP Sharp tv. I ordered it online via Costco.com. Absolutely no extended warranty for me. I figure that by the time I have issues with the t.v., i'll probably be tired of it and I'll just buy a new one which will be better than an old 2yr old t.v.
My 32" Olevia tv which i use as my monitor also was purchased w/out an extended warranty.
My car stereos, speakers, subs, dghtrs dell laptop, printers, video cameras, digital cameras, etc...have no extended warranties either. Don't need them.
Oh, I also buy lots of refurbished units. Never had a problem with those either.
Call me lucky buy I've never had to worry about ext.warranties. Those of you that feel you must buy one are just throwing your money away.

 

[Peter.Cort]

i never buy warrenty's but sometimes my parents say that they want me to get one and i just simply say I'm not spending my money on something that will break and i will end up fixing it, and they either say ok, or pay for the warrenty themselves.

although you can get new stuff if you have a warrenty and can do the right things. i snapped the ribbon cable that goes to the screen on my ipod and they gave me a new one.

but on any of my computers, no I absolutely hate warrenty's. and yeah we do have them at my work on our systems we build, but its usually like a 1 year free on site labor thing and then most things are cheap cause we usually add 40% to the parts which gives us some extra money and covers labor of putting it together. and the people get the comfort of knowing they can **** their computer up whenever they like

 

[pts2800]

well if i dident buy an extended warreny for my laptop it would have been replaced every year with a new one, but i have had it for about 5 years, and broke it 13 times

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

My desktop we bought an extended warranty for...it did come in use, because the motherboard blew out for no apparent reason...

However, the warranty was unfortunately with Geek Squad, who, in their stupidity, first wanted me to pay $90 for "hard drive recovery" (I'm pretty sure the HDD was fine, but those morons swapped it out anyways, and I lost all my data). Second, they insisted that they take my PC and send it off to some other place for repair (it's a Socket A, at that time, I'm sure they had other Socket A boards in their store). When it came back, my PC (an HP) booted with a nice "COMPAQ" screen and then asked me to insert Windows XP Pro CD's (which I didn't have, my system was supposed to have Home Edition)...so what? Another trip to Best Buy, another week without a PC while they fixed the SOFTWARE! Got the PC back, took it home, and thank goodness! Windows XP Home and an HP BIOS...yet IT WOULDN'T CONNECT TO MY NETWORK!!!! Another trip back, they determined my integrated Ethernet card on the replacement mobo was dead, and asked if I wanted a PCI one (no way! a microATX board suffers from too few PCI slots as it is!). So, after yet another trip to the repair center (apparently run by brainless idiots who can't tell a COMPAQ board from an HP board, can't test a hard drive before blankly swapping it, and numerous other idiotic no brained mistakes), it came back...with a working motherboard/Ethernet port and Windows XP...HOWEVER, it only had a 1.6GHz CPU, when it originally had a 2.0GHz (AthlonXP 2400+). Luckily, the one and only intelligent member of the Geek Squad was working that day, and he had the brains enough to change the motherboard jumpers and clock up the CPU to normal (turns out they actually did good, put in an AthlonXP 2600+ 2.13GHz instead of the 2400+ 2.0GHz that was in it before).

I guess as a way of saying "we're sorry", my PC came back with an extra stick of RAM, but I don't think a lousy 256MB is adequate repayment for a month without my PC.

So...lesson learned. If you want a warranty on your PC...DON'T GO TO BEST BUY!!!!!!!!!! and get a MANUFACTURER warranty, not a store one, as the manufacturers built the PC, so *hopefully* they're warranty service will have at least half a brain.

Now that I know how to do all that stuff on my own though (I was just beginning high school [4 years ago] when this happened), I'd just build it myself...no brainless repair people to take your data for no reason, no waiting for people who can't distinguish COMPAQ from HP, no people that install the wrong OS, put in broken motherboards, underclocked CPU's, etc...

I also bought my ThinkPad used for $160 on eBay like 2 years ago...works fine even now (it's probably 8 or 9 years old). I think if you buy a quality product (which HP apparently isn't), then you'll be OK.