Hi, Barry,
Funny I would see this, just about 8 hours after my twin sister asked my
opinion of an extended warranty option for a product she has. Generally, I
agree with Consumers' Union's position on extended warranty purchases.
Consumers' Union is the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. Generally,
extended warranties exist mainly as a means of padding the proffit on a
sale, and they are advertised in the trade press as just that, along with
strong admonishment for the managers to stress to their sales force to use
hard sell and high-pressure tactics to convince customers to buy them.
For a product line or a specific model known for being unreliable or having
a design aspect or feature that will need frequent service or repair, and
need it soon, the extended warranty might be worth the price if it costs
less than that repair you will know is needed. Since the half-life of a
computer system nowadays seems to be very little longer than the warranty
period, and since Sony is a paragon of the frequent complete model change
philosophy in consumer electronics, and since they are trying to get people
to think of their Sony computers like they think of their Sony TV sets and
their Sony VCR's, I'd be inclined to sasay, advise your buddy to save his
$400, or spend the $400 on any available upgrades or options, like extra
memory, larger hard drive, faster processor, or even on some "cool" "killer"
software applications to enhance the usefullness of the computer.
My sister's warranty option was on the Xerox Home Center, a slickly
designed, wonderously though-out combination InkJet printer, dedicated FAX
machine, OCR and color scanner, and color copier, all in one neat little
package not much bigger than an old-fashioned bread box, with separate
cartridges for each of its four basic building-block colors. It listed for
$429.99, and she bought it on sale at an Office Depot store for $199.99. I
convinced her to fill out and send in the registration card. It came with
gobs of neat, and genuinely useful software for all the flavors of Windows,
and Windows 95 OSR2 knew exactly what the beast was once she pointed the
installer by selecting the "Have Disk" option. The product is discontinued
and her original warranty is about to expire. The beast has been
trouble-free.
The warranty will cost her about $70 for a year. Xerox says in the letter
that if she elects not to buy the warranty, she can still get it serviced if
needed by "Team Xerox" by paying their $75 per hour plus cost of parts and
shipping for estimates and repairs, stated as currently averaging a cost of
$190 "per event" at the current time. This $70 warranty supposedly covers
any and all repairs in the period, including shipping. Not bad, right?
Well, watch the exclusions and see if they are written in such a way to give
the company a big enough loophole to drive any repair through and not
include it under the warranty. Xerox says they won't cover any damage
caused by the user's impropper use of the product. If you share your
morning cup of coffee with the beast, you're on your own. They won't cover
any damage caused by software, whatever that might mean. And, of course
they won't cover things like a fading or tarnishing of the finish by your
cigarette smoke, finger oils, and such things.
I advised my sister that since Xerox is not likely to go away any time soon,
it's a close call on that one. They aren't generally known for producing
trouble-prone and unreliable products. If she buys the warranty and
actually has to use it even once, she'll be grateful she did. There is,
also a very high likelihood that if she buys it, Xerox just gets $70 from
her, and the beast will still be happily and reliably doing its suite of
tricks this time next year.
In small towns where Sears was your only choice, or one of two choices and
the other being more expensive, to get your large household appliances, and
where Sears had some good designs but some quality control and reliability
problems, I advised people to pay the $80 a year to cover the old washer and
dryer pair if Sears offered service on it. One service call under that
warranty would more than pay for itself compared to the cost of the repair
without the warranty.
Remember, too, that some credit card companies offer automatic warranty
extensions on purchases of such gear as computers and electronic things
purchased with that card, one of the supposed benefits of cards called
"gold", "platinum" etc.
YOu can be reasonably sure that Sony won't be going away any time soon.
Sony is known for charging extremely high prices even for smallish parts on
many of their products, among the highest in the industry for similar
replacement parts. Ask about how much certain types of repair might cost,
or how much the parts might cost and compare those prices to the $400
extended warranty charge. For $400 I'd be inclined to take my chances, or
maybe look further to a more standard, less proprietary beast that would do
the same jobs, possibly for considerably less money, or buy a notebook and
get even more portability and flexibility. It's a close call. Most people
would say, usually, don't buy it, they aren't worth the money and usually
only serve to pad the proffit margin. In some cases, though, it might
actually be a good buy. Consider it on a case-by-case basis.
Reply to: [log in to unmask]
Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA USA
Warranty (n.): See Disclaimer.
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