Domestic Appliance Extended Warranties

Extended warranties usually are associated by some salesman trying to foist the store's own warranty on the poor customer and refusing to accept "no" as an acceptable answer. Sadly, that is a view held by many, even within the trade itself!

So, for the purpose of this article and the very fact that you've taken the time to find and read it I'm going to assume that you have a modicum of intelligence and found this article as you are interested in insurances or extended warranties on large domestic appliances. Bear in mind that this article is an opinion, mine, and no more.

Are they worth it?

To many people the answer is, yes. To many people the answer is, no!

There are no wrongs or rights here at all, it's all down to you, the customer to make as an informed decision as you can and decide if a warranty suits your needs. There are two basic arguments that I'll explain in a minute, but essentially, decide from the information what suits you, not the salesman.

Come to think of it, that's a bit self-defeating since we do now offer an extended warranty through UK Whitegoods, but then service engineers never were good salesmen as we tend to tell it like it is, not how the marketeers want you to see it as we are, primarily engineers after all.

The Argument "For"

The theory goes that you have no repair bills, fine but do you expect the product to break down? Well, if it's a good quality appliance then the obvious answer is "no" to that question. But, we are talking about machine here and whether it happens in twenty minutes or twenty years the inevitable will happen and the machine will break, nothing is more certain as they do not last forever. The issue is the "when" and how much it will cost to put right.

The addition of a warranty removes the burden and cost of that from you, the customer, quite simply.

The Argument "Against"

There has been much talk of poor value for money and, quite frankly, many insurances are poor value for money. Being marketed to sell you many features that already exist on your own household insurance policy or a credit card if you used that to buy the machine.

It has been said that putting the same amount of money away would cover any repairs and this seems to hold true for the most part. But you play the "numbers game" in just the same way that any insurer does.

So What Next

The one over-riding question that you have to ask yourself is, "am I prepared to take the risk?" regardless of what you decide to do. On the one hand you could risk expensive repair bills and on the other you risk wasting the money spent on the premium for the policy. As I said there's no easy answers here really and it all comes down to what you feel more comfortable with.

This may shock a lot of customers as it's rare that you are given the truth like this, especially on this subject, but I felt that if UK whitegoods was to offer any insurances to customers the least we could do is be honest about it as we are in all other things we do.