Extended Warranty Insurance - Should You Get One?
Sometimes we are put on the spot about
extended warranty insurance. Other
times, we are looking for them ourselves from a secondary company.
In either case, you will want to make the right decision about this
very important yet very hard to understand type of product. The
extended warranty insurance is a means for you to get a longer amount of
warranty coverage. In some cases, this coverage will last you
several extra years beyond the time that your manufacturer’s
warranty lasts. Yet, is it really the right choice for you? While
that may be hard for you to make a decision about, one thing that
you can do is to prepare for making that decision.
TO help you to know if the purchase of an extended warranty is the
right product to make, consider these very important factors.
• What does the unit that you are purchasing cost? What is the
cost of the warranty? In most cases, the extended warranty is at a
cost of about 20 to 30 percent of the value and the retail price of
the unit. Yet, if you are purchasing something that is not all that
expensive, is it worth that much more?
• What does the extended warranty cover? Now, this is where it
gets tricky because many times consumers do not spend enough time
determining what the warranty actually does cover. If you do not
know, invest the time necessary in learning what it does cover.
• Get information about the warranty company. Sometimes these
companies are just the retail outlet that you are purchasing the
unit from. Other times, you will purchase your extended warranty
from someone entirely different. In either case, find out what type
of rating they have with the Better Business Bureau. Determine if
others have used their service with satisfaction. The web is the
ideal place to do that.
All of these things can take you more than just a few minutes to
do. Yet, investing this time in determining more information about
the warranty will pay off in the long run. As anyone that has
purchased and even used, or has purchased and did not do their
homework about coverage will tell you, the extended warranty is only
as good as you insure it to be before you make the purchase of it.
In other words, doing some homework now on the extended warranty
will pay off later.
