New Toys and Warranties

At a time of year when so many new toys are bought and many of them pricy, I want to pass on a hard learned lesson. This is the warranty lesson. We have always been ones to search for the best deal when buying most anything but especially something as big as appliances. Well we learned the hard way that price isn't everything. In fact, these days many stores will match the price from another making the price matter even less. So the talk goes to extended warranties. Now I am skipping the debate on their general value. Anyone who has purchased an appliance in recent years knows they do not last. All you need to do is read online reviews to be scared witless. So to get back on subject, read all the fine print on the extended warranty. Look at it this way, you will be forced to sooner or later. For example, when do they consider the product a lemon and simply replace it. We found on our Lowes extended plan, it had to be the exact same repair three times in the same year. Unfortunately, a lemon can have lots of problems and since the parts get replaced as the problems occur they can be different. Of all the plans we looked at, hhgregg.com and sears.com seem to be the best. Overall, I felt Sears won out. However, even the salesman had special instructions on how to get the best service which required involving him in the repair. Not sure how effective that would be long-term. I guess the moral is that none of them are great but some are definitely far better than others. So shop wisely this season.