Should I Buy The Expensive Extended Warranty?
There are many components in a plasma or LCD TV that are just waiting to go wrong. The
processor, the cooling system to name just two. So if your Plasma TV is likely
to get a lot of use then this is one of the few situations were an extended
warranty might be worthwhile.
Now for the issues mentioned above alone it probably would be an
extravagance to buy an extended warranty. After all you can claim under
the sale of goods act which says that goods must be 'fit for purpose'
and if your £1000 TV stops working in 13 months it is fairly easy
to prove it is not. The problem with TVs is there are a number of
issues that degrade the performance of your TV and these could be
argued to be wear and tear issues if you took a retailer to court.
Things like cooling systems becoming intrusively noisy, dead pixels(to
an unreasonable extent), natural screen burn caused by inconsistencies
in the manufacture of the pdp (not caused by leaving a still picture).
These are just a selection of the issues where you could end up with a
free repair or replacement under an extended warranty.
You then consider that even with issues you might get covered by
arguing the sales of goods act, the retailer or manufacturer can
reasonably expect you to share some costs. For example ever wondered
how much it costs to send a 50 inch TV half way across the country. The
extended warranty would avoid such costs.
The biggest reason for me is that you can fault find. That is look for
the slightest problem and ask for it to be fixed. It will mean you
always have a great condition TV and if you get lucky you might just
end up getting a replacement when it is a few years old because it
can't be fixed.
You should of course pretend you are not
interested when first asked as it is always possible to get a reduction on the
cost of the warranty or on the screen itself as a condition of taking the
warranty. And even more important check the specific exclusions of the warranty you are considering.
