Extended Waranty Scam

[BillyB]

Weather you are shopping at Office Depot, Walmart or Amazon, they try to sell you a SquareTrade extended warranty.
Don't fall for it!

They are notorious for frustrating service and no help if there is any problem with your item. I have been assured "the check has been mailed" multiple times over several months. That was after hours upon hours on the phone repeating the same information to multiple phone bankers.

Their function is to wear you down till you give up.

The stores must get a big cut of this rip off so they try to push it, but save your money.



Here is a sample of experiences on social media other people have encountered:
"I have been waiting since the first of December 2019, had to file the claim twice and spent a couple hours re-sending the warranty documents and pictures of the damage, still no repair or refund check. This is the third time I have had problems with Office depot Square Trade Warranties. The time I have spent trying to warranty work is worth far more than it would have cost me to just buy a new item."

[terracore]

I've never used Square Trade but have made a few claims with Asurion. They were effortless and I got money right away, and they sent a pre-paid label to send the defective stuff back to them.

I used Home Depot extended appliance warranty- no problems there either. Lowes was a nightmare. Took them 6 weeks to fix a dishwasher.

I believe Amazon charges warranty vendors 50% so I imagine the stores get similar. That's a pretty good markup.

[EightFingers]

Ah yes, Square Trade... I had a Samsung tv that died and I spent four hours total on the phone and emailing them. Had to take several pictures of the tv trying to catch an intermittent issue. After a awhile, I was able to get lucky and catch it. Well it wasn’t good enough for them i had to get the ENTIRE tv in the picture, so back again to try and catch the problem. I think I sent them at least ten pictures of the back front and sides of the tv. So after they were finally satisfied, they agree to SEND me a new tv. I asked them why not send me a check and I can purchase one locally? But that’s not how they do it. About three weeks later I did get a tv by FEDEX and surprisingly it wasn’t broken. However the value of the replacement was $200 less than the original.
This was an extended warranty I bought at Costco.


Puna: Our roosters crow first

[terracore]

I had an intermittent issue on a small appliance with a warranty claim so I put a 22 minute video (thats how long it took for the device to turn itself off) on youtube documenting the products failure. And sent them the link. I don't know if they watched the entire video or skipped to the end (I didn't tell them in the email where the failure was in the video) but it very publicly documented their product's failure and they did expedite a replacement to me.

The replacement was DOA. They sent me a third.