Service and Insurance for Putters?

[Miss Poohs]

Another question 

Having had the misfortune of visiting PC world for the first time today - they were very kean to sell insurance for a new putter.

Which got me wondering - is it possible to do this directly with the supplier - ie ours is an HP, so can we just deal directly with them and miss out the middle man?

To be honest I wouldn't trust PC World with an abacus never mind a computer - not the sharpest tools in the shed today!!!

[Cob-Web]

Insurance to cover what, exactly?

I have accidental damage anywhere cover on my laptop that I arranged through my home insurance (an extra £10 a year ) and all our other computers are covered through the same policy for damage within the home as well as the usual cover you get with contents insurance .

Is this the sort of insurance you meant?

[Miss Poohs]

You know how they try and sell you insurance for damage and faults outwith the manufacturers warranty.

The cover is ridiculously expensive if you buy the insurance through the supplier, I just wondered if it  was any cheaper directly from the manufacturer.

On the other hand is it worth the money at all?

[suki1964]

Personally I wouldnt touch it with barge pole. Your pc is covered for the first year against hardware faults anyway. Software problems and theres usually the fix on the manufacturers sites, and for any problems like crashing the thing and not being able to get it back up, then the man down the road is often a lot quicker and doesnt cost an arm and leg in premium rate phone calls.

The last machine I bought in a shop with cover spent more time down and away being fixed then actually up and running. Every return took 3 weeks. In the end I rejected it (and the cover) got one built and when worse came to worse (once) cost £70 to fix and was back with 24 hrs

[Cob-Web]

You know how they try and sell you insurance for damage and faults outwith the manufacturers warranty.

The cover is ridiculously expensive if you buy the insurance through the supplier, I just wondered if it  was any cheaper directly from the manufacturer.

On the other hand is it worth the money at all?

Do you mean an extended warranty? It depends what you get from the manufacturer/supplier - if its one year, then it might be worth extending to three - but more than that is definately not worth it on Computer goods as they only have a three year life span for accounting purposes. I've never bought one tbh - if somethings going to go wrong, in my experience, it tends to happen in the first year and its covered - if it goes wrong later, then it tends to be excluded from the warranty anyway 

[Miss Poohs]

That's my feeling too.

With these extended warranty things you're covered for everything until it leaves the shop, then it's worthless 

So long as I don't lose touch with Big Jim I should be OK!!

[lyn]

janice we didn't take the extended warranty when we bought our hp pc in dec 04 as it had a 12 month warranty anyway,but i didn't take any insurance when the thing ran out and the pc died and had to be resusitated at the cost of £160 in jan 06(about 5 weeks out of waranty)the repair man said he has had loads of hp's in for repair over the last couple of years.we had to have a new motherboard,new graphics card and new psu though i also got him to put extra ram on as well/if we had taken it to pc world it would have cost probably double that price.

[Miss Poohs]

Can you extend the warranty directly with HP? - Was in PC World today and I wasn't impressed - bit fick!!

[ReadingSteve]

With the price of PCs dropping so much, you really have to weigh up if it's worth paying out for insurance.  I helped a friend buy a laptop from Dell recently and it came to £480. They wanted £150 or so for the service package, and in the end we decided that if the worst came to the worst, she'd save her money now and bite the bullet later if anything bad did happen.

Hate insurance, and hate the way these shops look at you like your on another planet if you decline their extended warranty packages!