I hear you. I have had bad luck with some extended warranties. It seems that they try to do everything to refuse my claim. If I am persistant, they finally give in. I got a Toshiba laptop last year and didn’t get the warranty. It fizzled out (I couldn’t get it to turn on), it was still under regular warranty so I sent it in. The repair center said it was my fault, that the laptop had water on it. I had never spilted water on any of my stuff. Toshiba wanted $400 to fix a $600 laptop! Well it justs sits here broken. It seems that before they sent it back to me they took out some parts. It turns on, seems to work, but now the Wifi component is gone and a few other things. I would have been better to have just let it sit here.
I often think about the content I have bought and what will happen when my device dies. Seems to me, when Gemstar abandonned their readers, they should have provided a way for us to unlock our books. In the future I do plan to write about putting books on readers. Thanks for dropping by!

Ellen

Consumer’s Reports used to say that purchasing the additional warranty on any product was most likely a waste of money – and I can guarantee that in some cases (your RocketBook, at least one of my cell phones) that it is… However, the overall thinking has changed on this when it comes to devices with expensive displays like LCD screens. For instance, when I bought my laptop, I sprung for the warranty because replacing the laptop LCD would’ve cost almost as much as a new laptop at the time of purchase, whereas the warranty was only $150. I justified the purchase by thinking of it as an insurance premium on my laptop – if the screen broke, hey great, I had the means in place to get it fixed without coughing up another $1500.

Similarly, my father just purchased a monster LCD TV – it’s something like 61 inches total (you can now watch TV from the neighbors). It also has a really expensive light source which could potentially need replacement within the lifetime of the TV. This was another case where it was to the buyer’s advantage to take the warranty as insurance against the expense of a replacing a really important part in the future.

Sometimes it really is worth the extra money for the peace of mind, if nothing else.

There are still some things that I’d never buy the extended warranty for, however – things like peripherals, hard drives, networking equipment, etc. It’s really only worth the money for anything with the potential for a really expensive repair, IMHO.

On another note, I’m really enjoying your blog. I’d love to be able to dedicate more time to exploring ebook technology from the UI side of things. Alas, I’m pretty much limited by time and resources to the “other side” – figuring out how to get the content into the eBooks that are usable now and will continue to be usable in the future.

Best Regards,
Jean K.