Should You Buy Protection Plan For Tv

Should You Buy Protection Plan For Tv

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Whatever it's called, these warranties are usually limited in time and scope. Thus, you'll frequently find the item's reseller (sometimes the manufacturer) trying to (up) sell you on extra coverage. That coverage is called an extended warranty, or sometimes a "protection plan" or "service plan/contract." The latter are more accurate, as no one can really extend a warranty except the original manufacturer.

Getting a protection/service plan means you pay more upfront, depending on the item and the coverage. In theory, you do so to make sure you have even more time with the product should it break in that pre-set amount of time, be it a few months, a year, or a few years.

These companies aren't offering extended warranties out of altruism. They're doing it because service plans make crazy amounts of money. The market(Opens in a new window) for such plans (including for automobiles) was worth $120.79 billion in 2019, and during the summer of COVID (in 2020) was projected to hit $169.82 billion by 2027, according to Allied Market Research.

Here's the big secret: it typically doesn't cost that much to repair most items. The cost of a single repair is usually less than the cost of an extended warranty. Consumer Reports once put the median cost at $136 for a service plan for electronics, but only 16 bucks more for the repair. The difference is negligible. Just save the money.

The rate of repairs on a modern flat-screen television? About 7%. Skip the extended warranty. Instead, make sure you've purchased that big screen on a credit card with some extra warranty protection. (That advice goes for any electronics purchase, period.) The average TV repair(Opens in a new window) only costs $207, which you can save for.

I'll give you another anecdote. When I worked at Circuit City in college, we were required to offer extended warranties at the end of the sale. I don't remember specific prices, but I do recall a one-year plan on a VCR could cost upwards of 25 percent of the price of the product. A five-year plan on a pair of speakers? Pennies on the dollar. Which do you think is more likely to break?

Fix: With most plans in the 10 percent range of the total price (depending on warranty length), they're not offensive, per se. But that's still over $100 on a $1,000 TV, which is not really a small chunk of change. Cheaper than replacement? Sure. But they're "cheap" because the warranty providers don't have to replace/fix many TVs. If they did, the plans would be a lot more expensive.

Extended warranties are just insurance for your TV. The provider is betting you won't have to use the plan, and you're hoping the same thing. Flat-panel TVs have proven very reliable, so it's unlikely you'll need to repair a TV.

Got a question for Geoff? First, check out all the other articles he's written on topics such as why all HDMI cables are the same, LED LCD vs. OLED, why 4K TVs aren't worth it and more. Still have a question? Tweet at him @TechWriterGeoff then check out his travel photography on Instagram. He also thinks you should check out his sci-fi novel and its sequel.

It's true that on paper, it sounds like a great deal. This particular extended warranty comes from Asurion LLC, a company that supplies a range of very affordable extended warranty plans for Amazon products specifically. It's a four-year Protection Plan for TVs from $175 to $199.99.

When you take a closer look at what's covered, the Asurion Protection Plan only claims to cover "failures due to power surge and other mechanical and electrical breakdowns." While this is certainly good coverage to have for four years, it's not the most robust in terms of protections. Anything accidental or water-based, for example, doesn't appear to be checked out. Though, for less than ten dollars, you're getting what you pay for.

The other issue here seems to be reliability. The four-year plan for this TV price range only has 25 reviews, but quite a few report never receiving the coverage, or being unable to have their claim accepted. What's more, there are complaints listed from manufacturers on Amazon itself who claim they have no say in the offering of Asurion (or even SquareTrade/Allstate) protection plans.

These plans are more expensive, of course. The $175-$199.99 electronics plan for three years costs $29 instead of Asurion's $9 for four years, but SquareTrade covers "drops, spills, accidents, liquid damage, plus mechanical and electrical failures during normal use." All in all, they're a more trustworthy and useful deal, even if the chances of something happening three or four years out are technically no riskier.

However, the chance that you'll need a protection plan over 1,000 days into product ownership is also extremely unlikely. I guess the answer boils down to: why not? It's probably subsidizing Prime benefits, at least.

The one question you know you'll hear before you cough up that moolah is the one that has become, for many consumers, the most annoying question one can hear from a salesperson: "Do you want our [INSERT SPECIFIC RETAILER'S PREFIX] protection plan?" If you're at Best Buy, it's the Geek Squad Protection Plan. If you're at Sears (and it happens to be one of the few locations that still sells TVs), it's the Sears In-Home Master Protection Agreement. And so on.

Many consumers won't buy a retailer's protection plan under any circumstances. A much smaller percentage will buy a protection plan in each and every case, possibly because at some point in their lives they needed one and didn't have it. That leaves a large percentage of consumers who are open to buying a retail protection plan for certain products under certain circumstances.

Should you buy the retailer protection plan for a big-screen TV? To cut right to the chase, my answer is ... You probably don't need to if you're buying a well-reviewed TV model from one of the top brands. However, there are some cases in which it's a good idea.

When it comes to TVs and retail protection plans, the three main questions to ask are: 1) What does the plan offer that the manufacturer's warranty doesn't? 2) How likely is it that the TV is going to have such an issue during the time period covered by the protection plan? 3) What's the extra cost?

Manufacturer's Warranty Vs. Retailer Protection Plan Part of the spiel that you're likely to hear from a salesperson is that the manufacturer's warranty doesn't cover every issue that could possibly go wrong with a TV. As you may be aware, one incentive for the salesperson to tell you that is that the retailer typically makes more profit off the protection plan than the TV itself. However, in many cases, the salesperson is likely providing correct information, especially if he or she works for a reputable retailer.

In general, a TV manufacturer's warranty covers manufacturer defects for only one year. I reached out to several TV manufacturers to ask about their TV warranty plans, and they did not respond to my request for a comment on the subject. Samsung, the overall TV market-share leader in the U.S. for several years, declined to comment, but here's how the company explains its warranty on its website: Coverage on its LED-backlit LCD TVs--which today make up the vast majority of models available--is for one year only and excludes a laundry list of items: plastic panels, plastic parts and the dust cover; cabinets; antennas and cables; external parts including levers, plugs, sockets, control knobs or adapters; and in-box accessories such as adapters. Plus, the remote control is only covered for six months. Also, read the fine print, and you'll see that Samsung's warranty is "not applicable to cases other than defects in material, design and workmanship." Also not covered under its warranty are "maintenance, repair and replacement of parts due to normal wear and tear," as well as accidents, "acts of God" and "voltage fluctuations." In other words, just as the salesperson might claim, any damage that happens due to a power surge is not covered.

A retailer's protection plan generally covers everything the manufacturer covers for a longer period of time (usually up to five years). In some cases, it also covers at least some of what the manufacturer will not cover even during the first year.

Under its Geek Squad Protection Plan, Best Buy's screen coverage "includes pixel damages"; so, if a customer who bought the plan experiences such a problem during the coverage period, Best Buy "would provide a new panel or a new TV," the company said in response to my query.

Playing the Percentages Even though some retailers' TV protection plans offer more and better coverage than the manufacturer warranties, the important question is this: just how likely is it that a TV is going to have a problem after the retailer's return period is up?

Nevertheless, Sasicki noted that Abt still sells TV protection plans, and he said that it makes sense for consumers to consider buying one "because of the high cost of repair and parts." A new TV may cost only $800, but the panel for a three-year-old TV costs about $950 without an extended protection plan. And the larger the screen, the higher the cost.

It Comes Down to This Most manufacturer defects will become obvious within a month of regular TV usage, giving you plenty of time to return the defective TV to the store that you bought it from before the return period is over. That includes manufacturer defects covered under a TV maker's warranty and those issues that should be classified as manufacturer defects but aren't--namely, dead pixels.

Once you get past that first month, issues like dead pixels and other AV problems tend not to happen on quality TVs from major TV makers, at least not until the TV's life cycle starts reaching its end a few years down the line--well after the time covered by the typical retailer protection plan. If that weren't the case, it wouldn't be profitable for retailers to even sell those protection plans. 781b155fdc