Extended Warranties; another option

[Ken Fox]

If you buy your Thinkpad using a premium level credit card, at least in the United States, you receive additional warranty coverage from the card issuer. The Visa branded version of this service is called "Warranty Manager Service." American Express has its own program and I'd imagine that Master Card and some other credit cards have theirs as well.

If you buy a machine with only 1 year's warranty, with a credit card having this feature, you will have the 2nd year's warranty for free. I have used this service once before and received prompt payment on a broken electronic (fuzzy logic) rice cooker. You have to keep your purchase receipts and be able to provide a copy of the manufacturer's warranty to the company providing the service for your card issuer.

If you have this free card provided coverage, then it is not cost-effective to buy an extended warranty from Lenovo, because they will not give you any credit for the free year of warranty your bank is giving you after the end of the 1 year Lenovo warranty, and they will not begin their extended warranty after the free year from your bank is over, rather it will run at the same time as the one from the card issuer. It just makes more sense to take the 2nd year for free and forego the 3rd year in that situation.

Some banks DO offer the ability to purchase additional years of warranty coverage after the free additional year is over. I have learned today that Bank of America does NOT offer this, but that Chase DOES. So, it will vary by bank.

Today, I bought a 3rd year of coverage for my new T43 that came with only one year's Lenovo warranty; the bank is providing the 2nd year for free, and it cost $82 to buy a 3rd year. The "warranty manager" provided warranty is identical in terms to the Lenovo one. Whether or not they would pay for shipping of a broken laptop for service I don't know, but their policy is that you are not limited to using the manufacturer's service facilities, you can use whomever you wish. Also, if it is a part that you can replace yourself, they will pay for that after you submit the bill.

In the case of the Chase Bank issued Visa Card I have, the extended warranty is transferable for a cost of $10 payable to the bank's service provider.

I think that this could be a very good low cost option for people grappling with whether to pay for 3 years worth of warranty from Lenovo vs. saving a couple hundred bucks by taking the 1 year warranty. The second year is free and you would not have to buy the 3rd year until the end of the 2nd year approaches. This would also help at the time of resale since as a transferable warranty, you could put this in your sales listing and the purchaser should feel somewhat protected vs. simply buying a machine out of warranty.

3rd party extended warranties have a pretty bad reputation, especially those sold by Mack. These credit card extended warranties should be better and if my own experience is any indication, people do answer the phone promptly and you will get your claims paid.

[Ken Fox]

I have now received the documentation on the $82 extended warranty I bought on my T43, from my Visa Card Issuer's "Warranty Manager" program. As I noted in the first post, the laptop was purchased with only the 1 year warranty, and by having used the Visa card to purchase it, I got a free extra year of warranty (making two). I then bought a 3rd year from them, for $82 (or I could have bought both the 3rd and 4th years for $122, and they told me that I could change my mind later and rewrite the contract for no extra charge over the extra $40 to cover the 4th year, later).

For anyone interested, here are the first two pages of the agreement I received in the mail today. I apologize for the image quality but it was as good as I could scan and get onto Photobucket in jpg format. Click on the links to view.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v429/ ... ranty2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v429/ ... rranty.jpg

On page 3 it clearly states under "Transfer of Ownership:" This Agreement may be transferred by paying to the Administrator a $10 transfer fee, and providing Administrator with the name and address of the new Owner within ten (10) days of transfer. Presumably the new owner would then receive an envelope in the mail from Visa with the rewritten policy showing their name as the insured owner. This could be a nice selling point for a used laptop, especially the part about being able to add an extra year later so that you are selling a used laptop with warranty coverage as opposed to one with an expired warranty.

One advantage of this warranty, which applies in years 2 and 3 (or longer if you want) is that you are not obligated to use IBM Easyserv. With all the complaints about Easyserv, you might find a better option than using that and the extended warranty would pay for it.

I have claimed previously under these Visa Warranty Manager programs and it has not been onerous.

Given a total payment of $82 to extend my warranty to 3 years in total vs. paying Lenovo $200 when I bought the laptop, I think this is a much better deal.