Should I buy the extended warranty? (AppleCare)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I bought my 1.5gHz, 15" PowerBook G4 last year. The original intention was to use it as a mobile editing unit. (Pretty slow for that, but it works.) One problem I’ve had with it since I took it out of the box is that the power jack is loose and sometimes it’s not being powered by AC. But I would have had to have had it sent away for repair, and it’s no big deal.

So now Apple is telling me this is my last chance to buy the extended service warranty – for $349.

Pros:
[ul][li]Piece of mind[/li][li]If I start using it heavily for editing, something may go wrong[/li][li]The power jack issue could be resolved if I feel like it[/li][li]What if I drop it? It would be nice to have protection[/ul][/li]Cons:
[ul][li]It costs $349[/li][li]I’ll probably get a newer, more capable PowerBook in a couple of years anyway[/li][li]My PC lasted five years before I had to replace the hard drive. If this one fails, I don’t think it will happen until after the warranty[/ul][/li]So. $349 AppleCare plan. Should I do it, or no?

2

Oh yes. I’ve bought it for each of the three Macintosh machines I have owned. It helped me through early growing pains, and provided me with a replacement hard drive when I dropped my PowerBook ( ahem. :smiley: )

The expertise and hardware support seems to me at least to be well worth the cost. Bench time is around $ 80.00 an hour where my Apple store is, and so that three hunnerd gets eaten up really fast when paying hourly. And as I said, phone tech support is NIIIIIICE to have.

Cartooniverse

p.s. how’s the movie going???

3

[QUOTE=Cartooniverse]
p.s. how’s the movie going???
[/QUOTE]

Aiyiyi… :rolleyes:

Scheduling problems put the project on hiatus in mid-December. Then the Director broke up with the Producer. Without her, nothing was being done. The Director said that he had to finish a couple of projects for the core business before starting the film again. Instead (I’m told), he played video games. Then he got back together with the Producer and moved to the other side of the state. And he had an argument with one of the actors/investors (the one who will ‘sell’ the film because of his popularity). I talked to the Director briefly last week, and he says he’s trying to salvage the film. We’ll see.

I sold the Arri 35 BL on eBay, but the guy didn’t ask his wife first so he backed out. He says he’s still trying to buy it. A local filmmaker (who currently shoots on an Arri 2B) emailed this morning that he’d like to look at it.

4

The conventional wisdom among the Apple owners I know is that AppleCare probably isn’t worth it for desktops, but definitely worthwhile on anything portable (laptops & iPods) because they just get knocked around more.

However, I have an iBook that I don’t have AppleCare on, and it has had to go in twice for repairs, once for a loose logic board connection, and once for a failed hard drive. The logic board turned out to be under recall, so despite the fact that it was working fine they replaced it (which, incidentally, involved connecting the new board to the display :slight_smile: ) and the harddrive turned out to still be under Sony warranty. In each case I was prepared to have to shell out hundreds of bux, but got off easy. (They upgraded the OS free each time, too.)

I’m going to get AppleCare on my iPod when it comes up, and when I get a new laptop this fall, for two reasons:

  1. I have a sneaking feeling that, having gotten off easy twice, I can’t continue to push my luck.
  2. In both cases it took a rather long time for them to diagnose the problem, all the while telling me it would probably be an expensive repair, and when they shipped the machine back to my local Apple dealer I walked into the store expecting to walk out with a big credit card bill, only to find a nice $0 the invoice. Paying the AppleCare would have saved me a lot of sleep. :slight_smile:
5

Back in 1998, when I bought my first Mac, in the course of 3 years, I had 8 major hardware problems that required replacement…2 hard drives, in fact.
I praised the day I bought the extended warrantee. My new I Mac is exactly 2 months old. The Mac guy is coming tomorrow to replace the optical drive. And yes, I expect more stuff to go in the next 3 years. My Apple Care policy is kept in a safe place.

6

I have an almost 2 year old iBook G4. In the last two years, I’ve gotten a new motherboard and a new hard drive.

AppleCare is wonderful. Their phone support is great. And when I needed my new hard drive, I received a padded box with tape and paid next day shipping to send my iBook in and I got in back in a few days. Cost $0.

7

I’d say that the decision to buy the warranty should come down to whether you can afford to replace the computer should it fail, and whether you are competent enough to attempt a repair yourself.

Also, if you decide not to get the warranty, I’d send it in for the AC jack repair ASAP. Who knows when it will just stop connecting altogether?

8

Ditto on the “get it for a laptop” idea.

9

You ever seen the Simpsons where Homer gets the crayon removed from his nose and he becomes smart?

When they’re putting the crayon back in, they’re trying to recreate how dumb he was. So, they push the crayon in a little and he says something like, “E equals em cee squared”. They push it in a little more and he says something like, “Go Team”. They push it in a little more and he goes, “sure, I’ll take the extended warranty.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about your car, your couch, your blender, or your iMac, extended warranties wouldn’t be offered if they weren’t profitable for the company – even if they call it “AppleCare”. :rolleyes:

And, where do those profits come from? People who want to pay $349 for “peace of mind” and who don’t really understand the notion of risk.

10

I must be in the minority. I’ve owned or been the primary user/“tech” person at work for: three pre-G3 beige desktops, two G4s, an iMac, an eMac, and my current 15" PowerBook, which is now at 2 years of constant use, back and forth to work every day, often in my backpack on a bicycle, and I have honestly never had a single hardware problem that required taking it in for service.

I probably just jinxed myself.

11

[QUOTE=FlyingDragonFan]
I must be in the minority. I’ve owned or been the primary user/“tech” person at work for: three pre-G3 beige desktops, two G4s, an iMac, an eMac, and my current 15" PowerBook, which is now at 2 years of constant use, back and forth to work every day, often in my backpack on a bicycle, and I have honestly never had a single hardware problem that required taking it in for service.

I probably just jinxed myself.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe, maybe not, but you’re a perfect example of why NOT to buy them.

Even if you’re next $2000 purchase breaks down the day you buy it, you saved yourself money in the long run by not shelling out $350 a piece for the warranties on “three pre-G3 beige desktops, two G4s, an iMac, an eMac, and my current 15” PowerBook".

12

[QUOTE=Trunk]
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about your car, your couch, your blender, or your iMac, extended warranties wouldn’t be offered if they weren’t profitable for the company – even if they call it “AppleCare”. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

On the other hand, I bought the extended warranty for my Yamaha Seca II. I didn’t have to pay for the engine rebuild.

13

[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
On the other hand, I bought the extended warranty for my Yamaha Seca II. I didn’t have to pay for the engine rebuild.
[/QUOTE]

Well, you were one of the lucky/unlucky ones who had to use it.

If you looked at the pool of people who bought the Yamaha Seca II, and bought the extended warranty, I guarantee you that most of them got a raw deal by buying it (unless that particular model was a complete lemon). If you bet me that a die would turn up 6, and I had 1-5, and you rolled it and it turned up 6, that doesn’t mean you made a good bet. Would you be willing to play that game 100 times with me?

This is what they do. . .

Let’s say they sold 100,000 of those bikes. Let’s say 1000 of them needed a rebuild. Without the extened warranty, lets say the rebuild costs Yamaha $2000 each. The EW costs $500.

So, Yamaha loses $1500 every time they have a bike fail and the customer has the EW. They MAKE $500 every time a bike doesn’t fail and the customer has the EW.

If every customer bought the EW, they would lose

$1500*1000 = $1.5 Million

They would make

$500*99000 = $49.5 Million

a fair price for this example would be to pay about $15 for the extended warranty. That ignores all the other things that the EW covers, but I think the point is made. If my numbers are anywhere NEAR the ballpark, it shows what’s happening.

Without actual company numbers, it’s impossible to say how much the customer is getting jacked by extended warranties, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the range of paying 4-5 times the cost of it. That is, a $500 EW probably has about a $100 value.

14

[QUOTE=Trunk]
Well, you were one of the lucky/unlucky ones who had to use it.

If you looked at the pool of people who bought the Yamaha Seca II, and bought the extended warranty, I guarantee you that most of them got a raw deal by buying it (unless that particular model was a complete lemon). If you bet me that a die would turn up 6, and I had 1-5, and you rolled it and it turned up 6, that doesn’t mean you made a good bet. Would you be willing to play that game 100 times with me?
[/QUOTE]

But comparisons to gambling with 100 games points out very nicely why warranties and insurance in general are not necessarily bad investments. Because the comparisons are entirely inappropriate. I agree that warranties and insurance are profitable for the company providing them. This means that if you bought 100 Apple products and took out 100 extended warranties the chances of coming out ahead would be practically zero (obviously not exactly zero). This would be an amazingly foolish move. Your risk is diversified over all 100 products. Likewise, I would understand a car rental company that doesn’t have damage insurance against all 10,000 vehicles in its fleet.

It is a slightly different story when we are talking about once off insurance/warranties against big ticket items (and the biggest ticket item of all, your health). Technically, since health insurance companies make a profit, you could argue that health insurance is a lousy investment, because if you look at 1000 people, on average, they pay in more than they get out. If you’re healthy this is very likely. But the hugely devastating cost of having a major operation versus the perfectly managably cost of paying for health insurance makes it less of a bad idea. The worst case scenario suddenly got a lot better, and you get to live in a narrower and safer band on the “life is great” vs “oh man, I’m completely screwed now” scale!

I believe, in certain circumstances, the same logic can be applied against warranties. Yes, they’re hugely profitable for the company. Yes, you’re probably going to lose out. But this is a manageable, and known, loss. If you’ve bought a $3000 laptop vital to your new startup business, and the loss of such a device would decimate your plans to grow the business (since you cannot afford another $3000), it may be completely reasonable to pony up an extra $300 for a warranty. It is a manageable cost that prevents you from dealing with a unmanageable cost. If you were a larger company that was buying 100 $3000 machines, you’d probably not buy the warranty.

Note that I am not saying the once off warranty is definately a good idea. But there are many factors that weigh in. The average return on the warranty investment is only one of them.

15

[QUOTE=Driver8]
Note that I am not saying the once off warranty is definately a good idea. But there are many factors that weigh in. The average return on the warranty investment is only one of them.
[/QUOTE]

You’re absolutely right, of course.

If you could afford $350 for a warranty, couldn’t afford $1500 for a new lap top, AND the loss of the lap top would cause you tremendous harm, it makes sense.

That’s why health care or home insurance makes more sense. The catastrophic event can ruin your life. You know it’s a bad bet, but you have to do it, and you also know that you will get your “nickels and dimes” out of it.

The loss of a lap top or having your car break down won’t destroy your life however. You can be more prudent with these because the worst case scenario isn’t really too bad.

16

[QUOTE=Trunk]
If you could afford $350 for a warranty, couldn’t afford $1500 for a new lap top, AND the loss of the lap top would cause you tremendous harm, it makes sense.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, a new laptop would cost $2,500 - $3,000. And I hav Final Cut Pro, so I need a Mac. But it occured to me that I could write off the cost of the plan as a business expense.

17

I am the Mac geek at a large ad agency, and I have always purchased the extended AppleCare on laptops, but never on desktops.

That said, if it were my own purchase, I’d probably skip it. Why? Because I have alot of experience diagnosing and taking those things apart and putting them back together. If you’re brave, a #5 torx bit and a repair manual can get you pretty far. But if you screw up, it’s easy to ruin a laptop. (The G4’s are fairly easy to work on, the iBooks are a nightmare) Used parts can be found pretty easily on eBay. If that possibility scares you, I would recommend the AppleCare.

Laptops take a lot of abuse, and 3 years is a really really long time for them. One hardware repair in three years on a laptop is actually a pretty good rate in my opinion. Some get lucky and never see a repair in 5 years, some don’t and send it in once a year at least. It’s a crap shoot. But one hardware repair can easily top $349.