Best way to add extended warranty ??

Hi folk,

I ordered a R3 which was cancelled an replaced by a R2. It will be delivered today. Currently it comes with 1 year complete care warranty, but now I want to extend the warranty to 4 years total. I called Dell but they gave me a quote of ~$700 while it was only $430 on the config website. I tried to explain that this is basically a new laptop, I even havent received it yet, so the price for the warranty should be just like if I purchase it as a bundle with the lap. No luck with both sales dept, return dept and the escalade rep.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you !!!!

 

Best option is to return and re-order. It's an arm and a leg to extend the warranty after the initial order. Sorry man.

 

Thanks DR650SE. I would have no other choice if they cant give me a good price. It is ridiculous since each department works for their own profit and no one would care the cost to issue a return for me, then re-order.

I made a few more calls and still no luck. Best price right now is about $150 more than original upgrade price. I am still waiting for my sales rep to call me back. I told him he made a mistake when making my order. Lets see what he can offer me.

Any idea why it is so much more expensive to add the warranty later (especially when it's still not delivered, unopened?) Cant they make a change to the order in this specific situation?

 

It is the way it is. Mostly because corporations aren't driven by the need to service a customer like a business should be, rather they are driven by the need to get consumers instead. They don't care about taking care of you, they care about their bottom line. The general industry charges more for a extended warranty after the fact than at point of sale. When they've sold you the product, they've made their money. Therefore at point of sale things are cheaper to get you to buy them (albeit with warranty reduced and such). Afterwards, they don't seem to understand that good customer service makes for repeat customers. This is partially because the general market will shrug, sigh, and buy another computer from them later anyways.

However, I'll shut up before I go into one of my rants. I hope you get your warranty extended. I've been trying to deal with Dell before mine expires in July to get them to extend it at lesser cost than what they want (a lot) because knowing my luck stuff will start going to hell the day it expires. I'll let you know if I have any luck, but it's not going well.

 

Can you add warranty, particularly CC, when your initial expired?

 

Thanks JaiaV. If it has been used, its reasonable to increase the price for warranty. However, this is just a brand new lap and for this very short period of time they should be able to add the warranty just like making a change in your order.

Btw, warranty dept. is known to make a lot of profits. Some customers may be beneficial from it, I know, they're all happy. Meanwhile, a lot of customers would never use the warranty. I bet there are many people who buy computers with only 1 year basic warranty - which is INCLUDED in the price. And many of them will not use much of their warranty in the first year. Problems only occur after that (as what happened to my 2 previous laptops) when the warranty already expires. Basically when you buy a laptop with basic warranty you already pay a premium for something you may not need in the first year.

 

I would say NO. Take a look at this bro

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/504059-dell-sucks.html

 

According to the sales rep the maximum warranty you can have on any Dell machine is 5 years. Who has ever seen a 5 year option when first ordering their machine?

On most Dell machines you can order up to 4 years but the maximum on an Alienware is 3 years, at least here in Europe.

Bottom line is you can extend it when your 3 or 4 year warranty expires as long as you accept their quote which as you have already noticed requires you to empty the contents of your bank account, remortgage your home, and still sign away all rights to your soul.

 

This ^. That goes for insurance companies too. They will whine and whine and whine about paying more out to people than they get in, but it's all a lie. They make MASSIVE profits on this stuff.

 

Unless the computer concerned happens to be an Alienware.

 

And unless the customers happened to be AW NBR members who know pretty a lot of "tips" and "tricks" and information sharing has been become an art

 

You can always go with a third party like Square Trade, that way you have the cost to replace it covered and put spill and drop on it. I covered a m11x for only 119.00 for 3 year acc: and cost replacement. Dell wanted like 370.00 if I remember. I can use the money to replace it if something happens.

 

problem with aquare trade and other third party offerings is they may not have the parts and if the repairs get too expensive they have an out to simply refund the original extended warranty price to you.



I would stick to Dell if at all possible.

 

Update: got 2 years extended (3 years total) complete care for $500 plus $75 gift card.
Do you think that's a good deal?

 

The deal is as good as YOU think it is

Do you like it, go for it and enjoy your system
you don't like it : return system, reorder and suffer the pain of another 1.5 month of no Alienware ...

 

After my one year is up, I'll just get whatever I need to fix whatever breaks from eBay or the NBR marketplace. There are enough R2s saturating the market that parts aren't hard to find.

 

Extended warranties through Dell are like having a life insurance policy for your computer. You may never need to use it, but if something happens, you're glad you have it.

Thinking about having to replace an RGB LED 1920x1200 screen out of pocket after the one year is up makes my wallet cry.

On the flip side, extended warranties are pretty much free money. That's why just about every retail outlet in the US (at least) pushes them. Years ago, when I worked at Office Depot, we had monthly extended warranty quotas. Besides incentives to hit the quota, each site that hit their quota was rewarded.

 

you might regret that, I extended my warranty every year on my M1710 and i ended up with a FREE M1730 when dell decided the M1710 was too old and out of parts, on my free M1730 I extended the warranty every year as well and now I ended up with a FREE M17xR2 , all that for a measely $150 a year, can't beat that ... I lost my trust in gaming laptops along the way, so in my mind this M17X will probably break as well,so i'm gonna extend da damn warranty on it as well and we'll see where I end up