SquareTrade extended warranty - seeking opinions

SquareTrade apparently provides aftermarket warranty coverage on PCs and other electronic items, it seems to be common on eBay. I am considering purchasing a used Dell notebook PC on eBay and its original warranty has expired. The Dell site indicates that warranty coverage from Dell cannot be purchased once warranty has expired. Has anyone purchased warranty coverage from SquareTrade and needed to use it? For those users, I'd appreciate opinions on the quality of service and on whether they would purchase warranty coverage from SquareTrade in the future.

Thanks,
PG

 

They are like any other 3rd party insurance, they will usually cover repairs up to the certain amount. If it exceeds the value, they give your money back equivalent to what you purchased the laptop for. HOWEVER, if they do cover a repair, usually that repair (dollar amount) is deducted from the value laptop, so in case of multiple repairs, likely you would only get very little money back. They usually had very specific rates for labor/parts, at least this is how the extended warranty worked for my old workplace. ADH usually requires adjudication/evaluation to them so you'd need to ship it to them.

 

I purchased a SquareTrade warranty for my wife's laptop in 2009. Shortly before it expired, the WiFi card went out. I swapped the hard drive out and installed a fresh copy of Windows so there would be no personal information, and sent the laptop to their repair depot. To their credit, they fixed the problem right away, and the system was back in my hands within 10 calendar days. The whole process was hassle free, so I can definitely recommend them.

But as noted above, you would have to be careful if the system should need multiple repairs. Fortunately, that didn't apply in my case, and the system has been happily humming along ever since.