Dell Onsite Warranty - Worth it or Not?

zenmaster

I bought one of the £399 Dell 5150s a week or so back and selected the 90 day (actually 1 year) Return & Collect.

However, I have had them on the phone today offering me a 3 year onsite parts and labour warranty for £77.50, which is 1/2 the price that it would have been if I had ordered it at the time. They are giving me 24 hours to consider it.

I'm thinking that for just over £25 year it's not bad, but I would value the opinion of other MSEs.

I am pretty competent at PC repair having previously built several and also having completed an A+ course. Despite that, I would prefer to have someone else do it for me, if possible.

Thanks.

Darksun

Extended warrenties are almost never worth the paper they're written on. I wouldn't say this is an exception.

peter_the_piper

I hope they offer it to me, daughter will be taking it to Uni this autumn and it would be nice to have this to fall back on.

pigeonpie

My (then expensive) laptop is still within warranty on their 3 yr NBD onsite warranty and have had keyboard problems but Dell will only give phone support. They always find an excuse for not sending someone. You pay for the 0870 call to tech support.
The chances of someone coming out for a home user 2 3/4 yrs down the line on a single non top range PC.....??????
Ask them why they won't do a one year onsite NBD warranty which would make sense.
Special offers are seldom special with them in my experience.
If you are lucky enough to know what you are doing, better to do it yourself I reckon.

zenmaster

Thanks,

I had forgotten about Dell's reluctance to send anyone out - I have heard this from several people before.

I think I shall say thanks, but no thanks to the offer.

Email support is free, but I don't know how reliable it is.

monterey_2

I agree with the no answer.

Extended warranties are judged by the major retailers as having huge profit potential and sales staff get big comission for selling them. That tells you all you need to know about retailers extended warranties.

Off Topic, Richer sounds do cheaper warranties on the things they sell.

I've used Dell many times and have occasionally had things go wrong with a PC after the warranty had ended, but in most cases, you just fix it yourself. I put a new USB card in one and I'm sure it cost me a fraction of what the warranty would have cost!

Dell are good at what they do. The componants are a good combination of quality and cost. Take a gamble and say so to extended warranties, but DO shop around for goods of reasonable quality first

M

Brodel

personally, I would.
I've had it on other systems in the past and they've sent people out without any problems. I recently got another laptop and am hoping they'll call me up with an offer later as I don't intend to upgrade the laptop in the future because it's only used for word processing so the whole paying for repairs vs getting a new one doesn't really apply in my case.