Buying a Washing Machine : Should I take out extra insurance

Alanp

Put the monthly payment aside each month and, if anything goes wrong, you have the repair fee

daivid

WLM21 said:

After many years our washing machine has finally packed in, so it is time to buy a new one.

I pop to my local JL store to take a look

There is an AEG machine priced at £479 which has a guarantee of 2 years, with an additional option of adding 'breakdown and accidental damage' for £165 for 5 years.

However looking at the pictures, there is a warranty of 5 years included.. I assume this is with the manufacturer rather than JL directly.

We always take good care of products, so I am assuming there would be no need to fork out the extra £165 .. am I right ?

thanks

I think your 1st line answers your question. Unless you really hammer the new machine it should comfortably get through years 2 to 5. I'm currently on machine 3; no 1 lasted 11 years, no 2 lasted 5, hopefully no 3 will comfortably beat no 2. As 1 and 2 were both sub £200, extended warranties would have been pointless, they had pretty tough lives too.

macman

Extended warranties are invariably a waste of money. But, if you feel you must buy them, then do it direct. Buy in store and you will invariably pay 100% more: all straight profit to the retailer.
Stores like DSG make more margin on extended warranties than they do on the goods themselves, which is why them push them so hard, and even offer them for the most trivial of items, like kettles or toasters.

Albermarle

macman said:

Extended warranties are invariably a waste of money. But, if you feel you must buy them, then do it direct. Buy in store and you will invariably pay 100% more: all straight profit to the retailer.
Stores like DSG make more margin on extended warranties than they do on the goods themselves, which is why them push them so hard, and even offer them for the most trivial of items, like kettles or toasters.

Due to being so irritated with this hard sell, I stopped buying anything from Curry's that had to be picked up in store. 

ashe

Just chiming in to say that I wouldnt have any kitchen appliance with a warranty under 5 years. Even if something happens within the 2 years included, if it doesnt reoccur within 3 months it's then deemed fixed and 2 years isn't very long. 

We've had issues with our washing machine, dishwasher, 2 American style fridge freezers, air fryer and full sized oven that were all in the 2.1-5 year period which would be outside of those little warranty times. I usually keep an eye out for offers eitehr from manufacturer or with retailer for extended warranties and this has saved us a lot of costly repairs over the last few years. Several issues in the AV world as well. 

Self insuring is definitely an option, I usually look at it as what's the cost per month for the extra period, and would I rather pay that or buy a new one. Not everything is worth covering but most expensive things are!

Albermarle

ashe said:

Just chiming in to say that I wouldnt have any kitchen appliance with a warranty under 5 years. Even if something happens within the 2 years included, if it doesnt reoccur within 3 months it's then deemed fixed and 2 years isn't very long. 

We've had issues with our washing machine, dishwasher, 2 American style fridge freezers, air fryer and full sized oven that were all in the 2.1-5 year period which would be outside of those little warranty times. I usually keep an eye out for offers eitehr from manufacturer or with retailer for extended warranties and this has saved us a lot of costly repairs over the last few years. Several issues in the AV world as well. 

Self insuring is definitely an option, I usually look at it as what's the cost per month for the extra period, and would I rather pay that or buy a new one. Not everything is worth covering but most expensive things are!

I think though that your experience is quite unusual/unlucky. Apart from items like kettles & irons, I can not remember a fridge/washing machine/dishwasher/AV product having problems until they were >5 years old, or < 6 months old.

Bigphil1474

The extra warranties are always worth considering as a bargaining tool - just need to find the right person to bargain with. If they are on commission they will usually be happier to reduce the price of the purchase if you take the cover.

macman

Albermarle said:

macman said:

Extended warranties are invariably a waste of money. But, if you feel you must buy them, then do it direct. Buy in store and you will invariably pay 100% more: all straight profit to the retailer.
Stores like DSG make more margin on extended warranties than they do on the goods themselves, which is why them push them so hard, and even offer them for the most trivial of items, like kettles or toasters.

Due to being so irritated with this hard sell, I stopped buying anything from Curry's that had to be picked up in store. 

I just stopped buying anything from Currys: period. 

Albermarle

macman said:

Albermarle said:

macman said:

Extended warranties are invariably a waste of money. But, if you feel you must buy them, then do it direct. Buy in store and you will invariably pay 100% more: all straight profit to the retailer.
Stores like DSG make more margin on extended warranties than they do on the goods themselves, which is why them push them so hard, and even offer them for the most trivial of items, like kettles or toasters.

Due to being so irritated with this hard sell, I stopped buying anything from Curry's that had to be picked up in store. 

I just stopped buying anything from Currys: period. 

They are not my favoured supplier on line either, but if they have what I want at the best price, then....

ashe

Albermarle said:

ashe said:

Just chiming in to say that I wouldnt have any kitchen appliance with a warranty under 5 years. Even if something happens within the 2 years included, if it doesnt reoccur within 3 months it's then deemed fixed and 2 years isn't very long. 

We've had issues with our washing machine, dishwasher, 2 American style fridge freezers, air fryer and full sized oven that were all in the 2.1-5 year period which would be outside of those little warranty times. I usually keep an eye out for offers eitehr from manufacturer or with retailer for extended warranties and this has saved us a lot of costly repairs over the last few years. Several issues in the AV world as well. 

Self insuring is definitely an option, I usually look at it as what's the cost per month for the extra period, and would I rather pay that or buy a new one. Not everything is worth covering but most expensive things are!

I think though that your experience is quite unusual/unlucky. Apart from items like kettles & irons, I can not remember a fridge/washing machine/dishwasher/AV product having problems until they were >5 years old, or < 6 months old.

It can be unusual, I'm just providing it for context. 

We take very good care of things, and yet have had a lot of problems - I'd say looking at the consumer forum, reading this forum, and sites like AVForums, white goods and AV electronics breaking down inside 5 years is far from  unusual. Most people on AV forums would suggest a minimum of 5 years warranty on TV's where possible for example. I've had 1 plasma TV require a repair, and one OLED, both outside of 2 years but inside 5 years, and got a new TV both times. The amount of money we've saved on buying new appliances has far outweighed any extra we have paid, and usually we have not paid any extra as it has all been covered by warranty. 

Our last LG fridge required 5 engineer visits, and when it required the 6th repair it was 1 month out of warranty and because it had been ok for 3 months since the last issue, they deemed it a separate issue even though it was the same problem. I love LG TV's but I wouldn't buy another fridge from them with just a 2 year warranty. Luckily we made a claim and had an engineers report done which confirmed a manufacturing fault, and got most of our money back. We have a samsung now, which has had its ice machine break 3 times in the last 12 months, which causes the water connection to have a great time piping water all over the kitchen floor - ice machine faults are common with these models from reading forums. Engineer said he's never seen it happen twice to the same machine, yet they keep just repairing it. They've replaced the door twice and the ice machine 3 times as part of these repairs.