There must be a comission for selling extended warranty

[Bob Haller]

My old 4900 died. I called for advanced exchange, it is stone dead. The rep was very nice but insisted I should get the $5 a month extended warranty. I explained I didnt need labor since I used to be a dealer. She insisted and I finally said no way no how.

Anyone else have this happen to them?

[Tomsoundman]

Not happened to me but it is common for promotions/incentives on jobs like customer service phone reps.

This person probably just came out of a meeting and was very motivated...

[Scott Greczkowski]

$5 a month? I thought it was only $1.99 a month.

[Rick_EE]

My sister-in-law worked at best buy. Those things are HUGE moneymakers for them. Every meeting was about pushing them. IIRC, they even and a threat on employees who did not suggest them during a sale.

[Bob Haller]

Regular non llabor warranty is $2 all inclusive with a small labor charge is $5 a month.

As I told her I doubt I would need the labor coverage:(

[Richard King]

I just bought a laptop at Best Buy and couldn't believe the high pressure garbage they tried to pull on me to buy that warranty. I had to go through the department manager to refuse it. I just about walked out on them and would have if they didn't have the best price in town on comparable products. Best Buy is new here and I swear they have the highest pressure sales people there that I have ever seen. They were not like this when the company started out in Minnesota years ago. I am at the point where I hate to even set foot in the place because they jump on you as soon as you walk in the door.

[Jacob S]

Thats what happens when you have commissioned sales. If it is a good deal thats one thing but if it is way too high and they are trying to put it off on you, then they are making almost pure profit on that. Thats just like saying, 'just pay us more money for the product to make us even more happy'.

The $1.99 a month is well worth it though, especially those that have one or more pvr's in which it is a MUST HAVE. $4.99 may be worth it if you have a high risk of lightening or a lot of hardware and do not understand how to replace and service your own system.

[RichW]

The most humorous one I encountered recently was when I bought an HP Procurve LAN switch. HP gives a lifetime warranty on these with a next day replacement. The vendor I called to make the purchase wanted to sell me an extended warranty and would not believe that the manufacturer had a lifetime one.

[ChrisPC]

I once got a D* receiver on closeout at Circuit City for $30. A year later, when the warranty ran out, I got a letter asking if I wanted a $150 extended warranty! :rolleyes:

[Mark Holtz]

The only electronic thing that I go wrong was a car radio that I had received for Christmas, 2001. The radio started failing around June, 2002, and stopped playing CDs. It took THREE exchanges to the repair department before The Good Guys gave up and told me to pick up another brand. This was under warranty.

And, the good guys parting shot? "You wouldn't have gone through this hassle is you had the extended warranty."

[Jacob S]

That reminds me of the letter you get from a manufacturer or store where you bought your tv from wanting you to purchase an extended warranty in which may cost almost as much or more than what the tv costs. Not worth it. They probably make out very good on those as the amount it costs you for the warranty, even if something does go wrong, they still broke even on what it costs them, if not still made a profit.

[Bob Haller]

Frankly I think E looses their shirt on the PVR warranty at $2.

Its essential to have this! For MOST the $5 is a good deal. But I DONT need the labor warranty. I probably know more than most of their techs:(

[Jacob S]

And its not our fault they lose their shirts, their own fault for not having a reliable product and for offering the warranyt for their PVR product for that price, that is their own choice.

Dish needs to get their act together and I mean fast on this pvr thing. I dont sell pvr's nor do I advertise it much at all due to their reliability issues. As for the rest of the Dish receivers they have been pretty good and only had one 301 that I recall go bad and that was dead on arrival.

If the tuners is what is going bad in the pvr's then how come are the tuners in the pvr's different than what they are in the 301's that are so much more reliable? I know that I had seen tuners in the Dish receivers go bad in the past with other models before the 301.

[Bob Haller]

The low price on PVR warranty may be related to the fact PVR subs are the best ones they get. Little churn. Once addicted you dont go back to regular tv.

Besides E KNOWS there are issues with their PVRs:(

[Nick]

Bob Haller says... "Frankly I think E looses their shirt on the PVR warranty at $2."

Bob, I doubt that the good folks at E* loosen their Dish-logo shirts over selling a warranty at $2/m. They seems to be a pretty buttoned-up group. Also, I don't think they lose their shirts on warranty replacements.

If only 1 million subs have the $2 warranty option, that's $2 mil/mo, or $24 mil per year. At that level of revenue, the RMA dept can replace a lot of IRDs and still turn a profit, Not to mention the added benefit of sub retention.

[Bob Haller]

I wonder what the TOTAL cost is for a RMA replacement? Csr time getting the tech call, troubleshooting, sending out box, CSR time activating replacement, return shipping of bad box, tracking, troubleshooting, and repair of dud box. Then pretty it up nice and pack for the next use.

All of this must add up to a $100 easily.

Its a good retention device. I just wish they were more reliable.

I have a 508 with a bad modem, I am waiting for something else to break on it. It runs great and we dont watch PPVs on it anyway.

It loads the phone line bad and plugging it in drops auduio volume by 60%

[Chris Blount]

If you think about it, the extended warranty that Dish is selling is priced no less than any other company. I just purchased a computer systems at Best Buy for my college bound son. The 4 year extended warranty is $100. Dish is collecting $24 per year from me. Do the math.

The only exception is that Dish is not collecting the money up front which makes it seem like less.

[Jacob S]

What they could do in the future is offer something like a warranty, for a nominal fee each month you get your receiver replaced with an upgrade to the latest one every so many years and have different price ranges for the basic receiver to the pvr or HD receivers. At $3 a month that would be about every 3 years. If they did a trade in perhaps it could be cheaper than that, or someone could sell their old receiver and make up for a lot of the cost that way. This may not seem like a very good deal for more than one receiver though if they charged that per receiver so that would change things.

Perhaps they could have a premium coverage plan that has this plus the $4.99 warranty plan they have now all for $10 a month, where you get upgrades throughout the future on all receivers on the account and everything is covered with a warranty as long as you keep your account active.

[Claude Greiner]

I have the $1.99 extended warrenty myself and its well worth it for the amount of equipment in my home. Even the $4.99 extended warrenty plan is a bargin for people who cannot service their own equipment.

The thing about the Dish warrenty is that its easy to redeem. If I have a bad reciever, I call 1-800-333-Dish and they look up my account and send out a replacement.

The thing about Best Buy warrenties is that if you don't have your reciept and paperwork, then you can't redeem the warrenty. Not for anything, im not the most organized person in the world and the chances of me finding the reciept, or just remembering a certain product which I purchased under warrenty is almost impossible.

Now on the otherhand, we have a Gas BBQ grill which has a 3 year replacement warrenty on the burners. Funney thing is that we BBQ with it about 2-3 times per week and the burners never make it an entire year. For the past 5 years we have saved the origional packaging and returned them under warrenty for replacement :)

[Bob Haller]

Yeah for under $300 I bought a lifetime warranty on my vans transmission. It now has over 350,000 miles and I have enjoyed 3 FREE transmissions. I am the store owners worst nightmare. He is 48 me 46 I tolds him we will go to our retirment balls in my van:)

Since its a old AAMCO lifetime he gets ZIP for rebuilds. He inerited me when he bought the store, and eats every visit.

I had fun, the engine n the van died, so I put in a difdferent one and reassured him I will be around forever:)

I tend to use things till they are junk and sometimes beyond ....

[Jacob S]

You could probably even put the transmission in another vehicle and still get the warranty unless it says right on it that you cant. I bet that dont have that type of warranty anymore on that transmission if they even make it.

That is how I was starting to feel when I kept on having to send in the 501 over and over, I was getting a new receiver all the time over and over. What does dish do for warranty replacements when they do not make the product anymore and run out of remanufactured units?

[Bob Haller]

They still offer the lifetime, but its a lot more expensive and the $$ buys a actual insurance policy from a insurance company.

Its as long as I own the vehicle. and they check the VIN.

E replaces dead 4000s with 4900s today. Thats how they handle no longer available stuff.