Old cars 1798

You might think that, but I've more than paid for the extended warranties I've put on vehicles and a heater-air conditioner (and I pay more initially because I buy the zero-deductible version). I suspect part of it is that we keep our cars for a long time. Right now we've got a '93, a '96, and an '01. If we traded cars more often, more like the average, we'd never run out of original warranty.

As for the heater-air conditioner, we just got our third replacement for the circuit board. We've owned it for 6.5 years and we have a ten-year warranty on it. The warranty cost less than one replacement board (the first replacement was on the regular warranty, I think). This is a known flaw now, but it wasn't recognized at the time we bought.

We also have service contracts for heating and cooling at both houses, if only to be sure someone besides me replaces the filters in the ceiling-mounted returns (twelve-foot ceilings). Those contracts cost less per year than the twice-yearly service calls. I save a little more because I provide my own replacement filters, bought by the dozen on the Web.

However, we don't buy extended warranties for anything else. We'll take our chances with computers, TVs, washers & dryers, refrigerators, cell phones, telephones, speakers, houses, etc. Those warranties aren't worth the money.

Mary

-- Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.