I never buy extended warranties, but this sure sounds like sound logic.
This month I want to share with you a little trick that I learned to help choose the best appliances when building your own home.
When we built our house I did not know this little gem so we wound up with some new appliances that have not been that great. After a couple of years we started to have some issues with them breaking and the result was having to come up with the cash to repair them.
I figured out a great way to tell if an appliance was reliable or not.
Here it is in a nut shell:
- First find the appliance that fits your need and budget.
- Price the extended warranty on each appliance model that you are interested in.
- The higher the cost of the extended appliance warranty the lower the reliability and the more costly it is to own over the long term.
- The insurance companies that back these warranties do studies on the cost of repair and dependability of the models and companies that produce the appliances. They are in the business to make money. So it stands to reason the lower they set the warranty cost to you, the lower the frequency or repair they are going to have to cover under the warranty.
Here are a couple of common sense points when using this rule of thumb. - Choose appliances in the same price range when making the comparison. If you choose one that is much more expensive it stands to reason that it will be more expensive to fix than a cheaper model with less bells and whistles on it.
- Make sure you choose the same term or duration of the insurance policy for the appliances that you are comparing.
A couple of months ago we had to replace our microwave vent hood combo. My wife used this exercise to choose the new one. The two models that she compared were about the same cost but the warranty on the Kitchenaide was $99.00 for 5 years and on the GE model it was $399.
No doubt we bought the Kitchenaide and bought the warranty for good measure. Even if you do not buy the warranty this comparison method is better than any other method I know of.
Hope this helps when choosing your appliances.
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