Should you or should you not purchase warranty for your hardware?  Is warranty a waste of your money?  Aren’t warranty programs a profit generator for the hardware companies?

Our advice -

Yes, purchase warranties for your hardware.

No, it is not a waste of money.

Yes, it is a profit generator for the  companies.

But it is well worth spending extra dollars to obtain the warranty coverage.  The coverage provides you with replacement parts and depending on the warranty, service if your workstation or server breaks.

Why do we recommend letting the hardware vendor replace the parts? 

It normally cost less.  The vendor knows which parts will work with your hardware and if the part(s) does not work they take responsibility for obtaining the right part(s).   We have even seen vendors replace workstations when they are not able  to properly repair workstations under warranty.   If you need to hire a person to repair the hardware, the repair cost of a third-party is normally more than the original warranty cost and the person normally does not have access to the vendor related part information.

Working with Dell, Thomas L. Friedman (The World is Flat)  traced the entire global supply chain that assembled his laptop.  Including suppliers of suppliers about 400 companies in 3 continents (North America, Europe, and Asia) and 30 key players were involved. 

For more information, check out Thomas L. Friedman’s  The World is Flat, Release 3.0, Chapter 16, The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention.

Issue 43, January 2009