Are Extended Warranties Ever Worth It?

Summary

The Wirecutter Show – Are Extended Warranties Ever Worth It?
Date: May 27, 2026
Hosts: Christine Cyr Clisset, Caira Blackwell (not featured), Producer Rosie Guerin
Guest: Liam McCabe (Wirecutter Senior Reporter)

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Episode Overview

This episode dissects the true value of extended warranties on consumer products. Christine Cyr Clisset interviews longtime appliances reporter Liam McCabe, who recently published a Wirecutter article arguing that extended warranties are almost never a wise financial investment. Together, they dive into the economics, psychology, and big business of these warranty plans, providing clear advice on when (if ever) it makes sense to buy extra coverage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Manufacturer Warranties versus Extended Warranties

[05:08–11:19]

• Manufacturer Warranty:
  • Included automatically with most products: typically 1 year for electronics and appliances but can vary.
  • “It's their promise against defects… automatically included… as a sweetener to convince you to buy that product instead of something similar.” – Liam McCabe [05:13]
• Extended Warranty:
  • Optional add-on at extra cost, offering additional years and sometimes covering accidental damage.
  • Common examples: AppleCare, Best Buy Geek Squad, Asurion (Amazon), new players like Mulberry and Extend.
  • Sometimes paid monthly (e.g., AppleCare+) rather than lump sum.

2. When Does a Manufacturer Warranty Matter?

[08:09–11:19]

• Longer/stronger warranties can signal higher product quality or serve as effective marketing tools.
• High-end products can afford to offer longer warranties since they're less likely to fail and charge higher prices.
• Cheap products might offer good warranties because replacements are inexpensive.
• Memorable anecdote: Christine’s husband’s “indestructible” sunglasses that get replaced regularly. [11:02]

3. The Math Behind Extended Warranties: Are They Worth It?

[12:27–15:52]

• Statistically, most people will not need the coverage during the warranty period.
  • “The likelihood that the product will fail during the extended warranty period is quite low. People overestimate the failure rate, so you end up paying these premiums for protection you will not end up using.” – Liam [12:27]
• Even if you do use it, repairs often cost less than what you paid for the warranty.
• Ancillary “insurance-like” reasons rarely justify the cost.
• Warranties protect against inconveniences, not financial catastrophe.
• Comparison with real insurance (health, home): you insure against potentially ruinous costs, not annoyances.

4. Big Business: How Companies Profit from Warranties

[15:14–17:37]

• Health insurance typically pays out ~90% of premiums in claims; extended warranties, less than 25%.
  • “With extended warranties… the payout rate is about 25%. A little bit less than that… they're keeping 75% of the money.” – Liam [15:14]
• No minimum regulatory payout rates for extended warranties.
• Major companies—like Allstate (owns SquareTrade) and Best Buy—make huge revenues from these policies:
  • Best Buy made $373 million from warranty sales in 2025, about 40% of its net revenue. [17:01]

5. Why Do People Buy Extended Warranties? Psychology & Sales Tactics

[19:47–23:23]

• Human nature: risk/loss aversion. The desire for “peace of mind” after a big purchase.
• Some buyers see warranty purchases as a gamble or believe they're beating the system (“Illusion of Victory”).
• People are most susceptible after fun, high-dollar purchases (big TVs, not necessarily washing machines).
• Retailers hard-sell warranties in both person and online, using optimized sales flows to increase sign-ups.
  • “They're giving you many opportunities to opt into this.” – Liam [23:10]

6. How Other Countries Handle Warranties

[23:23–24:16]

• UK: Retailers must post the price of the protection plan next to the product price.
• Australia: Mandatory four-day “cooling off” period before offering the warranty post-purchase—reducing impulse buys.

7. What Should You Do Instead of an Extended Warranty? Actionable Steps

[24:26–29:16]

• Self-Insure: Create your own repair fund for future product failures rather than buying coverage.
  • “You should just hang onto that money, put it into a savings account… and when things need to be repaired or replaced, you just take money out… The stats suggest… you’re going to come out ahead.” – Liam [24:26]
• Getting Your Warranty Honored:
  • Try the official claims process first—three times if needed.
  • If unsuccessful, escalate: call for supervisors, use the “executive email carpet bomb” (email company execs politely).
  • Going in person is sometimes more effective: “It's harder to be rude or dismissive to somebody's face.” – Liam [26:26]
• Edge Cases Where Extended Warranties Can Make Sense:
  • Not really a financial win, but sometimes a rational business expense (e.g., freelancer with a mission-critical laptop needs next-day replacement).
  • For some, the elimination of hassle is worth the known loss.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The likelihood that the product will fail during the extended warranty period is quite low. People overestimate the failure rate, so you end up paying these premiums for protection you will not end up using.”
  – Liam McCabe [12:27]
• “Insurance is a very important tool to protect yourself against financial catastrophe...when a thousand dollar dishwasher breaks, that’s very disappointing...but you can absorb it.”
  – Liam McCabe [13:34]
• “With extended warranties… the payout rate is about 25%. A little bit less than that. So they're keeping 75% of the money...”
  – Liam McCabe [15:14]
• “Loss aversion—the fear of the pain you will feel if this thing breaks sooner than you want it to—hurts more than the pain of spending extra to protect it.”
  – Liam McCabe [20:21]
• “One advocate… said, try [the claims process] three times… then you can start escalating...there’s this classic technique called the executive email carpet bomb…”
  – Liam McCabe [25:00]
• “Assess your own situation. Know that in most cases an extended warranty is going to be a money-losing situation, but… gauge when it really is worth it to you.”
  – Christine Cyr Clisset [28:29]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Difference between Manufacturer and Extended Warranties — [05:08–06:24]
• Math & Economics of Warranties — [12:27–15:52]
• Insurance Comparison & Why Most Warranties Are Bad Bets — [13:34–15:52]
• Financial Stats & Big Business of Warranties — [15:14–17:37]
• Why We Buy: Psychology & Sales — [19:47–23:23]
• International Regulation Comparisons — [23:23–24:16]
• Alternatives and Consumer Advice — [24:26–27:23]
• Tips for Using Warranties and Edge-case Scenarios — [25:00–30:13]

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Final Takeaways

• Skip most extended warranties—they’re typically a bad deal.
• View manufacturer warranties as an included part of your purchase calculus.
• Self-insuring by saving the money is a smarter long-term bet.
• Exception: Mission-critical business equipment or peace-of-mind premiums may be worth it—if you go in with eyes open.
• If you must use a warranty, persist, escalate, and document your efforts for the best chance at resolution.

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Referenced Article:
Liam McCabe’s article on extended warranties—linked in podcast show notes at nytimes.com/wirecutter.

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Transcript

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[Liam McCabe]

The likelihood that the product will fail during the extended warranty period is quite low. People overestimate the failure rate, so you end up paying these premiums for protection that in all likelihood, you will not end up using.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I'm Christine Cyrclassette, and you're listening to the Wirecutter Show. Hey there, it's Christine. If you've ever bought a computer, a cell phone, an appliance, or any other purchase of relative value, you've probably been offered an extended warranty. Maybe a salesperson asked you if you wanted to purchase AppleCare after you bought a phone. Or maybe you were offered an extended warranty at checkout on a when you were making an online purchase. And at that moment you might have wondered, will paying a little extra now for an extended warranty say 50 or 100 bucks? Or maybe a monthly fee of something like $16? Will that save me a big repair bill if this thing breaks? Will it provide me with some kind of insurance against a future hassle? In today's episode, I'm exploring this topic with Liam McCabe, a longtime Wirecutter reporter. Liam has been reviewing and writing about large appliances, H vac systems, and home improvement solutions for over a decade. Basically, he covers big stuff that costs a lot of money. He just published an article that makes a strong argument for why you should almost never buy an extended warranty. At least not for most of the things you have in your home. We're going to get into the math, the psychology, and the big business of extended warranties after the break. Be right back.

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[Liam McCabe]

Seevizable.com Running a business means checking a lot of boxes.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Let's see, payroll check, inventory check insurance.

[Liam McCabe]

Ah, good thing Simply Business makes getting small business insurance fast and easy. Check insurance off your [e-mail].

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Welcome back. Today I'm speaking with one of my longtime colleagues, senior writer Liam McCabe, about extended warranties and why you should almost never buy one. Liam, welcome to the show.

[Liam McCabe]

Thanks for having me.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I am thrilled to actually have you in the studio this time. We've talked to you before, but it's really nice to see you in person. Okay. You've been reporting about and reviewing appliances, H vac systems, and other kind of large, expensive things that people buy for their homes for a long time. You did a stint at Consumer Reports and at reviewed, so you've probably thought a lot about when it's worth getting an extended warranty on any number of purchases. So going into this investigation, what was your take on extended warranties?

[Liam McCabe]

I went into this. I had a period a few years ago of listening to a lot of personal finance experts just to kind of get my house in order. And they cover a lot of topics. But one that came up in a bunch of places was extended warranties and why it's generally not a good use of your money in pretty much any scenario. And I didn't look into it much deeper than that at the time, but I kind of had it in the back of my mind that this, this might be something worth writing about at some point.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

What is the difference between a manufacturer warranty and an extended warranty?

[Liam McCabe]

Right. So manufacturer's warranty automatically comes with the product when you purchase it. It's written down somewhere in a pamphlet or on the box or maybe on the product listing online. And that is basically the manufacturer. It's their promise against defects. Usually for a certain period of time, most commonly it's about a year for like major appliances or expensive electronics. It can be 90. It can be five years lifetime. There's, you know, you have to look at the specifics, but it's automatically included with the purchase. Often is like a sweetener to convince you to buy that product instead of something similar.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

So if I buy a washer and dryer combo at Home Depot, it's usually coming with some kind of manufacturer warranty. If I'm buying a computer at Apple, you know, it's coming with some kind of manufacturer warranty. There's some guarantee that this thing, if it breaks within this amount of time, they'll take care of me. Right. And so the extended warranty goes beyond that where you know you're going to have maybe it's like three to five years extended warranty covering certain things if they break. Right, Yep. What are some examples of common extended warranties that people might be offered?

[Liam McCabe]

AppleCare I think is one that people will be familiar with. So when you buy a phone or iPad or Mac, whatever it is, they will offer AppleCare plus or AppleCare One. It's additional coverage on top of the manufacturer's warranty. So I believe the iPhone has a one year warranty on it, for example. And that will protect against defects or manufacturing errors. AppleCare plus often protects against accidental damage or sometimes loss or theft. And you know, the way that they've restructured that one, you now pay a monthly premium instead of a lump sum. So basically as long as you keep paying that monthly premium, you will have that extra protection on that product.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

You know, if you are bought into the Apple ecosystem, you surely have been offered AppleCare. But what are some other examples, like common examples that people might run into?

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah, Best Buy Geek Squad is kind of a longtime popular one. They now have a store membership program that offers similar benefits. You know, even checking out on smaller e commerce websites, you'll usually see some kind of protection plan offered. There's smaller companies like Mulberry is a, is a newer one extend. And on Amazon for example, you'll see Assurion, which is actually one of the bigger companies. They have like a, a big bundle. You just, you know, you pay 16.99amonth for Assurion Complete Protect, I believe it's called. And that will cover everything that you buy on Amazon that's eligible. There was someone I talked to for this story who had purchased that and his headphones broke right outside the manufacturer's warranty period. And the Assurion plan, it covered him and he filed a claim with them and got the process started. Got a little more complicated than that.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

But Liam when our journalists are reviewing different products, they are oftentimes looking at the warranty as one of the pieces that they're considering and whether they're going to recommend something. So when I used to cover sheets, for instance, we really loved L.L. bean because they had this great one year return policy at that point. How should people be thinking about their purchases when they're thinking about that manufacturer's warranty? Like, let's set aside the extended warranty for a second. Is there value in these manufacturer warranties and how long should they be?

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah. So manufacturer warranty, you can absolutely look at it when you're considering buying a product. It's just part of the deal. You don't have to decide whether or not you want it, they just give it to you. So take that into your calculation when you're deciding whether you want something or not. And yeah, there are many cases where we recommend something because it's got a better warranty than some of its competitors. I think maybe our electric kettle, like the Cuisinart kettle that we recommend, has a longer warranty than some others like it. Some of our luggage picks, Leatherman Multi Tools is a famous one. You know, they will repair it, I think, just for the cost of shipping for years after you buy it. So if you know that this product you're about to buy, you're going to want to have it in your life for a long time. Yeah, maybe pay extra for a version that has a longer warranty. You can't always find it. There are a lot of categories where that just doesn't really exist for major appliances in particular, it's just usually one year across the board with, with a few exceptions.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

And I think we often gauge the length of a warranty as a measure of how confident the company is in the durability of that, that item.

[Liam McCabe]

You know, that's the way that I think a lot of people think about what a warranty means. And I don't really get into this in this story. It's something I want to look into a little more. I think it's more complicated than that. I think the warranty itself can be used as a marketing tool and there's nothing wrong with that. It signals confidence whether or not the quality of the product is really superior or not. There is one research paper I found, and again, this isn't in this story, but since we're talking about it, the products that are best positioned to offer the longest warranties are very high quality and very expensive products, which makes sense because you can build it to a level of quality that it's unlikely to fail. Plus you've also charged so much upfront that you can build in the cost of service into your business plan as a warranty, as a company that's on the hook for that warranty. The other kind of business that can offer a really good warranty is a company selling a very cheap product because it costs very little to replace. If you can manage to convince someone to pay an inflated sticker price something with a relatively high margin compared to what it costs to produce, then yeah, you can just swap em in and out.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah, the example of that. I'm not gonna name names because I don't wanna throw any companies under the bus, but my husband loves a certain brand of sunglasses and he, they break pretty regularly, like every eight months. And he has used the warranty to get these sunglasses replaced like five or six times.

[Liam McCabe]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Okay. So Liam, what's the big takeaway? When you're looking between a manufacturer warranty and an extended warranty, so the manufacturer

[Liam McCabe]

warranty is included with the purchase of the product. You get it no matter what. The extended warranty is optional. You will often be offered a protection plan extended warranty. When you're checking out either at a register or you know, on a E Commerce checkout page, you actively have to choose to buy it and it costs extra.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

In theory, it kind of sounds like an extended warranty is kind of a responsible choice. Like you might buy it and think that you're doing the, the quote unquote right thing or the responsible thing. I, I bought an iPhone last year. It was very expensive and I got Apple Care because at the moment when I was buying this thousand dollar phone, you know, I don't want to have to pay to have the screen replaced if I, if I crack it or if something goes wrong. But in your piece you really lay out the argument for why these extended warranties are what you call a quote unquote terrible investment. So tell me more. Why are they a terrible investment?

[Liam McCabe]

So the amount of money that you spend to get that protection is usually more than the protection that you'll get back. You know, I'm not going to do math out loud in public, but researchers have studied this, personal finance experts have looked into it. The likelihood that the product will fail during the extended warranty period is quite low. People overestimate the failure rate. So you end up paying these premiums for protection that in all likelihood you will not end up using. And even if you do use it, there are sometimes cases where you could have done the repair yourself for cheaper or hired a repair technician yourself for less than you ended up paying the coverage. And then there's kind of other ancillary reasons why that type of insurance is maybe not worth getting.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

In general, why is this different than other types of insurance? Liam, I am sure that you are not going to recommend that I not have health insurance or someone might not have home insurance. You know, I never do that. So what is the difference here? Yeah, it is a bad idea. So, so what's the difference between these forms of insurance?

[Liam McCabe]

So what economists and marketing professors and what personal finance experts will tell you is that insurance is a very important tool to protect yourself against financial catastrophe. So something really expensive like cancer treatment or house fire or even a car wreck, the cost of that if you don't have insurance is very difficult to absorb. You know, it's in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or more dollars. That's very difficult for anyone to come up with that money without insurance. When a thousand dollar dishwasher breaks, that's very disappointing and it feels unfair and you are going to feel bad about that. But you can absorb it to some extent. And there are ways to replace that thousand dollars dishwasher or repair it for. We're talking like in the hundreds of dollars, which I don't want to make that seem like no big deal, but in the grand scheme of things, when we're talking about $300 repair or a $500 replacement dishwasher versus being on the hook for $50,000 in damages for a flooded basement, for example, it's a completely different scale.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Right. So basically it's an inconvenience with most consumer products if they break or need to be repaired. But as we talked about on this show back in January when we we did a series on the LA wildfires, if you don't have enough homeown, then you could be really in a financial crisis. Yeah. Okay, so that makes sense to me. Reading your piece, I was really surprised by some of the statistics about how little some of these protection plans pay out to their policyholders. When you compare it to something like homeowners insurance or health insurance. Can you walk us through the math?

[Liam McCabe]

When you look at the public financial statements for health insurance companies, for example, 90% of what they take in in premiums typically gets paid back out to cover medical cost. They keep 10% to cover the cost of doing business with home and auto. It's usually something more like 65 or 70% gets paid back out to policyholders with extended warranties. You know, not all of them are publicly traded, but the ones that we did find, some of the bigger ones, the payout rate is about 25%. A little bit less than that. Yeah. So they're keeping 75% of the money that gets paid in and not using that to cover repairs or replacements.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

So with health insurance, is that regulated?

[Liam McCabe]

So insurance is regulated on a state by state level, but my understanding is that most, if not all, states set a minimum payout amount that health insurance companies are required to hit.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

And is that also the same with extended warranties? Is there regulation around that?

[Liam McCabe]

No, not in that way.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Okay. Wow. So this kind of sounds like a big business for these warranty companies. Are they making a lot of money?

[Liam McCabe]

They're bringing in a lot of money.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Okay.

[Liam McCabe]

So, you know, one of the ones I looked most closely at was Allstate. You know, they do all kinds of insurance, and they own Square Trade, which is kind of the upstart extended warranty option that you could get online, you know, 10, 15 years ago. I think at this point, they're now owned by Allstate. You can look at their financials. The protection services subsegment of Allstate's business has over 170 million policies in effect, and it brought in $2.8 billion in revenue in 2025, fiscal 2025.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

What about places like you mentioned earlier? Best Buy. What does that look like?

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah. So Best Buy, they have the Geek Squad and their membership plan. They don't underwrite the insurance. They work with insurance companies to handle the financial side. But Best Buy does the heavy lifting of selling those policies, and that is valuable to the insurance companies. So Best gets a commission on those sales. And when you look at their financials from 2025, I believe it was, they earned $373 million from the sale of extended warranties. And when you look at their total profit, that accounts for about 40% of their net revenue last year.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

We're going to take a quick break. Liam. When we're back, we'll talk about why people buy extended warranties even when the math doesn't work out. And we'll walk through some actionable steps that anyone listening should consider for their next big pur. We'll be right back.

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[Liam McCabe]

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[Christine Cyrclassette]

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[Liam McCabe]

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[Christine Cyrclassette]

Foreign. Welcome back. Liam, you have this really fascinating detail in your article about how product warranties have basically been around for thousands of years that there were likely product warranties in ancient Egypt. And you know, intuitively it's understandable why someone would want a warranty for something that they have purchased, especially if it's an expensive purchase or but if the math is so bad for extended warranties, why do so many people still buy them?

[Liam McCabe]

I think it hints at something in human nature like we just you want some assurances when you spend money, you want it to feel fair. There are some theories among researchers about exactly what drives the impulse to buy an extended warranty to spend extra on this protection. The leading one, and probably the most obvious, is just risk aversion. Loss aversion, the fear of the pain you will feel if this thing breaks sooner than you want it to, hurts more than the pain of spending extra to protect it.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Right? That makes sense.

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Okay, so loss aversion is definitely a reason why people are buying extended warranties. Are there other reasons?

[Liam McCabe]

Some other interesting papers have looked at alternatives. There's one paper that came out last year called the Illusion of Victory. That one suggests that there is sort of a gambling impulse. Like people buy them because they think they're going to win. It's not so much that people are afraid of losing, it's just there's some people who think they know a good deal when they see one and they're sure they're going to win. There was a study from 2009. I think the Times actually covered this when it came out, suggesting that people are more susceptible to offers to buy Extended warranties after they've decided to buy the product. In that nice buzzy moment when you've decided to treat yourself to a $1200 TV or whatever it is, it usually has to be like a fun purchase. People seem to be more susceptible to saying yes to one of these extended warranty offers.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

More so than something utilitarian like a washing machine.

[Liam McCabe]

That's what the data suggested. Yeah.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah, right.

[Liam McCabe]

You know, you have to imagine that many sales associates are coached to try to push these. So I think we've all fallen into this. At some point you just don't even realize that you're being sold something. And the pressure or the buzz or excitement, whatever it is, before you know it, you're saying yes to something that was offered by a person who has a lot of practice getting people to say yes to things.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

So clearly it's a high pressure situation when you're buying something in person with a salesperson. But what about when you're buying products online?

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah. So there are anyone who's worked in web development or anything like that knows that you can test page designs and look for ways to get people on that page to do more of the thing that you want them to do. And there are a number of kind of upstart embedded insurance companies that have popped up in, you know, last five to 10 years. The value that they offer to retailers, as they put it on their own websites, is increasing conversion rates. It is getting more people to opt into these protection plans. Ako is one that I've heard of. Mulberry is another one. They're kind of these digital first companies. They don't sell extended warranties in stores that I'm aware of. But when you go onto their websites and kind of look at their pitch, it's all about making it easier for E commerce retailers to get high performing protection plan widgets onto their website.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Right. And so, you know, there might be some pop up at checkout like do you want to add this extended warranty?

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

And you're basically saying that, you know, there's a lot of thought that goes into those pop up windows or that checkout flow to try to get you to buy that extended warranty.

[Liam McCabe]

One would have to assume.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yes, one would have to assume.

[Liam McCabe]

I had a marketing role at a, you know, marketplace style website. A lot of thought goes into how to optimize that funnel, that flow. So they are giving you many opportunities to opt into this.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

You mentioned in your piece that extended warranties are handled a little differently in other countries. There's more regulation around them. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah, there are a few examples. So in the uk, any retailer selling an extended warranty has been required to post the price of the protection plan alongside the price of the product. Australia has a somewhat stricter rule. I think as of 2021, there is a mandatory four day cooling off period. So the retailer cannot offer you the add on insurance, the extended warranty protection plan, whatever you want to call it, until four days after you've made the primary purchase.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

You said that in the beginning of this process. What got you kind of interested in this was listening to a lot of finance podcasts. What are you supposed to do instead of get a warranty? Instead of buying an extended warranty, what should you be doing instead?

[Liam McCabe]

The nuts and bolts econ geek way of looking at it is, you know, you should self insure. Instead of spending the money on an extended warranty, which is a type of insurance, you should just hang onto that money, put it into a savings account or under a mattress, whatever you want to do. And when things need to be repaired or replaced, you just take money out of that savings and pay cash. And the stats suggest that if you do that, you're going to come out ahead in the long run.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Do you have any tips on how to get a warranty honored?

[Liam McCabe]

These are some tips I got from consumer advocacy journalists who have been helping people navigate similar situations for decades. In some cases, you should try to do it the standard way at first, like go to the claims page, fill out the paperwork, do it that way. One advocate that I talked to, Christopher Elliott, told me, do that three times, like give them three chances to do it properly, then you can start escalating matters. One of the people I talked to who had trouble with his extended warranty plan started calling the company's customer service and asking to get it escalated. If you ever run into a barrier, just keep trying to escalate it. And there's this now classic technique called the executive email carpet bomb, which was I think made popular on the consumerist blog like 20 years ago. It is not that hard to find the email addresses of people in executive suites at these companies. So if you can find those emails and after you've done everything the right way and you remain polite and document every step that you've taken, try finding those email addresses and getting in touch with them.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

So that's basically like the Internet version of I want to speak to your manager who's in charge.

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah, so it's like slightly less rude version of storming into the back office to talk to the manager.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah, okay. What about going in person?

[Liam McCabe]

It's harder to be rude or dismissive to somebody's face. I don't know that this is always the case, but in general you would think that if you can get a human to interact with you and maybe just physically swap out the products, it's going to go more smoothly than shipping something in, hoping that it gets there. You know, there's someone I talked to who lived an hour from the service center that she was instructed to send her phone into for repairs. Somehow it took a week to go 70 miles and then the phone was just missing from the box when it arrived and nobody really seemed to want to help. She said she would have been perfectly willing to just drive that hour to do it knowing that she had handed it off to somebody. So I think it's a, it's a psychological thing for people too, just knowing that their thing, it has never left their chain of custody by the time it gets to someone who can do something about it.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Are there any scenarios where you think it is actually worth getting an extended warranty even if somebody knows that they might lose money on it? Because I'm sure there are some people listening here who are saying, hey, I have a very good reason for getting an extended warranty.

[Liam McCabe]

I don't have enough data to accurately predict when those edge cases are where it makes good financial or economic sense. But there are some maybe psychological reasons where you understand that you're going to probably lose money on this deal, but it's still worth it to you anyway. So there's one writer who I spoke to who has written in defense of extended warranties in the past. He gave me the example that he is self employed. His laptop is crucial to him being able to do work on a day to day basis. And it doesn't make sense for a self employed person to hire an IT department. So he views the extended warranty on his laptop as standing in for that. It's going to be next day service. He knows he's paying more than he strictly needs to, but he needs to have that laptop working at all times. Like he cannot afford to have the downtime.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

So it's almost like a business expense for him. And knowing he has a plan to get the laptop fixed if it breaks is worth the cost to him. Right, Exactly. That makes a lot of sense. So it's sort of like you might need to just assess your own situation. Know that in most cases an extended warranty is going to be a money losing situation, but you know, gauging when it really is worth it to you.

[Liam McCabe]

Yeah, right. And you know, some people just don't want to have to deal with the hassle of finding repair on their own, calling appliance repair technicians. To them, it's worth it having somebody that they can pay to handle that and that's fine. Just my advice would be to go into it with open eyes, realizing that you're probably going to lose money. You should be thinking about buying it for different reasons than financial safety.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I'm going to skip our usual last question, which is what's the last thing that you bought that you really love? I want to know what's the last thing, last thing you bought an extended warranty on and why.

[Liam McCabe]

I bought an extended warranty on a refrigerator one time. I lived in a condo with a very weird shaped kitchen and there was basically one fridge that we both wanted and fit. The reliability reviews for this fridge were not great, but we still wanted the fridge and the store that we bought it from, well regarded independent store. They have their own service team so I knew that if something went wrong, they were sending their own people. That one I bought extended warranty for. Given the risks of this particular model, maybe not making it past five years, it felt like it was worth the few hundred dollars that it cost.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Did you end up having to use the extended warranty?

[Liam McCabe]

No. Absolutely nothing went wrong.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

It has been great chatting with you about this. I cannot wait to bring you back on for your next big reporting project. And I'm now going to buy AppleCare again for my phone. Thanks so much.

[Liam McCabe]

All right, thanks, Christine.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage, go to nytimes.com wirecutter and we'll also link to Liam's article in the show notes. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening. The Wirecutter show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Mattie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Rowan Ni Misto, Katherine Anderson and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief. I'm Christine Cyrclassette. Thanks for listening.

[Liam McCabe]

Absolutely nothing went wrong and then we moved and maybe I should text the guy who lives there now, see if it's still working. About 10 years old.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

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