[Deestan]

It can work, though. Some retailers do it properly.

I have had use for it for a printer and a portable CD player. The extra warranty was about +10% of the product price, and they said it covered "anything, including kids dropping it on the floor or you spilling coffee on it".

Unsurprisingly, the CD player lid stopped working because the kids managed to knock it off a shelf. I took it back to the outlet and got a new one with no paperwork or questions asked.

A few months later the printer broke down because my hamster defecated severely into the paper feeder mechanism. This, too, was replaced with no cost to me.

[blasterford]

> and they said it covered "anything, including kids dropping it on the floor or you spilling coffee on it".

That should raise a giant red flag. Unless you're extremely careless and don't look after things, you're paying for other peoples carelessness.

[Deestan]

Or I could think of it as gambling that enough other people either 1) are lucky, 2) don't bother with the return ("I don't really need it/want another.") or 3) forget about the return.

But, I don't think of it in terms of how much money I "save" by breaking stuff.

I pay the extra cost and try to be careful. What I get back is Less Worry. If the thingy breaks down, I get a new thingy. That's worth money to me.

The alternative is to handle the risk myself, and saving the 10%s into a "surprise expense account" to use when things break down. I'm convinced I don't have the discipline for that - both managing it and not using the money for other expenses.

[blasterford]

A recent survey found that something ridiculous like 0.5% of TVs break down within 5 years. Yet people are paying out a lot of money for extended warranties on them.

It's a matter of cost vs hassle as you say though I guess. For me, if I have 10 electronic gadgets and one blows up, it's not really a big deal, because I can buy a new one with the money I saved by not having extended warranties on all 10 items.