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I bought it from Best Buy and had the Product Replacement Plan. I explained the issue, they replaced it. I now have a new 360 Elite, with my old hard drive (determined that the hard drive wasn't the issue), a new PRP, and an extra $108. Can't beat it with a stick.

Thing is, I was going to buy an Xbox 360 for my little brother and sister for Christmas. Now, it's $100 easier to do.

My Xbox Elite died

But, but, everything Microsoft does is evil, bug-ridden, and destined to give you endless frustration!

At least that's what all those smarmy, overly-hip Mac commercials tell us.

My Xbox Elite died

Qonas said:

But, but, everything Microsoft does is evil, bug-ridden, and destined to give you endless frustration!

At least that's what all those smarmy, overly-hip Mac commercials tell us.

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Pretty much. It wasn't fun by any means, but when my 360 red-ringed, I had it back within a week and a half with a month of Xbox Live for my trouble.

Granted, it's probably because of the bad publicity...but still, hard to beat the customer service. Although, if their next console is not BC, I will start stocking up on spares to play all my old games...

My Xbox Elite died

Qonas said:

But, but, everything Microsoft does is evil, bug-ridden, and destined to give you endless frustration!

At least that's what all those smarmy, overly-hip Mac commercials tell us.

Click to expand...

Ahem: "I bought it from Best Buy and had the Product Replacement Plan."

My Xbox Elite died

Oh, they still had to clear the return with Microsoft and get some sort of code. Took all of 5 minutes once we got to that stage. The wife kept sending me back to get better boxes because so many of them were squished. Finally found one that had a manufacturing date of 9/11/09. The return policy was painless. Well worth the $80 that the PRP cost me.

Took all of 5 minutes once we got to that stage.

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Almost as if they have some sort of agreement worked out...

I was just pointing out more factors where at work (about 80$ worth of factors actually).

Can I print this thread out and take it to work with me? People always think I'm trying to scam them when I tell them about our PRPs.

At 80$ you are scamming them. Except if their XBox dies... so it's like any other insurance...

I'm all for it Droll.

I've had 4 Xboxs die on me. The first one died within 2 months of me getting one when they were first rolled out. Because it was within the original 90 day warranty that Microsoft provided, it was replaced and I kept my Replacement Plan. The second started going, so I exchanged it and upgraded to an Elite. The first Elite went after a graphics (E84?) error. Then this last one was the RRoD. So, I've spent $210 total on the replacement plans. Considering the cost of replacing the Xbox machines that have failed would easily be 4 or 5x that amount, I'd have to say it's worth it. And keep in mind this last one technically didn't cost me anything since I was refunded the original cost (479.99) of the Elite and replaced it with the new one (299.00). However, I forgot to return my HDMI cable, which the new version of the Elite doesn't appear to come with.

We bought our Whirlpool Duet Washer and Dryer from Best Buy. Within 2 months, the washer had somehow managed to suck a sock up into the intake (somehow). We called the Best Buy hotline and they had a repairman out within 2 days who was there for about an hour before he decided to check the intake. I don't even want to know the cost of that repair had we not had it. TOTALLY TOTALLY TOTALLY worth it. Paid for itself in that one visit.

My wife had a laptop and we bought the two year plan. If you bring the laptop in for repairs a 4th time, they replace it. My wife went from a heavy-as-hell P4 Gateway with 512mb of RAM and crappy harddrive to a dual-core, 2GB memory, Vista machine (we don't mind Vista). Granted, it was crappy for her to be without a computer while it was being repaired, but the laptop was totally free.

So yeah, I'm a proponent of the Product Replacement/Protection Plans. Absolutely worth it. We have one on both of our TVs (however one has to have expired), our HD video card, our washer and dryer, and the Xbox 360. I'd rather pay 50-250 (depending on the purchase price) and have it repaired/replaced then decide not to spend it and be out of that cash.

I'm a proponet of making stuff that doesn't crap out on you so easily... but i guess that's the next best thing...

Dude. Even the best made electronics in the world can have issues.

I still won't pay for any Best Buy plan, especially when their "insurance" is half the cost of the item.

I usually only buy the plan for the more expensive stuff. I bought my xbox360 from Micro Center with a plan. It died like 5 times (all red ring) I finally gave up and they refunded me full and I spend it to buy a PS3

I bought a couple of MP3 players back when it was like 200$. I bought a plan that cost only 40$ at the time and replace that MP3 at least 3 times already.

I was helping a friend of mine look at pc's at Best Buy the other day, 2 different "sales men" pushed a few of the 600 dollar laptops and warned about DIRE CONSEQUENCES should she not buy the 300 dollar protection plan.
How stupid.

Yeah so...

Xbox #3 died last night while playing MW2

360 #1 (brand new Falcon) - 10 days RRoD
360 #2 - 1 1/2 months - freezups (on the way to RRoD)
360 #3 - 14 months - E74

Luckily - just within the last few weeks MS has decided to include E74 under the 3-year replacement program. When it first happened I was pissed at myself because I never got around to buying the extended warranty in the off chance that it would be something other than the RRoD. I'm still pissed, and would be even moreso had we not won an Arcade edition in a Rockband contest a couple of months back. We put it aside for just this reason - an fortunately I'm the first to need it. Otherwise I would be staring at this copy of L4D2 with no way to play it for a couple of weeks.

As for protection plans - I usually get them. Both my first two laptops needed some sort of major repair that would not have been covered under the manufacturer's warranty. I don't think Best Buy does, but Circuit City pissed me off when I tried to cash in on it once - apparently they have different levels of coverage - and I hadn't sprung for the super duper coverage when the hinges crapped out on me. When I bought it online - there were no options... just the one level. So fuck em - I'm glad they went belly up.

Espy said:

I was helping a friend of mine look at pc's at Best Buy the other day, 2 different "sales men" pushed a few of the 600 dollar laptops and warned about DIRE CONSEQUENCES should she not buy the 300 dollar protection plan.
How stupid.

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The way that I understand the protection plan is that it's based on the cost of the item. My $300 XBox 360 cost 79.99, and that was for a REPLACEMENT plan. No repairs...just a replacement the first time it messes up.

When my wife bought her laptop, back before they were as cheap as they are today, she paid $250 for a 3 or 4 year plan on her $1250 laptop. Espy, I love your smokin' ass, but if you're saying $300 for a $600 laptop is what you were told, either the salesman was completely full of shit or you're full of shit and just blowing some pretty hot, nicotineless air.

In fact, I went to the $600-$899 range of laptops on bestbuy.com, selected the 899.99 laptop, and a 2 year protection plan is $179...less than 25% of the cost. If something were to go wrong, which does happen, the cost of the first repair alone would "total" your laptop, meaning you'd have to spend another $900. Hmm...$180 or $900. not a hard decision to make. Maybe the 4 year plan is more, but most people are going to replace their computers ever 2 or 3 years, especially given how cheap they've become.

Believe me from first hand experience and seeing a copy of the invoice for my wife's laptop repair...the service plan is an EXCELLENT buy. Now, is it worth paying for a $20 plan on a $40 item? No. But, on a nearly $1000 item at a cost of around 17-20% of the cost? Yeah. You'd have to either be a fucking idiot or a poor bastard to not get one...and if you're poor, you have no reason to buy a laptop.

When I bought a 2-year plan for a laptop at Best Buy, the price was equivalent to a new laptop battery, which I was told I should claim before the plan expired, if you didn't require any other servicing. I didn't, and two months before the plan expired, I called the number they gave me and received a new battery in the mail a week later, not a bad deal from my perspective.

KCWM said:

When my wife bought her laptop, back before they were as cheap as they are today, she paid $250 for a 3 or 4 year plan on her $1250 laptop. Espy, I love your smokin' ass, but if you're saying $300 for a $600 laptop is what you were told, either the salesman was completely full of shit or you're full of shit and just blowing some pretty hot, nicotineless air.

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I think there were 3 plans my friend was offered. The basic, a step up from that and the SUPER PLAN which was the one both sales folks said "You have to get it, these laptops go out all the time" (Wonder if the computer manufacturers know they are telling people that!) which was the 300 dollar one. I can't tell you how much the other ones were, they glossed over them and just pushed this one really hard.

Thing is, 300 bucks on my laptop, which was 3,000 is fine, but 300 on a 600? Do they REALLY get people with that? Needless to say my friend did not go with a Best Buy laptop.

Since it sounds like Droll works at BB, maybe she can clarify. I've always understood the price of the plans is in direct relation to the price. When we got my wife's new laptop (which was within the last year or so), I do not recall ANY plan that we were offered even coming close to $300, and her laptop was in the $600 range. I think we spent $200 on one, which covers the cost of batteries. Fortunately, nothing has happened to it and we haven't had to use it.

I dunno man. Unless they were lying to us they told us 300 for the ultimate coverage plan.

I've never gotten or needed the protection plans from Best Buy. I have a tenancy to buy stuff that's not going to break in the first few months I have it.

There was a reason I waited to get the current gen console.

Espy said:

Dude. Even the best made electronics in the world can have issues.

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But if the % is low enough they could just cover it under warranty...

And the idea behind any insurance is that out of the people that have it only a few actually use it, the rest is pure profit (relatively).

@Li3n;301418][quote=Espy said:

Dude. Even the best made electronics in the world can have issues.

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But if the % is low enough they could just cover it under warranty...

And the idea behind any insurance is that out of the people that have it only a few actually use it, the rest is pure profit (relatively).[/QUOTE]

A Warranty isn't insurance in the strictest sense (unless your paying for an extended warranty, which IS insurance.) It's more about a company or craftsman standing by their work and guaranteeing that it will work as designed... and if it doesn't (through no fault of your own), then they will fix or replace it at their expense. It's not about making money, it's about preserving the image of the creator as a reputable purveyor of goods.

Yeah, that's why i said "just cover it under warranty"... the second part was just a continuation of idea from my previous posts.

Warranties is a general coverage that can not take your own personal circumstances/care into consideration. So if that warranty expires, what then?

I'll go back to the laptop that we eventually had replaced. At one point in time, the heat sink on the motherboard went out (partially a design flaw of putting a p4 processor in a cramped laptop). When it went out, it took the harddrive and, somehow, the monitor with it. The invoice for the repairs? $800. We had to replace the battery 3 times. I want to say that each one of those batteries were over $100 each. So, in just the batteries and that one repair (there were 2 others), the plan actually covered enough money that it effectively paid for the laptop.

The repair bill for our washer? That would have been something like $400, almost the cost of the actual washer itself. WELL worth the money.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not all about the protection plan for everything. There are some things that it's just not worth it. A $75 DVD player? Nah. A $50 router? Nah. For me, it's about the cost of replacing the merchandise vs. the insurance. For any purchase above $200, I typically get it.

Espy, it wouldn't surprise me if they told you $300, it just doesn't line up with the information I was shown and had explained to me when I purchased a laptop and two desktops (I didn't get it for the desktops). Maybe my sales reps just didn't go into all of the details. I just have a hard time swallowing that any tier of their plans would cost 50% of the actual cost of the item. If you think about it, it's so extreme that it DOES sound like the kind of BS crap that people around here toss out in discussions without batting an eye.

For expensive or important things I like to have the protection plan. If I buy a new big ass tv, i'd want that extra insurance, but I also have it for my phone for instance. If my phone gets stolen, breaks or I flush it down the toilet by accident, I can hop over to the store and get a new one immediately.

KCWM said:

Warranties is a general coverage that can not take your own personal circumstances/care into consideration. So if that warranty expires, what then?

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You mean to tell me that the protection plan never expires after you first pay for it?!

And as i told a friend recently, whe his laptop broke 1 months after warranty ran out: "why the heck did you buy a laptop that only had 1 year warranty?" (he did get it replaced, the guy that sold it to him admitted it had previously been used at showrooms etc.)

KCWM said:

Since it sounds like Droll works at BB, maybe she can clarify. I've always understood the price of the plans is in direct relation to the price. When we got my wife's new laptop (which was within the last year or so), I do not recall ANY plan that we were offered even coming close to $300, and her laptop was in the $600 range. I think we spent $200 on one, which covers the cost of batteries. Fortunately, nothing has happened to it and we haven't had to use it.

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I don't know the prices on the premium laptop warranties off the top of my head, but a four-year premium one might have been 300 dollars. The regular warranty 2-year warranty on a laptop in that price range should be 129.99 - as you said, KCWM, it's based on the price of the item. Adding accidental damage coverage jacks up the price a lot, but with good reason, in my opinion - it's one thing to cover against hardware failure, but a warranty that covers you when you throw your laptop against the wall after being ganked in PVP is going to be expensive.

Obviously, the protection plan expires. Things are designed to wear out. I'd be a fool if I expected a company to back their product for the lifetime of that product. Different people use the same thing differently. So, what makes more REASONABLE sense (and not just reasonable in the sense that it fits your argument): "No matter how it gets worn or broken, we will fix it out of the expense of our own pocket" or "We will cover the product for X months of use"? To me, the latter makes much more sense. It's impossible for a company to predict how a customer will use their product and the different possible circumstances that it will be used in. It's not their responsibility to predict that.

For me, the length of most protection plans is the perfect amount of time before I feel an upgrade is necessary. Laptops for 2 years? TVs for 3-5? Washer and Dryer for 5? My wife is a teacher and having an up to date laptop makes her job easier. TVs have come a long way since I bought my 42" two years ago. By the time our warranty on the W/D runs out, we will have a child or two, and so we will need a bigger washer.

Works for me. Might not for you. I'd rather have the security net there.

Plus, it's not like Best Buy MADE the product. Why should they back up the warranty beyond the standard period without some sort of incentive?

---------- Post added at 01:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:12 PM ----------

You know, HowDroll, I didnt make the connection of it being a 4 year warranty. That and I forgot about the accidental damage. My apologies to Espy for the miscommunication. We were on the same page, just different parts of it.

On Laptop, I can tell you if the screen is damage, warranty (manufacture) will not cover it, but extra protection plan (that covers it some don't) is WORTH it.

For those who are lurking (I figure most of the posters know this) the screen on the laptop is the bulk of the cost of the laptop. Screens are not cheap to replace so a plan that covers it IS WORTH IT.

Also most batteries usually have 90 days to 1 year warranty EVEN if the laptop may have longer warranty.

I discover this and trying to work out a new deal with Dell for our school's laptop. We always buy 3 year warranty for all computers here (and it is worth it for repairs) BUT it doesn't cover battery each battery (that we use) cost around 90$ a piece.

KCWM said:

Obviously, the protection plan expires. Things are designed to wear out. I'd be a fool if I expected a company to back their product for the lifetime of that product. Different people use the same thing differently. So, what makes more REASONABLE sense (and not just reasonable in the sense that it fits your argument): "No matter how it gets worn or broken, we will fix it out of the expense of our own pocket" or "We will cover the product for X months of use"? To me, the latter makes much more sense. It's impossible for a company to predict how a customer will use their product and the different possible circumstances that it will be used in. It's not their responsibility to predict that.

For me, the length of most protection plans is the perfect amount of time before I feel an upgrade is necessary. Laptops for 2 years? TVs for 3-5? Washer and Dryer for 5? My wife is a teacher and having an up to date laptop makes her job easier. TVs have come a long way since I bought my 42" two years ago. By the time our warranty on the W/D runs out, we will have a child or two, and so we will need a bigger washer.

Works for me. Might not for you. I'd rather have the security net there.

Plus, it's not like Best Buy MADE the product. Why should they back up the warranty beyond the standard period without some sort of incentive?

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Meh, i was just being pedantic... i understand why one would get it, and in some situations i probably also use it, but that doesn't change the fact that the whole thing rests on the idea that the % of repairs required will be way under the actual money they make off the plan.

I probably shouldn't have just said that after you first quoted me, as that was directed at HowDroll.

I'm sure Best Buy is making money off this (or they wouldn't offer it) Basically most people would use their stuff for about 2-3 years (laptop, camera and such) MOST people usually take care of it pretty well and rarely would "break it" and use the plan to recover from it.

I personally don't know the numbers (I don't work for BB on any level but I'm guessing the higher up do have those numbers and some friends said they are pushing to sell more) so there is profit in it.

It is like insurance, tons of people pay for it and some may never use it (keep good health and such) so the company remain in business even if they pay out some money for other people.

Protection plan is just a short term insurance on your electronic stuff. It is optional but it is nice to use it when the time comes.

P.S. I bought a 2 year plan for the Wii and never use it but luckily it was cheap (40-60$ at Target) so.... that was ok, but like I said before MP3 player was worth it (even got a newer version)

@Li3n said:

Li3n's blah blah blah quoting my extremely long blah blah blah

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All is well because your Utrom/Krang avatar

No problem KCWM. I have no idea how long it was for. I just tuned out to the salesman the minute he suggested paying 50% the price of a ultra shitty laptop in order to replace it should it be as crappy as he said it was.
Needless to say, we got her a good computer with a reasonable 3 year warranty and she is in love with it.

I'd pay 50% for an accidental damage policy. And a couple of months before it was set to expire...oops..."dropped" it. Hey...I'm clumsy. And if you play it right, you never have to pay full price for an entry level laptop again.

KCWM said:

I'd pay 50% for an accidental damage policy. And a couple of months before it was set to expire...oops..."dropped" it. Hey...I'm clumsy. And if you play it right, you never have to pay full price for an entry level laptop again.

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Question for Droll then: How does Best Buy work around this? Because I guess if one cares not for morals than is there any reason this wouldn't work?

Espy;302530][quote=KCWM said:

I'd pay 50% for an accidental damage policy. And a couple of months before it was set to expire...oops..."dropped" it. Hey...I'm clumsy. And if you play it right, you never have to pay full price for an entry level laptop again.

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Question for Droll then: How does Best Buy work around this? Because I guess if one cares not for morals than is there any reason this wouldn't work?[/QUOTE]

If you got the warranty that covers accidental damage, then there's no reason that you couldn't do that - at least in theory. You don't really get to pick what sort of replacement you get hooked up with, though. They look for a "comparable item," but a lot of the time, you're going to end up with a lower-end replacement. It is sort of on a case-by-case basis, from what I understand, but I don't work in Customer Service so I really don't handle the actual replacement.

I didn't even buy my laptop through BBY, and my warranty has served me well. I got the 4-year one, and I've had to get it fixed probably 8 times between my old computer and the no-lemon replacement I got after the old one crapped out on me too many times. It was money well spent, in my opinion, especially if you're going with a manufacturer-built PC. They put such garbage hardware in them that it's worth having the insurance.

I want to be clear: I do think some sort of warranty thingie on computers is wise, especially laptops. I just don't think paying 50% of the price is a good idea. My wife and I have bought Applecare with every mac we have had and it's served us well in a wide variety of ways, no the least on my desktop Mac Pro where Apple will actually SEND a tech out to my house to fix it (well, not the tower but the bad nVidia card in it) so I don't have to lug it into the store. Paying 10% of the cost (which is about what Applecare ran on our compy's) seems perfectly reasonable.

The thing with the laptop replacement is if you buy a lower end computer, by the time you "accidentally" drop your computer, the advances will have been good enough that the lower end laptop you get will still be better than laptop you broke. I wouldn't suggest it with a $1200 laptop, but with a $600 laptop, why not?