Extended Warrenty???

Kelly - its no assumption on my part. I guess the word "sanctioned" I used was inappropriate as these stores known as the Sony Store are owned and operated by Sony Canada and the staff are employed by Sony Canada. Do you not have these Sony Stores in the good ole US of A?

rgd: i am iunaware of sony having such stores in my area of the usa. they did operate a "service center" close to where i live but they closed that and all others just last year. -kelly

I think Homer Simpson said it best, "Extended warranty! How can I lose??!? Woohoo!" Most of the time you are throwing money away on an extended warranty. Though with some items, it is justified, especially if the extended warranty is thru the OEM. Laptop computers, and cars with fancy engines come to mind. If you can get a 3 or 4 year extended warranty on a laptop computer, get it. You probably end up busting the screen sooner or later. And a couple cars that come to mind that NEED an extended 100k mile warranty WERE the older Ford Taurus SHO models with the yamaha V6. Another were the older mitsubishi/Eagle/plymouth 'DSM' 2.0L turbos (ecplise/talon/laser). The trick was to MAKE sure your engine blew BEFORE 100k miles, and you were set!

A TV, IMHO, falls into that 'gray' area. I guess it would depend on if the warranty will cover a full failure, and if you believe the set may very well fail with five years.

Hi My opinion is a little biased as I sell big screens and I do recommend getting something extra. The average service call on a rear-pro tv is about $300. This is what our service dept told me. It is kinda like life insurance-its better to have and not need than need and not have. Make sure it involves in-home everything. Also, Most stores have to contract out to outside service instead of the store`s own serv.dept. So if there is a dispute over something, you will be dealing with the outside business instead of the store from which you bought the tv. Fortunately where I work we have our own dept. so we take care of our customers a lot better. Now Ultimate says they have their own dept but they still have to send out. It is just a facade. In the end it is your decision. I would get it if I could afford it. Hope this helps Dan Rdlr

I seldom buy extended warranties but a year or so ago I did when I picked up a Sony ES (can't recall the model offhand) CD jukebox for my son. It listed for $1100 and I bought it for $200 from Sound Advice without box, manual, or remote. $30 for three years of warranty seemed reasonable.

The unit went back to the shop twice. The first time, the 3rd party repair shop replaced the laser and cleaned the mechanical drive train. The second time, they replaced the entire laser tracking/drive unit, the control board, and a couple of parts in the drive mechanism. No questions asked, old parts returned to me with the repaired unit, turnaround less than two weeks.

I got lucky! OTOH, I haven't bought any extended warranties since then so go figure.

Will