I have just had the satisfaction of successfully taking advantage of an extended warranty in order to acquire a brand new TV. And a beautiful machine it is too. 

I NEVER buy extended warranties. I don’t think they are value for money. More often than not the manufacturer’s warranty and your general consumer rights ought to be good enough. However, when we bought an ex-display LCD TV almost three years ago (quite expensive at the time in spite of being heavily reduced) we thought it prudent to buy extended cover in order to protect against the risk of the pixels burning out (which you can’t fix). And lo, after about 2 1/2 years a blue spot developed right in the middle of the screen. Not noticeable at first but increasingly irritating.

So, yesterday, two months before my extended cover expired, I trotted down to Curry’s where my old TV was written off and we were told vouchers for the replacement value would be winging their way to us in the post. And if we went ahead and purchased a new tv before they arrived we could recover the value of the vouchers by refund once they arrived.

So that’s what we did. All in all, apart from the facts that a) I had to steel myself to go into the nightmare world of a Currys store and b) their aircon was broken and it was hotter inside than out, it was far less painful than I had imagined. The staff were even friendly and actually quite helpful. I am all at sea with this concept in an electrical store.

The only downside was that I didn’t get to argue skillfully as I had anticipated about whether or not burnt out pixels were covered under the contract terms. They actually agreed with me that one blue pixel in the middle of the screen spoilt my viewing experience. I’m a little deflated not to have had to fight for my contractual entitlement, whhich I was fully expecting them to try and weasel out of.

In spite of the generally positive experience this weekend we didn’t purchase extended cover for our new tv. I am guessing we’ve had all the good luck we’re due on that front.