Dixons Laptop - 5 year Cover

Hi, I'm buying a laptop in Dixons tomorrow and will cough up for the 5 year
warranty with Dixons.

Does anyone have good/bad experience trying to claim off this warranty?

What does it cost? I was shocked at the cost of cover my inlaws paid for cover on a PC.

waste of time in my opinion - very overpriced for the type of service you get - what type of laptop is it ? Is it future proofed for 5 years to warrant buying a 5 year warranty ? Also how does the warranty work if laptop is lost/stolen ? does it just terminate itself or can you transfer it to replacement ?

I always advise people to buy Toshiba laptops - years of experience of purchasing/servicing all makes have proven them to be most reliable and easiest to get parts/serviced if there ever is a problem. Whenever I buy a toshiba laptop for someone I take the 1 year warranty up front and you have an option to buy a further two years warranty extension which you can buy anytime up to the end of your first year - register on their support website and you'll be issued an auto reminder before the years up and you can buy the extension then - if laptop is stolen in between you haven't paid for 2 years you will never use.

Its a HP laptop - €1549.

The 5 year warranty is €60 a month over 10 months.

Its covers theft. If the item is damaged in the 5th year - they'll still replace it.

Its a lot of money alright, but worth it if something serious does happen to it.

Hi,
I'd agree with Nai. These insurance products are a waste of time. The odds of it being stolen are highly unlikely & even if it was you may well have a good chance at getting it back. The only thing i can think off that would make it worth getting the insurance is if:
- you have young kids & are afraid that they might break it.
- you are using it in unsafe environments e.g. building site etc...

Having worked in one of these stores that propmote insurance on products, i can tell you that it is in the interest of the salesperson ($$$) to sell as much as these 'insurance' sales as possible. The truth is that after a year or 2, the laptop will have depreciated immensely & you will more than likely want to upgrade. The laptop probably has anything from a 1-3 year warranty with it anyways (most likely 1).The price of a laptop is falling all the time & if you saved or invested your €60 each month, by the end of a year alone, you would have enough for a brand new laptop & you could even sell it on. Also, if there is room in your Laptop for upgrades -extra RAM etc.. then you could use this money to upgrade it to keep up with the need for extra processing power etc...

BTW, there are also some online shops that are good for laptops that may be better for you & cheaper. Don't be fooled by the big brand names, there are perfectly good machines outthere with littl-known brand names that are just as good, if not better than the big brand names. Take a look at [broken link removed] for example. I use this one the whole time but im sure you'll find many more on google.

Also, maybe you can get this covered on your house contents insurance, worth a look.

Whatever ya do, DONT imho go wasting your money!

That's almost 40% of the purchase price! Way to much to pay, put that money aside to buy a replacement when the time comes.

Guys, thats some good advice.

I'm gonna ring the bank and check up on the house contents insurance.

Regarding buying online - the model I want is HP dv9030ea. I can't find it on or [broken link removed].

Many thanks for your help

Karl

Kmelvin,
Im off to lunch now & when i come back,ill look up the spec of that laptop & see if i can find it cheaper of offer you some better alternatives.

Philip.

I would always avoid extra in-store insurance. You need to decide what spec and price point meet your current and likely future requirements. I'd be inclined to buy a laptop with a 3 year warranty (maybe Dell) and possibly put it on my house insurance.

Thanks Philboy.

have a look on www.bms.ie - it's where I buy all my laptops from.

Just looked on Dell, didn't see anything near the spec that you were getting in Dixons. It looks like a really powerfull machine in Dixons & compared to what i've looked around at not a bad price (not too well up on Laptops at all). Another alternative i've seen is this one [broken link removed]

It's about €350 cheaper, it has:
- a slightly less better processor.
- 60 GB less memory
- 1 GB less Ram (but this can be expanded to 4GB - can the HP one be expanded, might be worth looking into if you wish to upgrade it in the future)
- an integrated camera
- a 5 in 1 card reader
- a slightly wider screen, but a tiny bit heavier.

Think thats about it so the choice is yours depending on what you want it for. If you are going for the HP in Dixons, you might get it cheaper around on the web if you want to have a look but im not too sure.

philboy said:

- 60 GB less memory

Click to expand...

You mean hard disk?

Thanks Philly.

This model is fairly new and doesn't appear available on the
standard sites.

Its expensive but a great spec - and would do me for years.

I've mailed Komplett directly to see if they'll have this soon.

Thanks for your help.

Yes,
Hard Disk space/storage.
typo

philboy said:

- 1 GB less Ram (but this can be expanded to 4GB - can the HP one be expanded, might be worth looking into if you wish to upgrade it in the future)

Click to expand...

Check how many slots are used for the standard RAM. For example if there are 4 slots and one is used for a single 1GB RAM module then that's ideal. However if it's 4 x 256MB then you will have to ditch/sell one of the RAM modules if you want to upgrade which is not great.

I'm staying well away from Acer - everyweek - another horror story.

HP will do me - good spec and a half-decent price on a reliable machine.

If you haven't already haggled, you should find that they will come down around 25% on the price of the extra warranty if you tell them that's it just too dear and that you're not going to take it.

I had good success with claiming from a similar PC World (part of Dixons group) policy some time back. I had 3 years cover, and found an intermittent fault with my HP laptop. After 3 failed attempts to repair, they paid out about €1200 in vouchers towards a replacement model, so I effectively got a brand new replacement at that stage. The warranty also include phone support which got me out of a couple of scrapes.

If the security of having someone on the end of a phone line, and having a reliable repair/replace option available to you is worth the few hundred euro, don't rule out proceeding with the cover.

Or maybe just buy a Lidl/Aldi laptop which comes with a good warranty and follow up support as standard.

I used to sell these extended warranties for a well known major English brown and white goods retailer. The pressure from the management to sell these was incredible and your percentage warranty sales would affect your job prospects. We were unofficially told that 90 % of the revenue generated from these sales went to profit and 10 % went to the service department. When customers phoned the service department it would often ring out, or the customer would be put into a lengthy automated messaging service, both with the goal of making the customer give up.
What I found incredible was the margins were so tight on the products themselves, that if we couldnt sell an extended warranty on it we would often tell the customer the product was out of stock. They are an absolute ripp off. Please please think twice about buying one!!!!!!!!!