Home  New  Search  Gallery  How-To  Books  Links  Workshops  About  Contact

How to Win at eBay:
Warranties
© 2009 KenRockwell.com. All rights reserved.

Use this link to get to eBay whenever you buy and it helps me write more like this, thanks! Ken.

December 2009     top of How to Win at eBay     Index of detail pages

Bogus "Square Trade" Warranties

Ignore sales pitches for warranties.

I often get repeated pitches from Square Trade glibly offering coverage, along with loads of claimed testimonials from happy customers.

I decided to read the fine print, since for about $10 they offered several years of coverage for a used Nikon FA I had bought, and I know FAs occasionally need service. I'd pay their $10 for a few years of insurance. The FA hasn't been made for over 20 years.

It would have been trivial to click the links and buy the coverage, and I almost did.

Then I read the fine print.

Square Trade explicitly denies any coverage for anything more than a few years old!

Square Trade would cheerfully have taken my money, and God help me if I ever needed to make a claim!

One of you consumer lawyers out there needs to do something to stop them from so aggressively and repeatedly offering coverage on items which clearly would have no coverage.

When I get an item from a seller in cahoots with them, the junk emails (actually illegal Unsolicited Commercial Email) keep coming for weeks.

Google them if you're curious.

New Gear: Manufacturers' Warranties

If you're buying what you think is new gear in the box, but if it's not sold by an officially authorized dealer, legally it's a used product, and not covered by the manufacturer's warranty.

This is another reason to buy new gear only from real, authorized dealers, and not strangers over eBay.

eBay is for used gear. I never use it for getting new gear.

Sure, you might get the manufacturer to cover you, but like everything else over eBay, you're gambling.

What if it shows up, and it's not what you expected?

Next: Legal Obligations

back to top of How to Win at eBay.

PLUG

I support my growing family through this website.

I've invested over a year researching, interviewing, gathering data and then writing this book. Instead of charging you for it, I thought it would be much more generous to put it on my website below where everyone can read it for free, first. If you appreciate my efforts and find this as helpful as another book or seminar, your generosity will help me to keep adding more books like this to my website for all to read.

If you've gotten your gear through one of my links or helped otherwise, you're family. It's great people like you who allow me to keep adding to this site full-time. Thanks!

If you haven't helped yet, please do, and consider helping me with a gift of $5.00.

The biggest help is to use these links to Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Calumet, Ritz, J&R and when you get your goodies. It costs you nothing and is a huge help to me. eBay is always a gamble, but all the other places have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them since before this website existed. I recommend them all personally.

Thanks for reading!