Bought a Dell Laptop from PC World today shuold I take the Coverplan insurance?

Snake Plisken

So bought a Dell laptop today for my 10 year old Daughter in PC World it was €479 now I never take the extended warrenty for anything but I know from repairing laptops that its more expensive to repair them and extremely hard to get parts for them be that the screen, keyboard or damaged motherboard. So I'm just wondering would it be worth it to buy this insurance, or if it's damaged would I be better off claiming from my home insurance? The cost of the 3 year cover plan is €150. Any advice apprecaited

Thanks

seanybiker

A child with a laptop. Me thinks getting the insurance would be a good idea.

Agent_99

it cost me 240.00 to insure my whole house contents, Extended warrants are very restrictive, check the policy first, and then check accidental damage on your home insurance might work out cheaper and cover the whole house as well

ttm

NO

btw its only a TWO year cover plan, normal warrentee for the first year then the cover plan kicks in. Correct me if I'm wrong.

jd83

I wouldnt buy a laptop of pcworld let alone insurance.

The Muppet

Snake Plisken wrote: »

So bought a Dell laptop today for my 10 year old Daughter in PC World it was €479 now I never take the extended warrenty for anything but I know from repairing laptops that its more expensive to repair them and extremely hard to get parts for them be that the screen, keyboard or damaged motherboard. So I'm just wondering would it be worth it to buy this insurance, or if it's damaged would I be better off claiming from my home insurance? The cost of the 3 year cover plan is €150. Any advice apprecaited

Thanks

Insurance would be a better option than an extended warranty unless it covers accidental damage, Broken screens etc are not covered under normal warranty. Make sure its covered for accidental damage under your home insurance is the best option IMO.

jd83 wrote: »

I wouldnt buy a laptop of pcworld let alone insurance.

It's a Dell , what difference does it make where he baught it?

Snake Plisken

ttm wrote: »

NO

btw its only a TWO year cover plan, normal warrentee for the first year then the cover plan kicks in. Correct me if I'm wrong.

yeah thats what I said to the guy in store, he said you've up to a year to take out the cover plan but if it's say six months down the road you would have to bring the laptop in to make sure it's not in poor condition.
I was hoping that I could take one of the Dell cover plans out, but it seems that you can only take that plan if you buy directly from Dell.
As regards the home insurance angle I'm with AA home insurance I take it they will load your policy so you'll pay say an aditional €50 per year for that, I'll look into it.

Also just wondering has anyone any experiance with the Dixons group cover plan good or bad.

Cheers

ttm

I used to work for Curry's years ago and even then the "Insurance" was money for old rope.

Your main problems, of software issues, and water damage (very very common) are not covered and the hardware is easily capable of 3 years use unless misused or dropped and afaik any damage attibutable to misuse is not covered. If you do need say a replacement HDD (well under 100euro at todays prices) then that might get done under that cover plan but you'll still either be paying for reinstalling the operating system or doing it yourself. Battery which may not last the 3 years isn't covered either.

dotsman

seanybiker wrote: »

A child with a laptop. Me thinks getting the insurance would be a good idea.

This is the biggest mistake that people make with insurance. Most of the things that a 10-year-old might do aren't covered.

Any insurance/extended warranty on a computer is a waste of money. The insurance/warranty will not cover all the most likely problems you will encounter, is likely to involve you sending the computer away to be examined/repaired for a long period of time and is so incredibly expensive compared to what it offers. With the cost of any given spec falling dramatically (Moore's Law), if a component actually does need replacing, it will only cost a fraction of what you originally paid for it.

Thoie

Snake Plisken wrote: »

I was hoping that I could take one of the Dell cover plans out, but it seems that you can only take that plan if you buy directly from Dell.

I'm not sure that's accurate. All the Dell's I've seen have a service tag on them somewhere. If you go here I think you can enter the service tag and buy extended Dell warranty if you want.

eightyfish

No, no, no. It's a scam. I used to work there and we were pushed very hard to sell coverplan. DSG might make €50 on a laptop but they'd make €200 on the coverplan because 95% of people wouldn't ever use it. The "free" helpline was woeful. Unless you drop the laptop, getting anything fixed will cost you a lot less than the coverplan. Avoid it like the plague.

IMHO.

Snake Plisken

Grand and I can replace keyboards, screens, harddrives etc myself but if the power connector does get broken on the motherboard as it's multilayered pcb your going to need a new one and thats not going to be cheap to get your hands on one. As I said I used to work in a repair shop and saw a lot of Laptops coming in where power leads were dragged damaging the motherboard. I'll check with the insurance company tomorrow.

thanks to all

ttm

Snake Plisken wrote: »

Grand and I can replace keyboards, screens, harddrives etc myself but if the power connector does get broken on the motherboard as it's multilayered pcb your going to need a new one and thats not going to be cheap to get your hands on one. As I said I used to work in a repair shop and saw a lot of Laptops coming in where power leads were dragged damaging the motherboard. I'll check with the insurance company tomorrow.

thanks to all

But remember when you work in the repair business you only get to see the broken ones! You never got to see all the laptops that lasted for 4,5 and 6 years or more with no problems

Snake Plisken

just built the same spec machine on the Dell site (its an Inspiron 1545) I paid €479 for it would you believe the same machine from Dell would cost me €646. I thought it would have been cheaper to buy from Dell, glad I went with PC World now (never thought I'd here myself say that )

MunsterCycling

PC World selling Dell, didn't they stop allowing them sell them due to their cr@p CS record?

Anyhoo, DSG do the warrenty on the machine themselves, you will never be able to get Dell to touch it (yes I know they don't have to but usually do for customer relations etc) and so are stuck with TechGuys (snigger) working on your machine, God help it if they get their grubby hands on it.

Best of luck with the machine, hope it does what it says on the tin.

MC

Sikie

Bought a new laptop 7 months ago accidental damage around children is the biggest risk.
I have seen 3 close encounters at home in the mean time but at the price PC world was charging for insurance, I decided to take a chance buying a new machine if it failed or is eaten by the dog.

Ian Beale

As eightyfish said don't bother with the coverplan, if anything went wrong you could most likely repair it yourself cheaper then the 150 and no doubt that coverplan would only cover certain "accidents"

iamo wrote:

.

So how's business jp :P

Red Alert

I have accompanied a few laptop purchases: I never advise anybody to take this option. Also, the excess amount you'd pay would probably buy you the same machine again. You are much better to put the laptop on your house insurance.

onetwo

used to work in currys, my 2c

Against:
It's feckin expensive (If I recall, 150 for 3 years, or 230 for 5)
On that point, it IS a 3 or 5 year. Yes, it will be sent to dell where it can in the first year, BUT if it got dropped in the first year, coverplan covers it.

They're not a helpful company to deal with it, if it breaks, they have up to something like a month to fix it, and they normally do take that long.

For:
People have mentioned home insurance. As well as the increased premium, check what the excess is on a claim. I ****e you not, a girl buying a replacement netbook told me the insurance company had a €300 excess. So they gave her €30 to replace her €330 netbook

In short, the only value to it is the accidental damage. You have to figure, for the 3 years its ≈ 1/3 of the cost. Is your insurance company a better option? Is there more or less than a 33% chance it will take significant accidental damage during the 3 years?

run_Forrest_run

do not take out any extra warranty on the thing, this is how PC world make their money and at the end of the day should it become damaged chances are PC world will try and avoid paying up as they will squirm out of it quoting some small print etc.
The salesperson once tried to convince me that if I wanted a new laptop after a year or two I could throw it down the stairs and bring it in saying the screen broke or something and they'd replace it...ha ha, he must have thought I was some idiot..don't believe a word they say, they are chancers and save your money.

Are Dell PC's and Laptops sold in PC World ment to be the same price as they are on Dell online ?

niallon

PC World insurance is a joke. We had the cover plan and when we had graphics card issues were informed that the coverrplan only covers software and so, though it would be free, they would have to send the desktop elsewhere to be repaired. By the fifth, yes, fifth week of waiting for a simple graphics card to be replaced, we were tearing their heads off when they informed us that if they cannot repair after six weeks they have to replace the machine. 5 weeks and 6 days later, new graphics card. Shower of ignorant tossers and I'm gladd our local store has gone to the dogs and now struggles on its last legs, no less than they deserve with customer service like this.