Where to buy extended warranty on VT50?

SquareTrade is your best bet, that's where I'm getting mine for my new 55GT50. Their price is very good and I think their maximum is 4 years in-home service. Check for coupons online as well, they honor them. They said I would have up to 90 days after I purchase the TV to buy their warranty. You should get it. Don't buy into the BS that "If anything's gonna happen it will happen in the first year".

The least-worst extended warranty company is Mack.

Do you have to buy the TV at Costco to take advantage of the SquareTrade warranty? Also, if anyone has specific Canadian information that would be great! BestBuy here in Canada is asking $599 for a 4 year warranty

Keep in mind that Best Buy is the only warranty that covers burn-in. I confirmed it with them this weekend. Square trade does not cover burn-in, and neither does the manufacturer. That's definitely something to consider. If you notice in 2 years you have permanent burn-in, Best Buy will replace your tv or give you your full purchase price towards another set of your choice. With Square Trade or Panasonic, you're on your own with burn-in.

Also, you can start with a 2-year at Best Buy to give your wallet a break now, and in 2 years, just before it expires, you can purchase an additional 2 for the same price. It costs more that way but at least you don't need to buy all 4 years at once, and you can see you feel about it in 2 years.

You can go to www.squaretrade.com and check if what and if they offer their plans in Canada, I'm not sure as I live in the U.S, but no, they said you can buy the TV from Ebay or any retailer that sells the TV. You don't have to worry about burn-in, that's a thing of the past. You'd have to do something very seriously on purpose to permanently burn-in an image on your set. And if you have to acquire a burn-in within 2 years then BB's warranty is BS and it's overpriced to begin with. Check out Squaretrade, it's rated #1 and got 5 stars on Resellerratings.com.

Burn in is the least thing I would worry about. I've had three PDPs over the last three years and no IR. Stuck/dead pixels, now that's a two headed monster in my book. Yes, you don't have to buy your TV from Costco to get a warranty from them. I'm thinking about them for my 65VT50 that I got at BB.

@ Jbug, exactly. It's just not something that happens anymore.

Permanent burn-in is not covered by BB anyway. They state if you change a channel and a shadowed image remains on the screen, they will "repair" it. Well that's image retention. They mention nothing about replacement. Furthermore they state that their black-tie warranty covers only normal wear and tear. Permanent burn-in is not normal wear and tear and it requires a full replacement of the screen, you can't repair it. Check out the attached PDF of BB's extended black-tie warranty.

 

BTP_HT (dragged).pdf 327.947265625k . file

No.

I don't think that's what he meant.

Most warranties are similar in what they cover and what you pay, with slight differences in what you, the owner, pays and when. Few provide the protection that you think you get when you first buy it. They are essentially insurance companies that balance cost like any other does. Once the cost of fixing your set exceeds a certain limit, there is no more. If it's cheaper for them to payout the current value of the tv then they will choose that option. If you have used up the stipulated amounts they are willing to pay out then they have filled their obligation. There's so much more to it though.

More of the people I know, who buy high end, will recommend Mack. Personally, I don't know. I extended my warranty buy using VISA, and I don't know what the heck that means. lol I have to check into that soon.

Huh? If we are reading the same thing, it clearly states burn in and dead pixels in the header. They just word it for lemans so they know what to look for. Dead pixels also require complete replacing the screen. It is called repair because they replace the screen, not the WHOLE tv.

I would recommend getting that clarified such as BB's full warranty description. Sounds like a gray area. You're right about dead pixels requiring the replacement of the screen however nearly every company requires a minimum amount of dead/stuck pixels before replacing the screen. Still as mentioned earlier permanent screen burn-in is so rare these days that BB's screen burn-in coverage is more a selling ploy than something the customer will most likely need.

BB does in fact cover burn in.

Gotcha, however you're missing the point entirely.

I get what your saying.

Also, since when is burn in considered abuse in using of a display? If I want to play diablo3 for 8 hours. I should be able to. Why should it be considered abuse. Last I checked some people buy an HDTV purely for gaming.

I never actually mentioned anything in regards to abuse, and playing video games doesn't abuse the screen either. I was saying that "burn-in", not Image Retention is hardly an issue anymore with today's plasmas so it would take quite a bit of "on purpose" activity in order to burn a permanent image on the screen.
This might just be the reasoning for BB covering burn-in on plasma displays because it's highly unlikely it will happen therefore they have very little to lose due to the possibility of very few claims that will be made for burn-in.

Also I was mentioning that it's important to read the TOS on warranties before just taking the salesman's word for it at BB. There's always a stipulation. I took a look at BB's TOS for dead pixels and it states that it requires at least 3 dead pixels in a cluster on the screen before a repair will be done, but they don't state that their Black-Tie warranty sales PDF that I posted earlier.

I would stick with SquareTrade. They are one, if not thee highest rated extended warranty companies online and their prices can't be beat for what you get.

Squaretrade's liability is limited to the original price of the set. If you buy a 1000 dollar set, they do one 400 dollar repair, and the set fails again they will only allow 600 for repair/replacement.

I went with Bestbuy mainly because they cover burn-in. Also, you have to consider things like service cost, hardware cost etc and If I understand correctly all those are covered under Bestbuy extended warranty.

More info - http://www.geeksquad.com/uploadedFil...alue-guide.pdf

Exactly. You can get burned that way, if you have a repair done first for several hundred dollars, because then if you need to get the tv replaced, they will only give you the original cost of your set, minus what repair work you've already tried. As mentioned, Best Buy also definitely covers permanent burn-in should you be unlucky enough that it happens. For those reasons, I believe Best Buy offers the best warranty, even though it costs more.

On that note, they're quite a bit cheaper than the manufacturer often is for extended coverage. I just received an offer from Samsung to purchase an extended warranty for my D7000 I bought last year - little do they know I just traded it in last month. They wanted to charge me $472.99 for a 3-year plan, or $269.99 for 1 year! And they don't cover burn-in either. Hilarious. Best Buy charges considerably less than that - in fact their 4-year costs less then Samsung's 3-year and they cover burn-in. So Best Buy's plan isn't so bad really. It's like any insurance - it's expensive if you don't need it, but if you do need it, it can save you a ton of grief.

It's kind of sad really - you pay all that money for a nice set, and a year later the manufacturer tries to get another $500 out of you by working on your fear of the unit failing. Their header on the offer reads "Stuff happens - don't let it happen to you". If companies actually stood by their products nowadays, we wouldn't have to worry about stuff happening to us.

I finalized my purchase of a 65VT50 last night at Future Shop here in Canada (Best Buy Canada equivalent of Magnolia) and they want to charge me $799 for a 4 year extended warranty. . The Square Trade warranty is a lot cheaper, but I'm not impressed with the coverage cap as discussed above. Although, if I could buy 2 Square Trade warranties (still less than 1/2 the price of the Best Buy warranty) on the same set to get 2x purchase price coverage that would work .

Has anyone here in Canada come across another viable extended warranty outside of Best Buy or Square Trade? Has anyone come across Marck (sp?) up here??

$799, wow that's pretty ridiculous. That's a ton of money just for some peace of mind. At that price you're almost better off just taking a chance and paying the cash for a repair if you need one. $800 would cover a pretty big repair job I would think, or at least could go towards a new set if you needed one in a few years. That just seems like an awful amount of money for a warranty. What a waste it would be if the set turns out to be fine - for that price, you almost hope something will go wrong so you get some value out of the plan.

Where I used to work, selling cameras, we offered our own version of an extended warranty, but it also covered accidental damage. The thing is though, the plans were quite reasonable in price, so customers could actually consider purchasing it. The cost of these tv warranties are nuts.

Well if that is how ST does there services then it may not be beneficial for everyone. With that being said then the OP should take a look at what Panasonic offers for their extended warranties as far as price and if BB beats them on price then just go for BB, however I wouldn't recommend buying the warranty based on the fact that burn-in is covered as has been mentioned enough times here that burn-in will be the least of anyone's worries with today's plasmas.
If BB's warranty is on par with the price and service offerings of Panasonic's then by all means go for BB since it adds the near useless burn-in protection.

@DrRx,

I got a 3 year extended warranty at my shop for $100.

Chris

I am going to give square trade a shot. For $150, I figure if a panel dies after warranty, I'm covered. If I end up with so many problems that I max out the warranty coverage, I'll trash the tv and not buy that brand again.

I've had Best Buys warranty before and it was kind of a joke. I bought a digital camera and a few months before the warranty was up (4 yr warranty) it started acting up. Took it in to them and they sent it off for repairs. My wife gets it and it still doesn't work. Takes it back. Sent off. Comes back and now is out of the warranty period but supposedly has a 30 day guarantee on the work. Still doesn't work right. Two more times they sent it in.

On the 4th time, the CS guy looks in the computer and says that they don't even have parts for it anymore. 4 TIMES THEY GAVE IT TO ME AS FIXED WHEN NOTHING WAS DONE. PARTS WERE NEVER AVAILABLE. Now they try telling me that I am out of warranty so they won't replace it like with a comparable model. I said that I was inside the warranty time frame when we started this mess. If they had told me that there were not any parts and it couldn't be fixed the first time I would be within the 4 years.

I had to go all the way to management to get it resolved and they still acted like they were doing me a favor. "Well, since you are out of the warranty period, we are going to make an exception this one time". Bite me.

I figure square trade can't be any worse. For $150, I'll give it a try vs $389. I don't want to trust the idiots at BB with a $2000 purchase after all that crap over a $200 camera.

That sounds quite good. Who is the warranty from? Is there a $$$ cap like the Square Trade one? Does it start AFTER the Panny warranty ends or does it run concurrent? Thanks!

If you purchased the entire set on your Mastercard or AmEx card they double the current warranty, just in case some people weren't aware.

I just stumbled on a company here in Canada (TechComm based in Oakville, ON http://www.techcomm.ca/Links.htm) that is selling Mack extended warranties (ie. service contracts) for goods purchased here in Canada. Better yet, they have a 20% off sale thru to end of May. This prices a 5-year in-home contact for my 65VT50 at $276 (compared to the $799 that Future Shop was asking) .

My question: What sort of experiences have any AVS members had with Mack service contract (good or bad)? Are they recommended or not? I would especially be interested in hearing from any fellow Canadians who have dealt with this company.

Hey I'm fairly new here as a poster but not as a visitor. I have a CRT with HD capabilities from 02 in my room still and thinking of either getting an HX929 or the VT50. I've been leaning towards the plasma after reading how they destroyed the competition earlier this week in the test.

So my question is as new consumer of this technology is, is a warranty for these TVs really needed that much? Do they break down at such a high rate compared to the CRTs of old that they require them? Or do you guys just purchase them because you are just covering yourselves just in case things go wrong? And lastly is burn in still something to be worried about in these new plasmas because I remember reading something a few years back that companies stated that they supposedly fixed the problem.

Thanks for your help guys.