Confused re Extended Warrantee Service Plan

I just had two Premiere 4s replaced under the extended warranty and there is no charge for the replacement. Also the lifetime service is transferred to the replacement unit.
The only thing is if you want the advanced replacement they will charge your card for the cost of the unit and then refund your card once they receive your old box.
If you do not want to do that then you send in your old box first and then they will send the replacement once they receive you old unit.
In either case once you receive the new unit you just hook it up and it is ready to go. There is no need to activate or purchase a new service plan.

You also have the option of buying the extended warranty on the replacement unit.

 

There are many examples here of tivo charging a reasonable fee to fix/replace a lifetime box. Costs are quoted at ~ $80 for a fairly new box up to ~150 for older boxes.

So, your $40 is really not as valuable as you may be thinking. There are also TONS of threads arguing why you should or should not purchase them. I will not rehash those. I never purchase this coverage on anything ever.

 

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How does that logic work? it ignores most of what's been said including jrtoo's accurate comment on them doing out of warranty repairs at reasonable cost.

When you add in that 90% of all Tivo failures are hard drives that are reasonably easy to replace I'm not seeing how a "service plan" is of benefit.

 

jmz: Jed1 has correctly described how the extended warranty works.

If it is worth paying $40 for a one time replacement if your unit fails is a financial calculation that is up to you to make.

I paid $590 for my Roamio with lifetime and didn't think buying the warranty was worth the cost. These extended warranties are like buying insurance and I give people the same advice; only insure items that you can not afford the loss if something happens, because in the end most consumers have to come out on the short end of the stick, that is the only way the these companies can make money and stay in bullishness.

 

I think I read somewhere and confirmed it in the terms and conditions that the extended warranty is good for 3 years, or your first replacement, whichever comes first...

So if you buy the 3 year extended warranty, and it goes out on you in 18 months, your extended warranty is effectively over at that point...you don't get to ride out the next 18 months of coverage...

I am in the camp of self-insuring... Insurance is only about risk transference... TiVo is willing to transfer your risk to them for $40.00.

I only transfer risk that I cannot afford to take... As an example, my $1M umbrella liability insurance is well worth my money. I can't afford a situation were someone has the opportunity to sue me for $1M (for any number of possible reasons). This is good insurance to have...

But if I lose my TiVo, I can muster the dollars to replace it... And remember that it is only insuring the hardware (not the service). TiVo customer service agents have told me that they will transfer a lifetime service to any replacement box for free in the first 3 years, even if the box was a replacement that is customer funded (as opposed to a warranty replacement). So if you bought your hardware replacement cost is $325 for a newly recertified TiVo Plus, you are paying 12% to protect $325.

TiVo reserves the right to replace your unit with a recertified replacement, so the above is right inline with reality.

I'll transfer risk for my house and my car...but I won't transfer risk on a $325 consumer electronics device...

 

If you listen to this advice from atmuscarella you'll undoubtedly regret it as have I; let my story here be an instructive tale so that you do not make the same mistake.

Over the last twelve years I've bought 13 TiVos ranging from S3 to Roamio Plus; I made the mistake of buy lifetime service for every one of them out of the box, and have never bought an extended warranty. Let me tell you, when the cost of the lifetime was amortized and I started cheating TiVo Corp. out of their rightful profit from monthly service, my feelings of guilt were intense! And then, when what would have been the term of protection for the extended warranty elapsed, another frisson of guilt was incurred for not having paid the tax on being bad at math that warranty guarantors deserve to collect.

Do not make the same mistake I have repeatedly made! Buy an extended warranty and pay monthly, you will feel better about yourself for not cheating a small but honest corporation out of their well-deserved profits!

 

Well done you! You got me. I was like, "WTF?" Sometimes I have trouble detecting sarcasm in writing.

 

I'm a little concerned that the op might take the post seriously. When I started reading I thought, uh oh, someone is posting that every one of his lifetimed TiVos died after 90 days.

 

What puzzles me with this warranty argument is that it only cost $1.11/month to have it. What is the big deal with that cost??????
My suggestion is, it is worth having if you have lifetime service on your unit. This way you are guaranteed to have the lifetime service moved to the replacement unit with no argument.

Like I stated earlier I just had both my units replaced under the three year warranty and it did not cost me anything other than the $40 dollars each to insure them.
I put the 3 year warranty on the two replacements also. This will take me to 2018 which is close to my lifetime service being fully amortized. I bought the original units in the summer of 2013.

Even if you can easily replace a hard drive on the Roamio that procedure will cost you close to $100. That is over 2 times the cost of the warranty. If the failure is something else then you can be SOL, especially if TiVo decides not to transfer the service.

 

Exactly! For only pennies a day you can help keep a struggling American corporation alive! (The same dollars a month logic you hear when buying a new car and your new friend, the trustworthy salesman, is piling on the options.)

(I tried to come up with something ironic about the lifetime argument, but all I have is the rather simple arithmetic of probabilities. I assume that no one that needs to hear such arguments would accept them, because anyone that would understand them obviously won't need to hear them.)

 

The cost is almost irrelevant- tivos, and most devices, so rarely fail. But, please go ahead and subsidize my lifetime service. Thanks!

 

There is one small flaw in your statement, TiVo does not issue the policy for the extended warranty. That is done by division called Service Net, which is owned by AIG. They are based out of Jefferson Indiana.
https://www.servicenet.com/

So nobody who buys the extended warranty is subsidizing someone else's lifetime service.

 

Buying extended warranties is a losing proposition in the long run. If it wasn't, the companies selling them would go out of business.

If you don't have a tolerance for risk then by all means buy the insurance.

 

It's my understanding that TiVo gets a kickback per policy sold. Is that not true?

If it is not, it would be insane to get an extended warranty, because there would be absolutely no upside.

 

Even if there was a kick back how big could it possibly be on a $40 policy.
If it was 25% that would amount to $10.

Every body has to remember that we are only talking about $40 for three years. "This is just not a large out lay of cash. Like I said it comes out to $1.11/month.
I get charged $14/month just to have a electric meter on the side of my house. $15/month to have a water meter in my basement.

 

Even if it's only $10, that's way better than the alternative, which is that your entire $40 is wasted on an extended warranty.

 

For electronic devices, extended warranties are a waste of money. More so in that they are just insurance policies offered and honored by a third party other than TiVo in this case. In general, electronic devices fail within the first 500 hours. If they last past that, they typically last for 20 years. So don't let your TiVo sleep for the first month as this is 500 hours of use. As most have said, the hard drive is most likely the component that is going to fail since it is a mechanical component.

That said, I bought the extended warranty on a refurbished unit. Probably a waste of money, but it still ended up costing less than the best price I could find on a new unit with a discount code.