I'm confused. You disagree, then repeat what I said??? You don't have any recourse if they CLAIM the part is unavailable. Parts that fail frequently WILL become unavailable when they run out of them and decide to discontinue production of the high-failure part... not necessarily in that order. If the damn things were reliable, they'd still have the 5-year warranty. You only shorten the warranty period if you're losing money on it.
It says if
I don;t see why you're confused. I made it clear that I agree that extended warranties are usually not a good deal for the consumer. I disagreed with you saying that the contract excerpt which you posted says that the warranty company can just choose to not fix something because it costs too much. In plain English, it does not say that. It says if the necessary part is no longer available, then they won't fix it and will refund all your warranty money.
Sure you do. Find out if the part is indeed still available. Easy to do. If it is, then have a regular repair service get the part and fix it. When they won't pay it, you have two choices. If the cost of the repair is less than the amount of the refund and you feel like you are ahead, then do nothing. If the cost of the repair is more than the amount refunded, then send the bill to the warranty company. When they refuse to pay it, take them to small claims for a slam dunk case. Also report them to state/local consumer affairs authorities.
Nonsense. Parts typically get discontinued over time due to declining volume for the part because what they go into is rapidly dwindling. Parts that fail frequently are exactly the parts that manufacturers want to keep making and selling, because there is huge margin in appliance parts. In all my life, I've never seen a suitable replacement part be discontinued in the 5 year period of an extended warranty for an appliance like you are talking about. If there is some extraordinary failure rate or safety issue with some part, I've always seen some alternate part available during the reasonable life of a product. For example, door seals are a frequent failure on refrigerators and I can still order those for a 23 year old Frigidaire refrigerator. Or a few years ago, the thermal fuse on my Insinkerator hot water dispenser blew out. The unit was only a couple years old. The replacement part was a totally different design, but a direct replacement.
oney back.
You're telling me what usually happens. That's great if it happens to me. I'm telling you that the wording of the warranty neuters it and is unacceptable.
Most warranties have wording like, "If we can't fix it, we'll replace it with an equivalent unit."
This one is more like your car insurance company telling you... "Well, you know that guy you crushed with your car...there are no replacement parts for his missing legs...here's the $200 you paid us for the liability policy...sorry for any inconvenience. Please call this number to purchase a new policy"
One unit doesn't make for a good arguement.
I'm a landlord and of the 6 refrigerators that I've purchased over the last 7 years, three have developed compressor related problems. One was was a bad compressor start relay PCB - increasingly common, two others were the actual compressor.
Sinee the start relay assembly was not covered by the 5 year compressor warranty, the cost for that repair, about $120, came out of my pocket.
The tenant replaced one bad refrigerator without asking my permission. The 3rd unit had a new compressor relaced under warranty at about the
4-1/2 year point.Brands included, GE, Hotpoint (same as GE), Roper (made by Whirlpool) and Amana (Maytag then, Whirlpool now).
Thus the compressor reliability rate in my admittedly small sample isn't great.
The above refrigerators replaced old units that were from 20 to 45 years old, including brands like Kelvinator, GE and Amana. None of them ever had compressor related failures. They were basically replaced when the rust got too bad on the cabinets or shelving.
The Kevinator units were amazing. They used a hot gas defrost system versus the typical electric heater in the freezer compartment. The use of hot gas defrosting had to be more efficient since it didn't depend on electrical resistance heating but it was noisy! The timer would call for a defost cycle, the freon gas solenoids would slam shut, reversing the gas flow and causing the compressor to strain like hell for about 20 seconds. Yet, those compressor were still running after 40 years.
Doug
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