Extended Warranties

[Jaedon]

When I bought my camera bodies over the past few years I have always fought with myself over whether or not to get the camera shops extended warranty on them. Well I will never be a doubter again. I always buy the lemons. Whether it is a car or a camera I have learned over the years that my luck will always land me the item that was built by the guy that was having a bad training day.

My camera bodies have been no exception. So I took them both to the shop today since my Olympus E510 was having some issues with the AF (just simply did not want to focus... when it decided to try and work it ended with an OOF shot) and my E500 decided to return to it's old ways of locking up the shutter always at the exact wrong moment....intermittently of course. SO as I stand at the counter I ask what all my extended warranty entails. Much to my surprise I discover that since each of them have had 2 visits to the repair shop... one more trip will entitle me to a new camera body regardless of what the problem is. 3rd trip under the warranty plan entitles the purchaser to a new camera body of the same brand and model... if that model is no longer in production then the body will be replaced by the next closest model upgrade in the same line of bodies. So my E500 has warranty left on it until October and my E510 has 2 years left on it. My plan is to make sure that each of them need to return to the shop before the warranty runs out. According to the girl behind the counter this will mean that I would be the proud owner of either 2 E520 camera bodies OR I can use the purchase value of each body and put it towards a different body of the same brand. Since I bought them both early in their releases that would mean that I would be able to purchase an E3 for around $250 after applying the credit.

After leaving there feeling good I called my telephone provider to tell them I lost a phone. Not only did I do the right thing and purchase the protection plan and will be getting a new phone for free...... she also managed to save me $130 a month on my Home Phone, sattelite and internet services in the process.

So since I am having all this good luck I am off to buy a lottery ticket since the prize is $14 million. If I win then I promise to head straight to Adorama or B&H cameras and buy a boat load of cameras for PR to give out for contests or something lol.

[zrfraser]

Extended warranties were always hit or miss with me. I enjoyed selling them when I worked for a large office supply store; made the paycheck bigger. I bought one on my first SLR (Minolta Maxxum 70) and used it twice. Once, for a tune up, and the other from when it got run over by a car. I ended up getting a refurb body, since Minolta was long out of business. The lenses were also refurb, and I didn't get any hoods with them, and one of the long zooms was very hard to zoom. I complained but never did get my hoods or a new zoom. I have only bought an extended warranty one other time on a printer, but never needed it.