LIKE most people, I have, over the years, gone through the ordeal of having to buy just about everything required to run a house. Be it a cooker, dishwasher, video camera or computer, I’ve negotiated the very tricky task of choosing the best one on the market at that time, taking into consideration things like value for money.
On each occasion, the decision to buy has always been met with the added dilemma of whether or not to go for the “extended warranty”. These things have become the bane of most householders’ lives.
When you go to buy a household item which runs into the few hundred pounds bracket, chances are you’ll have a budget to work to. So, finding a couple of hundred quid extra for a warranty can make life a bit tricky. Just as well they all offer handy direct debit services which mean you only have to shell out a few quid a month.
I have generally avoided buying into these things on the principle that if I’m spending my hard-earned dough on something, then I expect it to last longer than a year.
This was my attitude two years ago when I was getting my kitchen re-done and I bought a fancy new fridge freezer from Comet. As my budget was already stretched, I declined the offer to extend the warranty.
The original warranty came and went and then, a couple of months ago, I was tempted by an offer I received through the post from Comet to extend my warranty on my Zanussi Fridge Freezer for a year for about £80. Having a family with two young children, I reckoned the fridge is quite possibly one of the most important appliances in the house so, on the spur of the moment, I signed up.
At the beginning of this week, I was glad I did. My fridge just packed up and decided to stop working. Beers were warm and milk was off.
On Monday, I dug out my policy, called in and asked them to sort it. I was told an engineer would call on Wednesday of this week so I thought I’d just have to manage a couple more days without it.
As promised, the engineer turned up on schedule and duly looked at our fridge. He agreed it wasn’t working correctly and announced he would go away, fill in a report the next day, order the necessary parts and return to repair the fridge… the following week!
As you can imagine, I was less than pleased with this, as the whole reason I took out the policy in the first place was to make sure that, if my most important appliance in the house broke down, it would be fixed and back up and running as soon as possible. The only thing that seems to be missing from this service was any sense of urgency.
I called the Comet service centre in Broxburn and explained that I needed my fridge back working again as soon as possible. Unlike a hi-fi, telly or even washing machine, I just couldn’t do without a means of keeping food, milk and drink cool in the middle of summer.
Add to that the fact that Sam is having a birthday party on Saturday with 20 pals expecting ice-cream and jelly, and you can understand the urgency.
Sadly, I was informed that even a temporary replacement is not part of the service that they offer and I would just have to wait for the process to take its course. My family’s need to have fresh, cool food and drink didn’t apparently matter that much, which I have to admit I found a tad disappointing. No matter what I said, the policy line was continually fired back at me.
So, as an emergency measure I was keeping milk cool in my Homer Simpson beer mini-cooler until a replacement fridge – arranged by me, I hasten to add – arrived yesterday.
As it stands, I have paid money into a warranty to have my fridge repaired which, five days on, is still not working and is actually warming my beers and poaching my eggs as opposed to cooling them.
So how will Comet’s super-extended warranty perform? You, like me, will have to wait until next week to find out.
By Grant Stott from The Scotsman
