Re: The Worth of Service Contracts
If you can't afford the loss, whatever form
"can't afford" might take, be it downtime or monitary or
embarrassment or whatever, THEN you should definitely
consider the contract. This is an individual decision
which is completely outside the economic analysis of the
service contract.
No, it would appear to be integral to any economic analysis that would accompany the decision to use service contracts.
Besides, you are applying monetary value only to the parts and ignoring the economic value of the actual service and diagnostics. So this is one area where your overall analysis doesn't work for me:
Either the contractor will
make money at it on the average or will be out of
business or unable to provide service when its needed.
This is independent of the contract or its terms, by
the way. Therefore, YOU (or anyone) will make money
in the long run by giving these contracts a miss.
Let me at first accept this categorization. There could be an extended period where the service organization is losing money and still providing adequate service. I have used such companies for a couple of years before they went (sadly) belly up. They lost money on me and the ten PC's that were covered. Not the other way around, my company made out quite nicely. (In fairness, the average hard drive was 40 Meg in those days and the failure rate of everything but keyboards seemed to be greater.)
Now let me reject the premise. Correct me if I'm wrong (honestly, please do) but you seem to be implying that the contractor will make money only if the customer 'loses' it. What you are overlooking is that the contractor may be able to provide the service cheaper than the customer is able to do it.
So while you as the customer may be able to perform the same service (what ever it is) and even easily afford the cost of not using a contractor, if the service organization can do the repair at a lower price than your internal costs while still making a profit, everybody makes out.
But sadly our world is iffier than most.
That is the rub and I'll agree with you that the quality of many stand alone PC service companies merits a poor rating. Overall, our view of them is probably similar. I exempt the larger box manufacturers from the dreary evaluation.
My original comment was in reaction to a 90 day warranty. I think that this is a gimmick used to squeeze a few bucks off the system price. A business user would be better off by expecting at least one year coverage, in my opinion.
Regards,
Michael |
