Does it make financial sense to buy an extended warranty on exercise equipment?
First of all, make sure it is legal. The states of Florida and Vermont prohibit the sale of extended warranties. As a result, reputable sources will not sell you one if you live in one of those states. But it raises the question, why would states make them illegal? It's because unscrupulous companies in various industries have over-charged and under-delivered. The lesson is clear; deal only with reputable manufacturers. It is the manufacturer that offers the warranty. The store or website just passes it on to the purchaser.
You should also understand what the warranty covers. Specific parts of the equipment will have specific lengths of time that the warranty runs. For example, the frame and motor typically have longer warranties, up to "lifetime." Lifetime means the lifetime of the purchaser. What that tells you is that you're not likely to have a problem with the frame or motor and that it's probably not worth getting an extended warranty just for just those parts.
Generally, treadmills require more repair work than ellipticals because their parts are more delicate. Thus, for treadmills, you really want a warranty to cover "parts and labor." That's where the extended warranty really makes sense. It costs a significant amount of money for any skilled technician to fix anything these days and you can save a lot of money by not having to pay one. The best warranties are "in-home service programs" that will get a technician to come to your home to fix your machine for no additional cost. You thereby save the time and effort of bring your machine somewhere.
Still, the question remains whether you should buy an extended warranty. Think of an extended warranty like an insurance policy. You hope you don't need it, but it may be better to buy it anyway and it makes you feel good to have it. You can feel even better buying it when you realize that the insurance company and equipment manufacturers do a lot of research to figure out that spread out over a number of sales, they will make money selling you these agreements. That means they believe that, in the case of an inexpensive warranty (about $100) it less likely than not that a given machine will need $100 or more in service. Based on that factor alone, it seems the buyer should take the same bet as the manufacturer and not buy an extended warranty.
But the missing factors in this calculation are the cost and quality of the machine. As with other products, more expensive machines tend to be higher quality. It first seems that it makes more sense to protect your greater investment in a higher priced machine buy buying the warranty. However, higher cost machines tend to cost no more to repair than lower cost machines and they may even be less likely to need repair. The best overall value may be to buy a lower-priced machine with an extended warranty. That way, you insure against most quality problems, while spending relatively little.
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Robert Braun has been using, selling, and writing about treadmills for decades. For more information on treadmills and ellipticals, see Treadmill-World.com.
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