10 Worst Tech Rip-Offs and How to Avoid Them
Extended Warranties
Shopping at a big box retailer these days is like walking through Washington Square Park at midnight; everyone’s trying to sell you something bad that you don’t want or need. From the sales people on the floor to the cashier, store employees are heavily incented to hard-sell you on extended warranties, aka “protection plans.”
In-store stooges will tell you all manner of half-truths and outright lies, to get you to plunk down hundreds of dollars extra to add an extra year or two to your warranty. They don’t tell you that most products don’t break in the 3-year warranty period, that the first year is usually handled by the manufacturer anyway and that, after a couple of years, most gadgets aren’t even worth repairing if they do break.
Solution: With few exceptions, you should never buy an extended warranty. If you’re a small business and want to purchase additional service options for your corporate computers directly from the manufacturer (Dell, Lenovo, HP), it might make some sense. But when the blue shirts try to scare a few Franklins out of you, just keep walking.
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February 14th, 2013 at 5:58 pm
You sound incredibly cheap.
February 14th, 2013 at 10:57 pm
this, is a horrible article. Poor tips such as, “do not buy warranties”. There also is a HUGE difference in HDMI cords. My tv came with one of the cheapo’s the author suggests. I upgraded to a Monster cable much like what he said to avoid. The difference is WOW! You can’t compare the two. Also if you plan to watch 3D, cheapo’s won’t cut it. You need a high speed 3D capable HDMI.
February 14th, 2013 at 11:38 pm
How happen iPhone and MacBook(Pro specifically) are not in the list? Those are probably the most overpriced products to ever see the market!
Also I don’t see how the Surface Pro is overpriced since it is actually an Ultrabook and offers much more than MacBook Air for pretty much the same price.
Yes, I bought the Surface Pro, and for a developer like me its probably the most versatile product on the market by far, and I didn’t felt ripped off.
February 15th, 2013 at 10:03 am
Why on god’s green earth do all these idiot writers compare the Surface Pro to a bottom feeding level $499 iFad? It’s like comparing a Seiko to a Timex. If the writer can write this same drivel when comparing the new glorious 128GB iFad ($799 with it’s iPhone based OS, no connectivity or expansion options), to the 128GB Surface Pro ($999 with a full desktop OS, 64GB micro SDXC expansion slot, active pen digitizer, USB 3.0, display port) they are still lying through their teeth if they claim there is more “value” in the $200 less iFad.
February 15th, 2013 at 11:39 am
Why does everybody hate on these articles? They are there to help.
Also, go with the cheapest HDMI you can find, seriously.
February 15th, 2013 at 5:45 pm
This article is not only idiotic, it’s BS! On what planet does the iPad get 12 hours of battery life. It doesn’t get close. It gets between 9-10 hours of battery life. Secondly, how in the hell is the Surface Pro a ripoff? What nonsense!
March 6th, 2013 at 5:32 pm
Monster Cable’s marketing has led to one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on the American public, and I see there are some idiots here still wanting to defend their ignorance. Sure, there are bad, poorly made cables, but the specs, principles, and claims of Monster and its ilk are simply ridiculous. My favorite is “acoustic winding,” or Monster Cable’s claim that high and low frequencies travel on different parts of a speaker cable at different speeds and that this phenomenon induces a noticeable distortion of sound. Right. You can tell when two signals traveling for 10 to 20 feet at nearly the speed of light arrive with a 5% disparity.
But if you spend 2000% of what LAMPCORD costs, you can correct this and here sound as it should be. Oh wait, performers don’t use acoustically wound cable in live shows, so you’ve never heard the “correct” sound anyway. Oh wait, those frequencies would travel at different speeds in THE AIR. So it’s Monster that’s inducing an artificial distortion. Hey David, want to buy a bridge?
March 20th, 2013 at 6:27 am
I bought the extended warranty for my unibody Macbook back 2008 and it was well worth the $400 dollars. I’ve had my screen replaced twice, new hard-drive and what not. Right before the warranty ran out I took it in and made sure they fixed everything and a year and half later it’s still ticking!
March 22nd, 2013 at 3:31 pm
David says “You need a high speed 3D capable HDMI [cable].”
So David, you’re saying 3D is in the wiring? Not the display device’s software. Gold-plated, diamond-encrusted, platinum-named, stored-under-a-palladium-pyramid cables. As opposed to copper wires with the correct connectors that follow the industry spec.
Monster is glad for customers like you.
March 31st, 2013 at 8:31 am
Hey why did you not mention the biggest ripoff that best buy offered that so called buyback program that you the customer had to pay for as the years went by they paid less and less for your item
April 7th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
All ways get warrenty on your phone, I replaced my driod X 3 times, once it got stolen and twice took a crap. For $6 a month Verizon just next days another one. Not sure where they got there info on this atricle from ???
April 8th, 2013 at 11:40 am
Read the article! It says don’t buy INSURANCE, not warranties. They are not the same. And insurance is a complete ripoff.
April 8th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
I would really think about going with no insurance on your cell phone. You may never need it it, but when your phone dies are you going to have the $600 (roughly) to replace it, or the time to take to find a good used one? My daughter’s current phone has been replaced twice, and my previous phone had was replaced once. Neither has been abused, in fact mine was a known problem with the display dying on the phone.
April 8th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Certainly Monster makes some nice products, but when it comes to cables that carry a digital signal, they’re selling a whole lot of voodoo. Digital signal looks like a sawtooth – with two states – on or off. A $3 optical or HDMI cable carries that signal as well as a $50 cable. The content that’s being transmitted – be it 3D video, dts, or whatever – makes no difference.
April 9th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Actually the higher the frequency a cable is called upon to carry, the greater the loss due to capacitance within the wire. Cheaper cables often use poorer quality dielectrics as well, so there is loss possible there. I know little about HDMI, but if it is being called upon to carry very fast changing states (1 to 0 and back in the digital signal), higher quality cable could well carry information necessary to properly render fast changing digital information such as is undoubtedly present in 3D video signals. Of course, those of us who sit in front of a TV with a beer or two under our belts hardly notice anything anyway, so who cares, really?
April 10th, 2013 at 8:02 pm
Monster cables are overpriced but don’t buy the cheapest. There are differences! Best Buy is Worst Buy. They sell what they need to move out of stock. Their employees are forced to do this. Their Geek Squad is overpriced and generally run by idiots. They lie and tell people their PC is dead so they will buy something new there. Warranties are always a great idea for non tech people who screw up their machine thinking its all so easy to fix.