What is an extended warranty?

When you buy a product, the manufacturer will usually provide a limited warranty period, such as one year, three years, five years, or even lifetime coverage. Of course, some items, such as refurbished products, may come with only a three-month warranty or something similar.

During the warranty period, if a quality issue comes up, the manufacturer will generally provide free repair or replacement service. For example, Chanye once bought a rice cooker that broke after only a few uses, and the manufacturer replaced it. Another time, a pair of JBL wireless headphones stopped charging during the warranty period, so Chanye contacted JBL for a replacement. Because JBL no longer had stock of that model, they sent back an upgraded replacement instead.

But once the warranty expires, the manufacturer usually will not cover the item for free anymore. At that point, the manufacturer may offer paid repair service, but there is no guarantee they will actually be able to repair it, since the item may have been discontinued and replacement parts may no longer be available. And of course, getting a refund is even less likely. That is where an extended warranty comes in. As the name suggests, an extended warranty provides additional coverage beyond the original manufacturer warranty. If you have extended warranty coverage, you do not have to panic just because the original warranty has ended.

A credit card benefit

There are plenty of companies that sell extended warranty plans, but if we can get similar coverage for free, why pay extra? The same logic applies to rental car insurance. Making full use of credit card benefits and getting extended warranty coverage with almost zero additional cost is the goal.

P.S.: Be careful about the activation terms. Some benefit guides require that the full purchase price of the item be paid with the eligible credit card in order for extended warranty coverage to apply. If you plan to pay part of the cost with a gift card, read the benefit terms carefully.

P.S.S.: Many credit cards offer extended warranty protection. Two of the best-known issuers are Citi and AMEX. Chanye will not go into the pros, cons, and differences here. But for Citi cards, the extended warranty benefit at the time added an extra 2 years, regardless of the length of the original manufacturer warranty.

Why should you care about extended warranty coverage?

The reason is simple. Most of us have had something like this happen before: a phone screen goes black right after one year, a monitor dies just after the warranty ends, or an electric toothbrush stops working almost immediately after the original coverage period. When a product seems to fail right after the manufacturer warranty runs out, it is hard not to wonder whether that is part of the plan. Without extended warranty coverage, you are usually stuck eating the loss yourself.

How does extended warranty reimbursement work?

In general, extended warranty claims are handled by reimbursement after the fact. In other words, you pay for the repair first and then submit documentation to get reimbursed. That means you will naturally need supporting documents, especially the invoice.

A real Citi extended warranty claim example

Here, Chanye will use a recent Citi extended warranty claim as a real-world example to show what the Citi claim process looked like.

Background

This time, Chanye used the benefit because the touchscreen on an ASUS ZENFONE 2 had failed and the phone needed to be sent in for repair. The ZenFone 2 had been purchased from Amazon in June 2015, and the purchase was charged to a Citi Forward card, so it qualified for Citi's 2-year extended warranty benefit.

P.S.: The real reason Chanye used the Forward card for the purchase was simply that the card had not yet been devalued at the time and earned 5x TYP on Amazon purchases. As for the extended warranty benefit that came in handy later, that was a nice surprise.

Contacting customer service

Once Chanye realized the phone might be eligible for Citi's extended warranty benefit, the next step was to call customer service right away. Citi's extended warranty phone number was 1-866-918-4670, which was the same number used for Price Rewind. After calling, just tell the representative that you want to file an extended warranty claim. In the end, the representative will give you a case number and send an email to your registered email address listing the required documents.

The email Chanye received requested the following:

  • Itemized Store Receipt
  • Copy of Manufacturer’s Warranty
  • Repair Estimate
  • Photos of Item
  • Copy of Extended Service Plan
  • Salvage
  • Other

Of course, since Chanye had not yet contacted the manufacturer at that point, there was no way to provide a repair estimate right away. Everything else was submitted one by one. Chanye understood “Salvage” here to mean the item's value in its current state, or its residual value if it were still working properly.

Contacting the manufacturer for repair

After contacting Citi customer service, Chanye reached out to ASUS support, described the phone's symptoms, said that paid repair would be acceptable, and asked for an estimate. ASUS then provided an estimate, although the exact repair cost would not be known until the phone was mailed in.

After receiving the ASUS estimate, Chanye forwarded the email to Citi as an attachment, thinking that if Citi approved the amount and honored the extended warranty benefit, there would be no need to bother mailing the phone in for repair.

However, Citi replied that they would only accept the repair invoice, and ASUS would not issue that invoice until after the phone had been mailed in. So Chanye had no choice but to send the phone to the ASUS repair center. There was a small side story here: Chanye used USPS Priority Mail to send the package from OKC to Dallas. It should have arrived on the third day, but USPS took a full three weeks. It seemed USPS had initially misplaced the package, because tracking did not update for a long time. Chanye naturally filed a complaint through the USPS website and even received a response from the local Dallas post office, but the response only said they were aware of the situation and would check with the carrier involved. To be fair, this kind of thing does happen with USPS sometimes: an item slips out during delivery, gets stuck in some corner of the mail truck, and is only discovered a few days later.

After ASUS received the phone, the turnaround was actually very fast. The next day, ASUS sent over the invoice.

Chanye then forwarded the invoice to Citi. Citi's stated processing time was within 14 business days. So when Chanye followed up about half a month after sending the invoice, the customer service representative said that since 14 days had not yet passed, there was no update to provide.

Receiving the check

After that last contact with Citi, Chanye got busy and stopped following up for a while. Then one day, after checking the mailbox, Chanye found that the extended warranty claim check had arrived.

The amount was exactly the same as the invoice total. At that point, the Citi extended warranty claim process was officially complete.

Final thoughts

First, Citi did not reimburse the shipping cost for sending the phone to ASUS for repair. Even though Chanye submitted the USPS mailing receipt, the extended warranty terms appeared to exclude shipping expenses.

Second, based on the check that arrived, it appears Citi's extended warranty program was administered by a third-party company. In this case, that company seemed to be Virginia Surety.

Finally, Chanye hopes this real-life example helps more readers make use of this very practical extended warranty benefit.