Green Umbrella Product Review

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You may not realize the importance of a warranty on your electronic devices until you actually have to use it. Then you might even wish you'd gotten the extended warranty. Those are usually a bad value. The Green Umbrella warranty is different. Keep reading for the details.

We all have had, at one time or another, a bad experience with one of the warranty programs on our technology toys. The day after your token sixty or ninety days that the company so generously gives you (like anything ever happens during the first 90 days of usage) runs out is exactly the same day it that your device lands itself in a sink full of soapy dishwater or you get that error message. You know, the completely unintelligible one that goes something like "DDL file and service error number 165874DRZ has occurred. Please contact your system administrator for further support" and is followed by the blue screen of death.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you have had nothing but great experiences with the fine folks who supplied you with a lavish year-long warranty. Maybe you have gotten great service each and every call you have made, with both a friendly, cheerful attitude and a vast array of technical knowledge that made your problems go away in a snap. Sure, and I'll be buying that bridge from you real soon, too.

Either way, your warranty is up, or is about to be up, and that is a shame for you. It is a shame, because no matter how your toys have depreciated in value during the time that you have owned them, you still laid out the money to buy that device when it was brand new, and if it dies no one will give you one of those "but I just bought one of these last year" discounts. In a fair world they would, but it is not a fair world at all. You will have to shell out the full price for a new device again.

This may not sound like a great hardship if you have to replace a relatively low cost item, like a $200 PDA, but when you start getting into a higher bracket, then you are going to feel the pain right where it hurts, in the wallet. Don't believe me? Think about having to replace that flat screen TV in your living room, all $4,500 of it, or buying your kid a new $2,500 Mac Book Air to replace the one his older sibling's date sat on. (See, you shouldn't have trusted that boy. Now you have proof!) Now I bet you are missing the protection that your warranty provides.

When presented with this conundrum, many people simply call it quits, resolve to be a bit more careful with their device of an electronic nature and essentially wait for the day that their machines will fail on them. They know it will happen eventually, but not when. Then on that day, they will likely call technical support, who may or may not charge for the privilege of saying that the device is, in fact, beyond all hope and they should just upgrade to a new model. The one they have is obsolete anyway, and if they want to be up to date they should upgrade. Then after some swearing, most people will comply, toddling themselves off to the nearest big box retailer to make a near identical purchase for the third time. A depressing scenario, without a doubt.

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