SquareTrade

Win a Free SquareTrade Warranty by using Twitter!

100% off coupon code will be posted via @SquareTrade every day for five days. This could happen anytime of the day from 7/13 to 7/17.

We already obsess about saving you money and your electronics. This time, we’re giving away that added peace of mind to our followers on twitter.

Here's how to win:

To win a FREE SquareTrade Warranty, all you need to do is be the first person to use the 100% off coupon code at www.squaretrade.com. It’s that simple! 

It's first come, first served so you'll have to act quickly. Of course, to increase your chance of winning, we encourage you to follow us @SquareTrade.

What will you win?

When we say you'll "Win a free SquareTrade Warranty" we mean you'll win a FREE SquareTrade Warranty - the only warranty rated 5-stars by customers!

You'll have to enter your credit card info at Checkout but applying the 100% discount means you'll be charged $0!

What happens if you don't win?

If that's the case, be sure to follow @SquareTrade so you can be on the lookout for the next FREE SquareTrade warranty we tweet.

Rules:

• 100% off coupon valid only at www.squaretrade.com
• Each coupon expires 11:59pm PST the day it is tweeted.
• The promotion begins 12:01am PST on July 13th and finishes at 11:59pm PST July 17th, 2009.
• Discount reflected when you enter coupon code at checkout.
• You must enter your credit card info but will NOT be charged when you use.
• Coupon eligible for warranties on items purchased from any Retailer.
• Warranty must be purchased within 90 days of item purchase date. The purchase window of warranties for items bought on eBay is 30 days.
• Winner must have a permanent US mailing address.
• Coupon may not be combined with any other offer. (100% off means it's already free!)
• Coupon cannot be applied retroactively to past purchases.

Geezer Gamers Review: Is SquareTrade For Real?

Read what happens when FireMedic41 takes the plunge and chooses SquareTrade for the first time!

 "I had seen the SquareTrade logo multiple times on Ebay and felt that it was another way to get a few dollars from me. I really hadn’t researched it that much, but that day I needed it to be real. I read everything I could on SquareTrade (ST)... 'No hassle'.  'Customer Focused'...Why isn’t everyone using it then?"

Read the full review here.

Last Chance! July 4th Sale: with 30% off bonus till 6pm Today!

Embrace your independence; buy your electronics from any store then save big with SquareTrade!

Use Coupon Code JULY04 by Sunday and save 20% off your next SquareTrade Warranty.

But wait, does history repeat itself?

Yes, for today only, we've bumped the savings back up to 30%. Use this coupon by 6pm PST today for bonus savings!

That's right: 30% off til 6pm tonight! After that, 20% off up to $50.

Coupon expires July 5th and is valid for Retail and eBay purchases. Max discount $50.

Independence Day Sale: with 30% off bonus till 6pm Today!

More Summer savings! Use our special Independence Day coupon code JULY04 and save 30% off on your next warranty purchase (max $50 discount, through 6pm PST 6/23).

After that, coupon valid for 20% - up to $50 on your next warranty purchase through July 5th.

You can use the discount on a warranty for an item you buy from eBay or any store (like Wal-mart, Best Buy, Apple etc)  - online or not.

Kick off of SquareDeals of the Day and SquareTweets!

It almost feels like we’re back in school – sneaking notes.  We can’t let the cat entirely out of the bag just yet.  But since you’re our fans, we wanted to let you in on the secret.

There’s a lot going on here at SquareTrade HQ. This week, we’re gearing up to launch a series of SquareDeals of the Day! 

Raise your hand if you’ve recently purchased an LCD TV, a washer/dryer or perhaps a new wii.  Maybe you’ve been planning to buy a new laptop? 

Well, this week we’ll be offering even greater savings on coverage for things like digital cameras, LCD TVs, home appliances and game consoles.  Yup, we’ll be offering up to 40% additional savings with a new coupon each day!

So stay tuned (and don’t let Miss Othmar catch you passing this note!)

On a related note, if you’d like to be the first kid on the block that has the inside scoop, you can follow us on twitter. We’ll tweet breaking news on specials like the upcoming Deals of the Day as well as nifty things we hear are going on in the world of gizmos and gadgets.

Sorry, did you ask “What's a tweet?!”  Well, Mike Massimino has been tweeting from space. Even Oprah is becoming twitter savvy. You can also ask google. 

A Blogger's No-Good, Very-Bad 3-Week Battle with a Store Warranty

Just found Christopher's blog post about his terrible experience with Best Buy's warranty claim service for a busted HDTV.  In fact, his three-week battle with Best Buy for a resolution has led him to consider switching to SquareTrade!

Thanks for the shout-out, Christopher!

In fact, Christopher's experience with Best Buy is something we hear a lot from our customers about other warranties – weeks to get service, not being able to reach people by phone, lost paperwork headaches, total hassles trying to get service.

Well, Christopher, it doesn’t have to be that painful!

When you file a claim with us, we'll take care of you in 5 days guaranteed or your warranty is free.  Christopher battled through various departments and service providers to find out what he would get from his Best Buy Product Service Plan for three weeks.  THREE WEEKS.  That's insane.

We work hard to make your warranty experience hassle-free at claims time:

• There’s no messy paperwork to fill out and file away – just find us online.
• Should you want to talk to someone, call our warranty service agents at 1-800-649-5307 -- Our average wait time is less than two minutes.
• We’ll give you free shipping
• Never lose track of your claim – you’ll get status updates every step of the way.

It’s why 98% of our customers are satisfied with the service they receive from SquareTrade.

Compare Christopher’s experience to what “barrelracer318” said about his experience with us for an LCD TV claim on ePinions.

The moral of the story… Pick us!  It’s 40% less expensive and 100% less hassle!

Best Buy mails out $50 gift cards to HD-DVD mourners.

 Okay, so they're a little late to the party, but better late than never.  Best Buy is doing a little something-something for all those HD-DVD owners who got left without a chair when the music stopped, and it even looks like they're trying to one-up Circuit City's already-cool return policy.

If you bought an HD-DVD player or peripheral before Feburary 23rd, you're now entitled to a $50 Best Buy gift card.  You may not even have to ask for yours; BB's automatically mailing them out to everyone they can identify.  If you're in Best Buy's Reward Zone, bought it off their website, or bought one of their overpriced warranties, you should get your gift card should show up in the mail within two weeks.  Otherwise you'll have to bust out a receipt or a credit card statement and show it to the guys at the store... though they're also claiming you can do it over the phone at (888) BEST BUY.

The beauty of that is you can keep your HD-DVD player if you want... you're just getting free Best Buy money.  But starting his Friday, you can also ditch it by using Best Buy's new Trade-In Center, which will pony out another gift card based on their estimate of what your item's worth.  A few wee tests suggests that under optimum conditions, that'll be 60% of the retail price, but the good news is this option's available on any HD-DVD player (and any other electronics you've got lying around) whether you bought it at Best Buy or not.

It might not be perfect system, but it's better than nothing... which is what BB could've done instead.  But when you start spending all that cheddar, keep in mind that a SquareTrade warranty costs half as much for a faster service that's rated better by our own customers. 

Still, credit where credit's due... the gift card giveaway alone makes it about $10 million Best Buy's about to eat on this format war, all for your sake.  See, and you thought it was the consumers who were going to lose. 

Liked that?  DIGG this post and Subscribe to our feed!

Best Buy is Profiling You.

Looks like another ex-Best Buy employee has outted his company's policies regarding You, The Customer.  More properly known as You, The Angel or The Demon, depending on how cheap you are.  The swell guys over at The Consumerist have the full scoop (and screenshots of the official documents), but here are the fun parts;

Best Buy's customer service strategy, initiated in 2004, basically tags everybody who walks in the door as buy-on-sight "Angels" who are blind to sales or rebate-o-rama bargain hunters ("Demons") who aren't there to spend any real money.  You're also immediately stereotyped into one of eight personality types, from Buzz the early adopter to Helen and Charlie the empty nesters and super-yuppie Barry (expert hands can even break them down into "It's My Time Barry," 'Family First Barry," and "Entertainment Everywhere Barry"), and then each customer is approached accordingly. You get lots of attention if they peg you as a retiree with $10,000 in surplus annual income and no clue about "the internets," for example, and a lot more "guidance" if you appear to be a bored suburban housewife who's only thinking about her family's needs.

Needless to say, they're also trained to hit you with an extended warranty offer (especially you skinflint Demons) not because you particularly need one, but because they do.

Hey, the fact is not everything needs a warranty.  An iPhone?  Probably a smart move.  The new $50 1GB iPod Shuffle?  Probably not, unless you take yours spelunking... or if you're planning to keep it for three years, and want to drop six bucks as a guarantee it'll last that long.  That's a SquareTrade warranty price, of course... Best Buy's is nine bucks for two years.  We've got a 5-Day Guarantee and better reviews, too.

The lesson here is Pay Attention... and don't let anyone put you in a box.

Liked that?  DIGG this post and Subscribe to our feed!

Best Buy's Geek Squad is so good, you'll sue them for $54 million dollars.

 Holy Underwear!  We thought the FireDog expose was bad, but we just caught wind of the latest post on The Red Tape Chronicles, written by MSNBC consumer editor Bob Sullivan, and Circuit City's largely disinterested repair drones force suddenly look like Olympian heroes compared to Best Buy's Geek Squad.

Here's how it shakes out; nonprofit exec Raelyn Campbell bought herself a $1100 laptop from The Buy, and then got sweet-talked into adding a $300 extended warranty to it (feel free to use the sidebar widget to see how much less a SquareTrade warranty would've cost her).  Turns out that was a good idea, because it conked out on her.  She takes it in, and is told repairs will take 2-6 weeks (us: five days).  As estimates go, turns out that was waaaaaaaaaay low. 

Roughly four months later, Campbell returns from an extended business trip.  That's nearly three times as long as the Geek Squad's worst-case repair time, so it should be done, yes?  No.  And she spends the next few months getting the run-around from an interchangeable cast of Best Buy phone voices trying to find out how much longer it'll take.  Finally, the sixth person she talks to admits they didn't have any idea where her laptop was.  Best Buy lost it.  But that's okay, because they offered her a $900 Best Buy gift card to compensate. 

Campbell decided to sue them for $54 million dollars instead. 

Least you think she picked that number out of a hat, it's the same amount a judge sued a laundry last year for loosing a pair of pants.  Unlike the judge's situation, however, Campbell's loss opened her up to the very real threat of identity theft, since whoever has her laptop also now has all her personal information.  She says she's not expecting to actually get $54 million, but it did get BB to up their compensation offer to the high $2K range. 

Also interesting: the stories people commenting on Sullivan's post tell.  One is an ex-Geek Squader who quit because this is apparently Standard Operating Procedure.  Another claims their computer was resold by Best Buy with all their personal data still on the hard drive; they were contacted by the new owner, who confirmed the laptop had the exact same problem they'd originally taken it in for.

Did we mention our customers rate us very highly in terms of customer satisfaction?

Liked that?  DIGG this post and Subscribe to our feed!

Confessions of a Circuit City Repair Technician.

We love The Consumerist... so customer-friendly, so corporate-mean.  Today he links us to yet another confessional on why hauling your precious electronics in to a big box retailer for repairs or warranty work might not be the best experience of your life. 

Basically, Mr. X admits to everything you already knew, but it's nice to hear it right from the keyboard of a Circuit City FireDog technician.  Our personal favorites;

• "Most techs that are hired know little more than the basics, and learn as they go. You can't really have an experienced tech work on your machine, because once you leave, it may sit there for a few days, and who knows who will work on it then."

• "Your computer may well sit around for days without anyone looking at it. If we were low on computers to work on, we would often drag repairs out for days past when they should be done, just so we looked busy."

• "Sometimes, when we had a customer that kept bugging us because a part on his computer was taking forever to come in, we would just swap the part out with one off of a display computer to "expedite things."

As opposed to the service you get with a SquareTrade warranty, which our customers really enjoy, according to their reviews.  We complete every repair or cash reimbursement within five business days, and our technicians are technicians... customer service is an entirely different department, and we don't even have a sales division.  We let you make that decision. 

Oh, and we charge about half what Circuit City does.  Does that affect your decision at all?

Liked that?  DIGG this post and Subscribe to our feed!