3-yr appliance cover, typical till offer
major appliances yrs 2-5: ~5-15%
Advanced options
wear-and-tear and accidental-damage exclusions bite
The till-point warranty is one of retail's best margins for a reason: you're usually paying 25-40% of the item's price to insure years when failure odds are single digits, and the free protections already cover much of it: the Consumer Rights Act (goods must last a reasonable time: a GBP 450 washer dying in year 3 is arguably the retailer's problem anyway, with a repair/replacement remedy), Section 75 on credit-card purchases over GBP 100, and the manufacturer's own warranty (often extendable free by registering). Warranties make most sense on repair-prone, expensive-to-fix categories you can't afford to replace: almost nothing else.
What The Extended Warranty Calculator Works Out
- Expected value of the cover: the chance of failure in the covered years multiplied by a typical repair, assumed at half the item's price. A GBP 120 policy on a GBP 450 washer with a 10% failure chance buys about GBP 22 of expected payout; the card shows how many times the premium exceeds it.
- What you already own for free: the Consumer Rights Act makes premature failure a retailer remedy (repair, replacement or partial refund) for up to six years in England and Wales and five in Scotland; Section 75 makes a credit card company jointly liable on purchases over GBP 100 paid even partly by card; and registering the product often adds free guarantee years.
- The self-insure alternative: every declined warranty's price goes into a repairs pot. A few declines a year build a fund that absorbs the occasional genuine repair with margin left over, which is the warranty business model redirected to you.
- Typical repair cost (advanced): override the 50% assumption with a real quote. Washing machine repairs typically run GBP 100 to GBP 200 and a call-out alone GBP 60 to GBP 100; a laptop screen or a TV panel can approach the item's price, which is the only case where warranties start to make sense.
- Excess per claim (advanced): many policies charge GBP 25 to GBP 75 per claim, which is deducted from every payout and can erase a small repair's value entirely.
- Chance a claim is paid (advanced): wear-and-tear, accidental-damage and misuse exclusions hollow out many policies. Scaling the payout probability down shows what the cover is really worth after the small print.
- Years of cover and maker's guarantee (advanced): a three-year warranty bought alongside a two-year manufacturer's guarantee only adds one useful year, so the cost per year of useful cover is what to compare.
- Expected payout after excess and exclusions (advanced): failure chance x (repair minus excess) x payout probability x the share of years not already covered free, against the premium.
- Premium as a share of the item (advanced): till-point cover typically costs 25% to 40% of the item price for years when failure odds are single digits, which is why it ranks among retail's most profitable lines.
- Your repairs pot (advanced): the number of similar warranties you decline each year x the premium x the cover period, and how many typical repairs that pot would fund.