What Happens When Your Laptop Warranty Ends?

Every new laptop comes with a manufacturer’s warranty. The warranty will give the user coverage for repairs and replacements related to manufacturing defects — accidental damages like spills will not get any coverage. 

A manufacturer’s warranty is only available for a limited time. Typically, it will last for a single year. Once a year has passed, this specific coverage goes away. You’ll have to pay for all types of repairs and replacements out of pocket.

What can you do to handle these repairs when the warranty ends?

Emergency Fund

One of the best ways to cover this type of expense is with an emergency fund. An emergency fund is a personal collection of savings used for urgent, unplanned expenses — including laptop repairs. 

Withdrawing from your emergency fund won’t have a negative impact on your regular monthly expenses. You will still have enough in your checking account to cover your essentials as normal. Your budget will be completely fine for coverage.

Credit Card

What if you don’t have enough savings? When you don’t have enough savings in your emergency fund to cover a tech repair, you can use your credit card. After charging the repair to your card, you can pay down your balance later on. 

Online Loans

Your credit card isn’t the only alternative that you can turn to when you don’t have enough savings in your emergency fund. You could look into same business day online loans as a backup plan, too. As long as you meet the qualifications, you can apply for a same business day loan online. You just might get approved for one.

With an approved loan, you can use borrowed funds to cover the emergency expense in a short amount of time. Once the emergency is resolved, you can direct your energy toward the loan’s steady repayment plan. 

Extended Warranties

You can take certain steps to extend your manufacturer’s warranty past its original deadline. If you use a credit card to pay for your laptop, you may be able to automatically double that coverage time. In this case, you’ll have two years’ worth of coverage instead of one. Check your credit card’s policy to see whether this extended warranty is available.

Another way that you can extend the coverage is by signing up for an extended warranty plan through a retailer. This is paid plan will let your coverage continue after the original warranty’s deadline. These extended warranty plans tend to offer coverage for situations beyond manufacturing defects. You might get coverage for problems like accidental water damage, loss or theft. 

The Downsides of Extended Warranty Plans

Extended warranty plans offer some clear benefits, but they also come with downsides. One downside is that your plan will not make every single service free. Your repairs and replacements may not get full coverage and get discounted rates instead. 

Extended warranty plans tend to have strict rules about qualifying damages. You might find that your laptop problems are technically exempt from coverage.

Finally, it could cost you less to pay for the repairs out of pocket than to maintain your subscription fees over the longterm. 

You never know when you’ll need to bring your laptop in for repairs. So, prepare to pay for those repair costs before they happen.