This week, we're reviving an old series, where we shop around for electronics and appliances, and collect both qualitative and quantitative data on the extended service contracts offered by a variety of online retailers. With the holiday shopping frenzy in full swing, we priced out 130 television service contracts on 19 different websites, for a variety of TVs across the market.

Perhaps it's not necessary to say this anymore, because every TV we saw for sale online met these criteria, but all of the TVs in our survey are flat screens, and all of them are considered "smart," meaning they can access the internet.

We surveyed LCD, LED, QLED, and OLED TVs, in the range of 50- to 65-inch diagonal. In total, our survey consisted of 36 different models, from 10 different TV brands.

These TVs could be purchased with a protection plans ranging from one to five years long. The 130 service contract offerings in our survey represent ten warranty administrators, eight obligors, and five insurance underwriters.

We found several regional retailers still administrating their own extended warranties, with their own service centers, repair networks, and underwriting, and three of them were even selling their own protection plans online (the rest were in-store only). We also found an obligor/administrator selling extended warranties on refurbished TVs, along with a major retailer that's now administrating its own extended warranties with its in-house service center.

Methodology

Our first step in this survey of television service contracts was to go to the major online electronics retailers, and identify the most popular TVs being pushed for holiday sales. We cross-referenced between the websites of Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart.

We chose two representative TVs, one LCD and one OLED, from two different brands, which were common enough that we could find them at almost every online retailer we surveyed. These two TVs were the Samsung UN65DU7200, a 65" mid-range LCD TV that ranged in price from $400 to $750, and the LG OLED65C4, a 65" high-end OLED TV that ranged in price from $1,400 to $1,700.

Once we identified our two representative TVs, we gathered data points including the make, model, size, and price of the TV, along with the price and duration of all the extended service plans offered on the same webpage as the TV listing. We then chose two or three more TVs from each site, until we had a representative sample of the service contract price ranges and offerings.

We gathered data from between two and five different TVs per site, varying based on a variety of factors, including the pricing model of the service contracts, the variety of service contract offerings, the option to buy service contracts from more than one administrator for certain brands, and other interesting quirks of each individual website.

Next, we opened the search to a wider variety of online TV retailers, using a list of the top 100 electronics retailers in the United States to identify websites to survey. This exposed us to many regional retailers we hadn't surveyed before. We included data from retailers that require membership for purchase, but we found some quirks in these data.

TV Service Contract Retailers

The 19 sites we surveyed were: Amazon, B&H, Best Buy, BJ's, Buydig, Costco, DataVision, Electronic Express, HSN, Jetson TV & Appliance, Micro Center, P.C. Richard & Son, QVC, Sam's Club, Samsung, Staples, Target, Tech for Less, and Walmart.

In addition to these 19 sites, we perused many more websites, on which we could not find any TV protection plans for sale. These included Sears, which used to have an impressive in-house extended warranty operation, but ceased this after declaring bankruptcy in 2018. We also found two more sites that used to sell extended warranties, hhgregg and Newegg, had stopped doing so.

Other websites that sold TVs, but did not offer extended warranties for them, included Office Depot, Kmart, Army-Air Force Exchange, Navy Exchange, along with regional retailers ABC Warehouse, and Abe's of Maine. We did not survey any stores that catered to selling TVs for commercial use.

We identified many regional chains around the United States that seemed to offer television service contracts, but only sold them in-store, not online. Some of these sites, including Cowboy Maloney's Electric City, based in Mississippi, and Grand Appliance & TV, based in Illinois, list what they sell online, but don't do any e-commerce.

Others, including RC Willey, based in Utah, and Abt Electronics, in the Chicago area, have their own service networks and administrate their own extended warranties, but only sell them in-store, not online.

We also found Nebraska Furniture Mart, which sells SquareTrade protection plans; Curacao, in southern California, Arizona, and Nevada, which sells protection plans through Centricity; and BrandsMart, in Florida and Georgia, which sells plans through ProtectAll USA and Arch Capital Group.

That's a total of seven regional electronics retailers, five with online shops, all of which sell extended warranties in-store only.

Speaking of regional retailers, some of the websites in our list of 19 might not be familiar to all of our readers. Most of these regional chains will ship nationwide, though. B&H is based in New York City, as is DataVision. P.C. Richard & Son is based nearby in Long Island, New York. Buydig has a brick and mortar in Edison, New Jersey. Electronic Express has stores in Tennessee and northern Georgia. And Jetson TV & Appliance has five locations in the area of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Extended Warranty Administrators

Across 19 online retailers, we encountered nine different obligor/administrator/underwriter teams. Most sites only offered protection plans from one administrator.

The most prevalent offerings across all the websites surveyed were from Allstate, which has owned SquareTrade since late 2016. After the acquisition, Allstate started underwriting SquareTrade protection plans. So even though some plans are advertised under the SquareTrade brand, and some are advertised under the Allstate brand, they all have the same administrator, CE Care Plan Corp., obligor, SquareTrade Inc., and underwriter, Allstate Insurance Company.

Selling Allstate branded service contracts packaged as "Allstate Protection Plans, serviced by SquareTrade, an Allstate company," we found B&H, Costco, HSN, QVC, Sam's Club, and Target. And selling SquareTrade branded protection plans, we found Walmart and Buydig.

Back in 2016, the last time we conducted a survey of this nature, Walmart was selling Asurion plans, while its membership-only subsidiary Sam's Club was using SquareTrade plans.

In 2024, Asurion was the administrator, obligor, and underwriter of the protection plans offered by three retailers in our survey, Amazon, BJ's, and Staples.

Back in 2016, we found that Amazon offered a competitive mix of plans from AmTrust, Assurant, and SquareTrade, but the retailer now seems to be exclusive with Asurion.

In addition to the classic fixed-duration protection plans, Amazon also sells a product called Asurion Complete Protect, which is a monthly subscription that "covers all eligible past and future purchases," which "renews monthly until canceled." For $16.99 per month, Asurion covers all electronics, appliances, toys, furniture, even jewelry, that are purchased on Amazon, up to one year prior to enrollment.

According to this Asurion press release from February 2024, Asurion Complete Protect is an expansion of the former Asurion Tech Unlimited plan offered through Amazon, which was a subscription-based protection plan that covered a narrower variety of electronics. Asurion Complete Protect seems to be a unique product in the television market, veering into the territory of home warranty, where we're seeing comprehensive, subscription-based plans becoming more popular (we'll explore these more when we price appliance service contracts in coming newsletters).

The only website we found offering service plans from more than one administrator was B&H, and the variety was only offered on TVs of a particular brand. While B&H generally offered Allstate protection plans, for Sony branded TVs, B&H's website also offered plans administrated by Servify, with obligor Northcoast Warranty Services, Inc. and underwriter Wesco Insurance Company. Servify administrates Sony's product warranty as well.

AIG is still the obligor, administrator, and underwriter of Best Buy's Geek Squad protection plans.

Back in 2016, Micro Center offered service plans through The Warranty Group. Since TWG was acquired by Assurant in 2018, Assurant is now the obligor and underwriter of Micro Center's plans. However, we were interested to find that Micro Center now administrates its own protection plans, and has its own in-house service center.

Assurant also administrates Samsung's product warranties, along with the extended warranties that Samsung sells in its online shop.

We found service contracts from New York-based extended warranty obligor and administrator Consumer Priority Service, which uniquely offers extended warranties on refurbished electronics as well as new ones, on the websites for DataVision and Tech for Less.

And finally, we found three regional retailers with online shops that administrate their own extended warranties: Electronic Express, based in Tennessee, Jetson TV & Appliance, based in Florida, and P.C. Richard & Son, based in New York.

Membership-Only Wholesale Clubs

We found some rather unique results from the three membership-only wholesale clubs we surveyed, Costco, Sam's Club, and BJ's.

It seems that the wholesale clubs are now offering free extended warranty coverage, either by offering longer manufacturer's product warranties, typically for low- to mid-range TVs, or by bundling in free extended warranty protection plans, for high-end TVs.

The typical product warranty for the 65" Samsung DU7200 was one year long, but all three big-box membership clubs offered a three year manufacturer's warranty as a "member bonus."

Sam's Club and Costco provided the three-year manufacturer's warranty, with no protection plan add-on option, while BJ's provided four years of coverage, because it adds a "BJ's Bonus Year" to every TV product warranty. BJ's did offer to sell a 3-year BJ's Protection Plan for this TV, but it's more or less made redundant by the 4-year product warranty coverage that's included.

In contrast, for the higher-end 65" LG OLED C4, priced at $1,500 on all three websites, each wholesaler bundled in a free extended protection plan with the product. Sam's Club offered a "Complimentary Allstate Protection Plan," which was a 5-year extended warranty that started at the date of purchase. Costco added a bonus year to the product warranty, along with an "Allstate 3-Year Protection Plan bundle included, for 5 years of total coverage." And BJ's similarly offered 5 years of total coverage, with a free 3-year BJ's Protection Plan, described on the site as a "1 year LG warranty, 3 years BJ's Protection Plus, 1 year BJ’s Bonus Year."

Survey Results

In total, we recorded 132 data points in our survey. 130 of those were service contract offerings, with the other two being the Costco and Sam's Club extended manufacturer's warranties for the 65" Samsung DU7200.

Figure 1 shows the prices of the 132 TVs in this survey, all of which were in the range of 50-inch to 65-inch diagonal. These TVs were 36 different models, from 10 different TV brands.

We surveyed 54 TVs under $500, 44 TVs between $500 and $1,000, and 34 TVs $1,000 to $2,000. We did not survey any luxury TVs over $2,000, nor did we include any TVs clearly designed for commercial use.

The 54 data points of TVs under $500 represented 16 different models, the 44 between $500 and $1,000 represented 12 models, and the 34 between $1,000 and $2,000 represented 8 different models.

Figure 2 shows the length of the 130 service contracts offered for these TVs.

We found one one-year protection plan, along with 28 two-year plans, which we categorized together. The most common service contract duration was three years.

While we did not find any service contracts that were longer than five years, we did find eight five-year plans that started when the product warranty ended, effectively providing six years of total warranty coverage. Five of these were Allstate plans from Walmart, two were Consumer Priority Service (CPS) plans through DataVision, and another one was a CPS plan through Tech for Less.

Figure 3 gets into more detail about the start date of these service contracts. Most plans start at the date of purchase of the TV, but a few begin once the manufacturer's product warranty ends.

For the service contracts that begin at the date of purchase, we looked deep into the terms and conditions to find that typically, while the manufacturer's warranty is in effect, any claims it covers are not covered by the protection plan. However, some of the plans cover things that the manufacturer's warranty does not, like shipping, in-home service, accidental damage, power surge, etc.

The plans that start once the manufacturer's warranty ends were the minority, and came from a few specific websites. The CPS plans sold by DataVision and Tech for Less start once the product warranty expires, as do the Allstate Protection Plans sold by Walmart. In addition, the bundled-in extended warranties provided by Costco and BJ's started once the manufacturer's warranty ended.

Interestingly, Walmart is unique in selling Allstate/ SquareTrade plans that start once the product warranty expires. In contrast, the Allstate plans sold by B&H, Buydig, Costco, HSN, QVC, Sam's Club, and Target all start at the date of purchase.

Short-Term Service Contracts

Our next four charts show the prices of the service contracts divided by the corresponding prices of the TVs, as a percentage, compared to the plan price. Each of the four charts depict one of the four service contract lengths detailed in Figure 2.

Figure 4 shows the price of the one- and two-year service contracts as a percentage of TV price.

The price pairings ranged from a low of $50 for a two-year Connect Device Protection & Tech Help Plan provided by Asurion on a $1,500 LG OLED TV at Staples (3%), to a $102 two-year Samsung Care+ plan provided by Assurant, on a $430 65" Samsung DU7200 TV (24%).

The average cost of a two-year plan was 12% of the TV price. Therefore, in this group, there were 21 offers below average, and eight offers above average.

In Figure 4, the outlier to the far right was a $190 two-year Alliance Warranty Solutions Extended Warranty for Televisions plan on a $1,500 65" LG OLED C4 TV from Electronic Express (13%). The other outlier, slightly further to the left, was a $170 Geek Squad TV Protection plan provided by AIG, on the same model TV for the same price, from Best Buy (11%).

Three-Year Service Contracts

Figure 5 shows the price of three-year protection plans as a percentage of TV price.

These price pairings ranged from a low of $110 for a three-year In-Home Coverage Warranty from Consumer Priority Service plan, on a $1,700 65" LG OLED C4 TV from DataVision (6%), to a $60 three-year Screen Protection Plan for HDTVs provided by Assurant, on a $250 Samsung TV from Micro Center (24%). Following the same pattern as the two-year service contracts, the lowest ratio was for an expensive, high-end OLED TV, while the highest ratio was for a cheap LCD TV.

The average cost of a three-year protection plan was 14% of the TV price. There were 28 plans below average, and 13 plans above average.

In Figure 5, the outlier furthest to the right was a $250 three-year Screen Protection Plan for HDTVs provided by Assurant, on a $1,300 LG OLED TV from Micro Center (19%).

The data point next from the right was a $230 Alliance Warranty Solutions Extended Warranty for Televisions plan on a $1,500 65" LG OLED C4 TV from Electronic Express (15%). If that sounds familiar, it's because this is the three-year version of the two-year outlier plan from Figure 4. Electronic Express offered two-, three-, four-, and five-year service contracts for each TV, the widest range of plan lengths we saw on any web store.

Four-Year Service Contracts

Figure 6 shows the price of four-year protection plans as a percentage of TV price.

The price pairings ranged from a low of $60 for a Connect Device Protection & Tech Help Plan provided by Asurion, on a $1,500 LG OLED TV from Staples (4%), to a high of $130 for a Samsung Care+ plan provided by Assurant, on a $430 65" Samsung DU7200 from Samsung's online retail site (30%).

The average cost of a four-year extended warranty was 16% of the TV price. There were 15 TVs below average, and 21 TVs above average.

The two outliers to the far right are a $300 four-year Alliance Warranty Solutions Extended Warranty for Televisions plan, on a $1,500 65" LG OLED C4 TV, once again from Electronic Express (20%), and a $290 four-year SquareTrade Protection Plan, on the same LG OLED model, priced at $1,440 from Buydig (20%).

Five-Year Service Contracts

Figure 7 shows the price of five-year protection plans as a percentage of TV price.

The ratios for the five-year plans ranged from a $129 Walmart Protection Plan provided by Allstate, on the 65" LG OLED C4 TV, priced at $1,400 from Walmart (9%), to a $80 Alliance Warranty Solutions Extended Warranty for Televisions on a $240 Vizio LCD TV from Electronic Express (34%).

The average cost of a five-year TV protection plan was 20% of the purchase price of the TV. There were 18 TVs above average, and just six TVs below average.

It's hard to tell, but there are two overlapping data points at the far right of Figure 7, because both of these five-year plans cost $300, which was 20% of the TV price. Both plans also happened to cover the same 65" LG OLED C4 TV, which cost $1,500 on both websites. One plan was the Geek Squad TV Protection plan, provided by AIG and sold by Best Buy, and the other was the Protection & Warranty plan sold by local Florida retailer Jetson TV & Appliance, which administrates its own extended warranties.

The Third Annual Warranty & Service Contract Innovations for Vehicle, Home, Smart Products & Consumer Goods

Join us for a deep dive into all key ingredients for creating winning warranty & service contracts at The Third Annual Warranty & Service Contract Innovations for Vehicle, Home, Smart Products & Consumer Goods, scheduled for March 26-27, 2025, at the Crowne Plaza© New Orleans French Quarter - Astor, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This innovative 2-track event covers all the key ingredients to create, execute and manage warranty & service contracts for: Vehicle and Home, Appliance, Mobile, Electronics & Other Consumer Markets

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Here are the exciting agenda highlights and the industry leaders who will be sharing best practices for end-to-end warranty and service contract solutions:

• Pre-conference Interactive Workshop: Service Contracts 101 - An A-Z Primer to Understanding & Successfully Navigating the Complexities of Extended Warranties & Service Contracts
• Panel Discussion: Integrating OEM Factory Warranty with Extended Warranty & Service Contracts
• Building Trust in Product Protection: Addressing Compliance Gaps, Enhancing Customer Loyalty, and Managing Renewal Programs for a Competitive Edge.
• Applications for AI: A Cross-Industry Exploration from Product Design, Call Center, Marketing & Sales to Loss Control and Claims

TRACK 1: Vehicle Industry Insights & Solutions

• Developing a Customer VSC Platform Within Your Brand
• Legislative and Regulatory Developments Impacting Vehicle Service Contracts and Protection Product Warranties
• Delivering World-Class Customer Experience Through Remote Vehicle Monitoring & Diagnostics Coupled with Total Cost of Ownership Management
• Why a Successful EV VSC Program Should Look Like an Autonomous Vehicle Program
• Reinsurance and Other Profit Participation Programs for Dealer — Benefits to Profitability, Sales and Retention
• Rethinking Our Claims Journey: Keys to Success to Lower Costs

Warranty Week News Flash: 3 Ten-minute Fast Fact Sessions: Vehicle, Home/Appliance & Mobile/Electronics

TRACK 2: Consumer Goods, Home & Smart Products Innovations

• Customer Insights on Extended Warranty Value Proposition
• Home Warranty Trends and Innovations — New Product, Distribution, Service & Technology
• Evolution of Home Warranty Distribution & Sales
• Building a Best-in-Class Service Program to Ensure Long-term Customer Value
• Legislative and Regulatory Developments Impacting Home and Consumer Goods Service Contracts
• Benefits of an Integrated Trade-In Solution

Industry-Specific Roundtable Discussion Groups

• Home & Appliance
• Vehicle
• Mobile & Electronics
• Diagnostics-based Underwriting and EV VSCs

Who’s Who Distinguished Speakers from These Companies:

• Warranty Week
• GM Financial
• Women of Warranty
• Hudson Automotive Group
• Subaru
• Danner Automotive Consulting (DAC)
• Allstate Protection Plans/Square Trade
• Excela Protect
• SAS
• Toyota Financial Services
• Hendrick Autoguard & NationsGuard
• GSFSGroup
• APCO Holdings
• Circuitry.ai
• VectorSolv
• Meenan P.A.
• SCIC
• Centricity
• Rely Home
• Brown & Brown
• Amber
• Deere & Company
• Sears Home Services
• Whirlpool
• Best Buy
• Armadillo
• Meta
• Ally Financial

Early Bird Expires February 7 — Register Today! Warranty Week Subscribers Save $300! Use Promotion Code WW300 When You Register.

www.globalwarrantyinnovations.com

This event is consistently rated as the best warranty & ESC conference to attend for education and networking!