With the year-end holidays approaching, I’ve been inundated with a barrage of the typical, “You should purchase our extended warranty” sales pitches.  These have always bothered me.  Either the product is reliable or it isn’t.  Why should I have to pay extra to ensure the product is going to work? Why doesn’t the manufacturer have the backbone to stand behind their product? If it doesn’t work, I should be able to return it.

This got me thinking.  Why haven’t other industires picked up on this?  When was the last time you watched a bad movie or read a boring book and said something like, “That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

What if movie theaters or book stores offered extended warrantees on their products? How many times have you been into about 50 pages of a book and can’t tell whether it’s going to be worth the time to finish?  Sometimes it is, but other times it just keeps going downhill. I need some kind of insurance I should keep going.

Here’s my proposal.  If the price of a movie is $10, I’ll be happy to plop down an additional two bucks as insurance that the movie will be good.  If not, I should get my money back (they can keep my two bucks).  If I really like it, I’d be happy to fork over the additional few dollars.  I won’t  be able to get my wasted time back, but at least it will make me feel better that I didn’t get totally ripped off.