Recently I had a reason to contact DELL customer service. I had bought a laptop few months ago. The power adapter conked out during warranty period. Not a big deal. These things do go wrong.

I chose to contact DELL using their online chat facility. Their web site is pretty good. It can detect your computer id if you permit it. That id will speed up getting technical support. That was neat. BTW, that id is also put on the back of the laptop where you can find laptop serial number. That service tag id is the social security number of computer. Have that handy. All communication with DELL is done using that.

First online chat person was helpful. He had to determine if it was battery or the power adapter that was the problem. One step was for me to restart the computer and check for some BIOS setting. So, I had to end that chat session. He was nice enough to provide his name and id so that I could try to request for the same person when I reconnected for online chat support.

Unfortunately when I reconnected the same person was not available. The other support person was equally helpful. Walked me through their regular process and determined that most probably it was power adapter that was defective which was causing batter not charge. Turned out be true.

Great thing was how quickly they processed the replacement. Once they confirmed and agreed to replace, I got my replacement in less than 2 days excluding the weekend. They shipped using DHL. Kept me posted on the process using their automated e-mails so that I could stay on top of the process. Their supply chain system seems to so well oiled. It was a pleasure. As part of warranty replacement, I have to return the defective part. They enclosed DHL label for return shipment. I just need to put back the old adapter and ship it back to them. How much more easier this can get?

I certainly recommend DELL based on this experience. I certainly did not want anything to go wrong. But, things do go wrong. When they do, having someone like DELL take care of your concerns promptly is worth the business you give it to them.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 8:52 PM EDT

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Firefox version 3 beta is available for sometime. I started using it for last few days. It's been good.

Ever since I switched to Firefox 3 years ago from IE, I have never gone back. It is such a nice browser. Browsing is so smooth. So fast and it loads in no time. Compare that with IE. With every new version, it has become slower and uglier. I use IE to browse only those pages in some Indian languages which Firefox does not seem to render fonts correctly. I am sure there is some setting which can be changed or some additional fonts to install. I have not done it well or simple tasks such as changing encoding does not work. Another place I am forced to use IE is to watch movies online from Netflix. Their DRM scheme works only in IE and you can not watch movies online using Netflix. That's about it and rest all only using Firefox.

Firefox version 3, performance seems to have further improved. Seems faster and smoother for most of the pages. I would have preferred UI to have remained same. Some things they have changed are not very intuitive. For example, home button has disappeared. You can get it back but it is not very clear. I had to Google to find out how. Another pet peeve is the disappearance of nice separate menu item for bookmarks for live feeds. That has its own tool bar now but is not that user friendly. I can live with those annoyances for better performance.

So far no problems. Being beta, it is bound to have some issues. They have built a nice feedback utility which can transfer back the information if and when the browser crashes. That's neat. So far in last 3 days, it crashed only once.

I hope a day will come when I do not ever have to use IE. It's such a dog of a browser.

Cheers to Firefox and Mozilla for such a nice browser and for free.

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Posted by Mahesh at 3:45 PM EDT

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What can $2 buy? Answer is troubled banks such as Bear Sterns. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080317/jpmorgan_bear_stearns.html.

This is amazing and should be a great study for students for finance. If you look at the balance sheet of Bear Sterns. JP Morgan which acquired them paid only for cash or close it. So what happened to other assets. With little knowledge of finance and banks that I have, I think most of the other assets are loans. With sub prime mess, all those loans are worth nothing. Thus effectively taking them away from firm's value. Loans and receivables are only as good as your ability to recollect them.

Normally, when a company acquires another company, they pay more than the book value as a premium. In this case, price is less than book value. This is the case of negative goodwill (goodwill as in finance).

How many more banks will follow the suit? All excesses have to come to an end. Correct? We saw dot com bubble. Now real estate bubble. History repeats.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:54 PM EDT

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Politicians and politics do not interest me much. However, this week a politician or more than that a good regulator I had come to admire faded away into oblivion. That's sad. By now, you may have guessed it. The man is Eliot Spitzer, ex- governor of New York.

I admired Spitzer when he went after financial services industry. That was the time when mutual fund companies, brokers all played with our money to their benefits. Mutual funds companies traded our money in and out - many times against the set policies of the funds. They helped make a great deal of money for the brokers they used to trade funds. In the net, we lost out in reduced gains and in many cases lost out big time.

Spitzer was the attorney general of New York back in those days. He went after these irregularities methodically and won the admiration of many people like me who felt helpless. Helpless because for small investors options were limited. And among the options we had mutual funds seemed the best. People whom we had trusted our money with doing this kind of things.

It was due to Spitzer's no holds barred approach which reined in these hoodlums of the industry. He made them pay huge fines. A little of which was used to compensate people who were the victims of malpractice. More than anything he was successful in instilling a sense of fear and responsibility on wall street. Bravo for all that.

Later Spitzer became the governor of NY. Even after he became governor, he kept a watchful eye on anything out of ordinary in financial sector.

I wish he had not destructed himself the way he did by getting entangled in sex scandal. Too bad. Human weakness got better off of him. If he is genuinely a good man, destiny will forgive him although it may look like his career is over for good. I hope it turns out be like that and Spitzer comes back to public life after doing (moral) time for his mistakes.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 6:51 PM EDT

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Stock market has been swinging violently off late. No wonder history repeat and so are our mistakes. It is sad to see people emptying their money from stocks and stock mutual funds avoid loses. What we do not realize is by withdrawing money during market downturns, we are following worst way to invest - "buy high. sell low." People re-enter the market once again when the stocks go up. Making same mistakes again. Buying high. Selling low.

I have always wondered why people get into stock markets if they do not have stomach and patience in the first place. First of all, if you do not have excess money after you have put aside money for emergencies, no point in investing money in the market. It takes decades of patience and perseverance to make money in the market. If you can invest for a long haul, diversified portfolio can yield 8-10%. That's about it.

I think people have some money and instead of keeping it aside for emergencies, they invest all that they have in market and get nervous when the market goes down. Who can blame them? If you have invested your emergency fund in the market and if the market goes down, it can make anyone nervous.

Invest funds excess of your emergency reserve and that you do not need at least for next 5 years. Once you invest in the market, stay put for a long haul. If you buy individual stocks, cut your losses. It is far better to limit losses than hope that you will somehow recover the losses. It is true that overall market comes up but not individual stocks.

By buying and selling frequently, you are making others rich at your expenses. All those trading costs add up and affect returns.

Once again basic principles if you want to dabble in individual stocks.

1) It is difficult to manage more than a dozen stocks at a time.

2) Buy value stocks. Value stocks are good stocks which are trading around 15 P/E ratio.

3) Cut your losses. Rule of thumb is to sell a stock if it falls by 5%. Set an automatic stop order to sell at 5% drop as soon as you buy the stocks.

4) Lock in gains. Set a trailing stop order once the stock appreciates by 10%. By setting trailing stop, you will lock in some profits and minimize loses.

5) Trade less. Even with discount brokers, trading costs add up.

6) Remember to write off losses in tax returns.

7) Put only a small percentage of your assets in individual stocks. As an individual investors, out abilities are limited by how much time and effort we can spend researching the stocks compared to full time traders and their support systems. Rule of thumb - 20% of your total assets. If you have 100,000 to invest, it is wise to keep individual investments to less than 20,000.

8) Park rest of your money in diversified portfolio of stock and bond mutual funds and forget about intermittent market changes.

It is easy to make decent money with basic discipline and commonsense. It is just that simple things are always complex for us.

Very best with your portfolio.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:12 AM EDT

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Even in these days when majority of the communication is done by e-mail, on certain occasions need arises to use a fax. This is especially the case when someone asks you to sign something and fax it. You can buy a fax machine and use it, if you want to spend money. Otherwise, services like Fax Zero are very useful.

Fax Zero offers free Internet based fax service. 2 faxes per day are free. If you have additional faxes to send, you can buy additional services. Works very well. You simply upload the document, you want to fax and enter the fax number and hit send. You will get a confirmation e-mail in no time. After you confirm the e-mail by clicking the embedded link, you are done. Within a few minutes, you will receive an e-mail to let you know the status of your fax. If the fax machine on the other end is fine, your fax should go through just fine.

When we normally fax, normally the document has our signature. How to capture signature on a word document? I used a simple technique. Just sign clearly on a piece of paper, take picture of the paper with the highest resolution possible with maximum zoom. Edit the picture and make it a nice small jpeg picture and insert it into document. If you do a good job, when you print or fax the document with signature inserted, it looks perfect as though you have signed it. Another way is to scan your signature to get the jpeg. Either way works fine.

If services like Fax Zero can save me a trip (& money) to Kinkos or Mailboxes etc., I am all for it.

Thanks for the great free service Fax Zero.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:02 AM EDT

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Recently read 'Dadagiriya Dinagalu' a three volume set by Sridhar Murthy aka Agni Sridhar. The books are in my native Indian language Kannada. 'Dadagiriya Dingalu' roughly means 'my days in the mob'.

Agni Sridhar is the editor of Kannada weekly tabloid Agni (Fire). Journalism is his latest profession. For over 2 decades he was a prominent figure in India's IT hub Bangalore's underworld.

Probably it is the first time any mob boss has written his own biography. There are several books on mob people by other people. It is rare that the mob figure himself has written about his own life story.

Makes a very interesting read for those who have interest and followed mob scene in Bangalore. First volume introduces the author and his entry into crime world. The first volume ends with an era. The era of Kotwal Ramachandra who was once the uncrowned king of Bangalore underworld. During late 70s and early 80s, he had created such a menace in Bangalore with tacit support from politicians and police that there are legends about his mafia exploits.

Second volume traces the rise of Sridhar with another mob boss M.P.Jairaj. After eliminating Kotwal, Sridhar became a trusted aide of MP Jairaj. Second volume ends with the elimination of M.P.Jairaj and the introduction of the most colorful of all mob bosses Muthappa Rai. Muthappa Rai brought true Bombay style gangsterism to Bangalore as he was closely associated with Bombay underworld. Muthappa Rai is credited to have introduced gun culture to Bangalore underworld prior to which only crude weapons such as swords and knives ruled the roost.

Sridhar as he claims in the books is a well read and well educated person. Due to circumstances he had to enter and stay in mafia. He makes his stance clear in several cases. Very open and candid style. These books I am sure to have opened several Pandora's boxes as many still living figures from police, politics and other walks of society prominently figure. Sridhar writes without any apparent malice or favor against his foes or friends. That is refreshing.

Sridhar claims to have left all mafia associations behind him and has become respected journalist. Hope it is true. Hope he pens many good books in the future. He certainly has what it takes to write good books.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:07 PM EST

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Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. - William Arthur Ward

When we feel grateful to someone or something, it is very important to make sure that we convey that. It is a simple act and goes a long way in making sure that our ability to feel grateful remains good. As they have been finding in studies, people who are grateful for all they have are happier. Put other way, one of the easiest ways to feel good is count your blessings.

Some people complain that being alive itself is a blessing. If we continue to count all such obvious facts as blessings, then what is the use. Yes, being alive is indeed a blessing and we should be grateful for that. If you do not want to count such things like being able to have food on table, being alive, being healthy as blessings, nothing will matter in the long run. Look at hale and hearty people at one moment and after sometime they may be dead in some meaningless incident. So, most of the things that we take for granted deserve our gratitude.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 5:13 PM EST

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"Life is 'present perfect' and not 'future tense'."

What a beautiful quotation? Hat's off to the creativity of the person who came up with this. Aspects of English grammar so well arranged to give a meaning that can give a new perspective when we are worried about the future.

Dale Carnegie uses a quotation from Jesus Christ in one of his books. Jesus prayed - Lord, give us this day our daily bread. Jesus did not pray for bread for the future or did not say anything about the days in the past when bread may not have been given or given bread was not good enough. Stress free life is possible only when we are able to limit our concerns to one day at a time. This does not mean we should not plan for future but worrying about future does not make any sense despite your best intentions. Things change and we can not possibly see all those changes. Making very specific plans for the distant future based on little information we have today is probably a waste of time. What is needed is a general guideline, specific goal and a rich collection of options to explore.

Another incident Dale Carnegie uses is that of a lesson he learnt from seeing the railway depart from a station. The guard and the driver set out of the station as soon as the first light turns green. They do not wait until all the lights to the destination are green. That does not happen anyway. Somewhere on the way, they are going to encounter a red light and have to stop till it turns green and so on. Starting on anything till everything is perfect is like asking for guarantee that we will get bread everyday for a year. Even if this request is granted, we may lose out on better things that may become available during those days.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 8:07 PM EST

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Sometime back, I wrote a couple of post about my dealing with car insurance company. I had a car accident in Nov 07 and then had to go through the process of getting the claim settled. My insurance was with Mercury Insurance. Now that all the processing is over, I thought it is time to record my feedback about my insurance carrier.

Honestly, I did not expect things to go so smoothly with insurance claim settlement. Mercury offers great rates compared to other insurance companies. Their costs are at least 10-15% less than what is offered by competitors. So, I was thinking you get what you pay for. If a insurance company is charging you low premiums, they will try to squeeze you when you file a claim. At least that's how I thought and shuddered when I was in a major accident and car was totaled. I feared they would low ball and give me a short shrift. How wrong I was.

I am happy to report that Mercury and the professionals I dealt with turned out to be fantastic. They offered a very fair price for my 2002 Honda Accord V6, provided adequate rental car support, completed the paper work as quickly as possible, always available for questions, promptly returned my calls, worked relentlessly with the other insurance company to get me my deductible as I was not at fault. How refreshing it is to deal with a honest insurance company in this era when honesty and insurance never seem to go together.

Despite all this, I hope no one has to ever go through this experience. If not anything, it is extremely stressful and time consuming. Too much paperwork.

My insurance company Mercury Insurance was very fair. It was a different matter with the other insurance company. They gave me fair bit of run around to decide on the fault. Ultimately they decided that their policy holder was at fault.

I recommend Mercury Insurance. Their premiums are probably the lowest. Coverage is good. Web site is very good. Provide several discounts.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 7:49 PM EST

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"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

Pain is part of life. Suffering comes from how one reacts to pain. We can not control the stimuli but we can certainly control the response. Don't take it too literally. Physical pain and suffering are different. This quotation mainly related to mental pain and suffering. Life is full of upsets. If we can remain detached, suffering does not have to immediately follow the pain. Buddha said - you are what your thoughts are.

No pain, no gain. True. Let there be as much pain as we are entitled to but let there also be wisdom to see pain as it is and not get unnecessary suffering.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 7:45 PM EST

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If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. - Donald H. Rumsfeld (former secretary of Defense)

Another quote which goes along with this is - "Nobody kicks a dead dog."

To the detached, criticism is nothing but another feedback. Same as appreciation. Criticism is good. Always welcome it. Sometimes people refrain from criticism because we threaten them saying 'put up or shut up'. We should not always challenge people to come up with something better if they do not like what we are doing or how we are doing. Even if people do not have better idea or if they are not able to articulate their ideas, even if they feel in their gut something wrong about what we are doing, it is in our own interest to ask them to critique us. Their very act of criticism may help us find for ourselves what may be wrong. So, let's encourage people to criticize us freely. As long as it is not personal, criticism is good.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:43 PM EST

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Knowledge is not power. Knowledge applied is power. Knowledge is what you know. Skill is what you can do. Action is the transformer what converts knowledge to skill. If we look at successful people, we will find most them are very action oriented. We can also see many successful people never give up. They are always trying to run. If the can't run, they try walking. If they can't walk, they try to crawl. Whatever they never give up. They are constantly trying. Action establishes a continuous feedback loop.They try something. It works or it does not work. Either way, we get feedback if what we are trying works or not. We can change accordingly. 'Karma Yoga' essentially teaches the same thing. Keep trying. If it does not work first time. OK. Gather yourself up and try it some other day. Do not give up. One danger with accumulation of more and more knowledge is lack of action as we start off with a diffidence thinking if something works on not. This does not mean that we should give up trying after acquiring knowledge. We should use knowledge to eliminate such actions which others have already proved do not work. Knowledge and action in imbalance result in waste of knowledge.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:23 PM EST

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A few days back I wrote about M2Mags (see below). Finally got the rebate after sending one final e-mail in which I told them I would approach BBB or other consumer protection agencies. I do not know what worked, they finally sent the rebate of $10. This is after 4 months of going back and forth. Many weeks of total silence. These companies and their rebates simply suck. As I said before, I can understand companies holding back money to help their operations. But, if you do not have any intention of paying in reasonable time, why promise in the first place???

============================================================================

Beware of M2Mags Rebate

You may come across an offer to subscribe to free magazines or get a $10 rebate when you shop online. You may want to consider, getting the mags instead of $10 rebate. When it comes cash rebate, this company M2Mags sucks big time. I have tried contacting them so many times after duly completing all the paperwork and they have never sent any rebate. Once I got an e-mail from someone who said she would look into it and then from there it seems to have gone into a black hole. In the past when I came across such magazine rebates (from some other company), I went for magazines and been getting the magazines without any problem. No wonder cash and kind are not the same.

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:14 PM EST

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Sri Eknath Easwaran (www.easwaran.org) introduced a very simple program called 8 point program to find peace in this mad world. His 8 point program draws best points common to all spiritual disciplines and puts into simple 8 points which if followed with sustaining enthusiasm and regularity is sure to improve your well being. I can say that with personal experience after having followed it for more than 5 years now. I do not call myself the die-hard follower or extremely diligent follower of this program. Even with mediocre practice of this program, benefits I have received from this program immense. Generally improved outlook towards life, resilience to face day-to-day challenges, increased peace level are some of the biggest gains.

What are 8 points.

1) Meditation

2) Spiritual reading

3) Putting other's first (or putting the interest of other people before yours own)

4) One pointed attention

5) Slowing down

6) Spiritual companionship

7) Training the senses

8) Repetition of the mantra

Whether you are spiritual aspirant or someone who is wholly centered on improving your own well being, this program gives you a great start.

I came across this program and one point - spiritual reading- got me hooked. I have been a voracious reader all along. Prior to coming across this program I was reading a lot anyway. However, most of my reading back then was what I today call junk. Good amount of reading pertained to my education. That was not all that bad. Other category of reading related to reading all sorts of sensational news in print or on the Internet. When I started reading wonderful books from Sri Eknath Easwaran, my time started getting spent well. I have read most of his books. Many books over and over again. The wisdom which is present in enormous amounts has trickled little by little in me. How wonderful.

There are some points in 8 points I have not practiced much. But they are all important. It is very important to make sure that we follow this program without ignoring any points. Even if it is not possible to follow all points of 8 points equally well, we can not afford to ignore any of them all together. We should try to follow each of them as well as possible.

When this world is full of many bogus program aimed at well being, this 8 point program is so refreshing. It is deceivingly simple at the outset and it is easy for us to suspect if it really packs the punch. We can only verify for ourselves.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:41 PM EST

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Pramahamsa Yogananda was an Indian sage. Probably one of the earliest sages from India to start his movement in the US. Details about him and his organization can be found at his web site - http://www.yogananda-srf.org/

This book is written by him. Unlike many other spiritual books, this really traces his transformation from an ordinary man to one of the most renowned yogis of recent times.

They say yogis do not become. They are made from common men who receive divine grace as determined by God. Some receive in one life time and many others after several life times.

The book is full of breath taking experiences that Yogananda underwent during the transformation. More breath taking are the experiences that Yogananda's teachers and their teachers underwent. Yogananda does a great job of trying his best to explain mystical experiences using the body of scientific knowledge that he was familiar with drawing from quantum mechanics to modern space theory.

Another highlight of the book is a set of rare photographs which show Yogananda's visit to famous people such as Gandhi etc.

This is a highly inspiring book. Easy to read. Very honest narration. Good read for anyone regardless of whether they are on spiritual pursuit or otherwise. It can serve as a good navigator to go through this life's journey.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:46 PM EST

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Came across this wonderful quote while listening to one of Dale Carnegie's audio books.

"You get ulcers not from what you eat. But, from what is eating you."

It is true to some extent that 'hurry, worry, curry' cause heartburn and when not taken care of result in ulcers. Although hurry and curry may contribute to ulcers, chances are worry is the main culprit. Worry is what eating us and it is bound to cause all sorts of problems.

There is no easy route to overcome worry. Some lucky people are pre-disposed with tendency to worry less. God bless them. They should be thankful to God. We can probably observe such people and learn a lesson or two and understand why these people worry so little.

One thing probably we notice is that they are even keeled in the sense that they are ok if things go their way or other way. Most of the worry is when we are hell bent on getting what we think we want. We do not know many times that what we desperately want is not really good for you. We do not understand this because we do not see the full picture. But, God sees it and gives us only those things which are good for us. So, developing some sort of detachment from our likes and dislikes may go a long way in reducing worry. Of course, this does not mean that we take fatalistic attitude. We just stop worrying about the outcome. We do our job and leave the result to God. Easier said than done. However, coming to this understanding and accepting it will go a long way before we can train ourselves to detach from results.

Secondly thing we may notice in people who worry less is their ability to always absorb themselves in something they truly enjoy. It may be their work or a hobby or keeping themselves busy with family. When we do not have time to think about ourselves, our wants, our likes and dislikes, we naturally tend to worry less. We can probably spend the whole day keeping ourselves busy. What about the night? Worries swarm as soon as head hits the pillow. If we are not fully tired from days work, worries tire us down before we get into sound sleep. One thing that can help is to read something inspirational before we go to bed. Slow reading naturally induces sleep as long as what we are reading is not a sensational novel. When we start feeling sleepy, it is time to make sure that sleep does not go away when worries hit us back again. That's why it may be useful to turn on some soothing music as soon as you keep your book aside and turn off the lights. Soothing music at a very low volume is sure to put you to good nights sleep. There are many music CDs that you can find which are specifically developed for this purpose.

Let's wish each other all the good luck in overcoming the worry. If we can do that, little bit of curry and hurry can harm us any more.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 10:47 PM EST

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Happy new year to all. Best wishes for a prosperous and healthy future in 2008.

Thanks to many of you who took time to leave comments or e-mail me. It's been very heartening to know that some of you benefited from my random ramblings. Thanks for such notes. Keep them coming either via comments or via e-mail at mahesh_uh@hotmail.com.

Once again wishing everybody a very happy new year. May all your wishes come true.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 10:44 PM EST

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"Relationship between two individuals should be like fish and water. Not like the relationship between fish and fisherman."

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Posted by Mahesh at 4:49 PM EST

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Extended warranty for automobiles seems to be next only to used cars business in terms of negative publicity. You can search on the web and you will so many people complaining and cursing extended warranty companies which did not pay legitimate claims by using some fine print or made it so difficult that the customer could not wait them to resolve the issue and went ahead and paid for the repairs and some flimsy companies even went belly up.

I had not really thought about extended warranty. However, soon after my previous car - 2002 Honda Accord V6- was out of warranty, my repair shop recommended that lower ball joints be replaced. I am not sure if it was really required or was simply ripped off. Since it was related to safety, I went ahead and had it replaced. Cost of the repair was around $500. That's when it really started sinking into me that even reliable Japanese cars can lead to costly repairs. What if transmission were to fail or engine or something other than routine parts such as brakes, bulbs, tires etc. It is one thing to plan for known wear and tear and totally a different thing to suddenly be hit with an expensive repair bill which can go up to a few thousand dollars in case engine or transmission rebuild.

In 2006, I researched for extended warranties. There are literally thousands of companies selling variety of auto warranties. It seems to me many are simply fronts to the same business entity based on their advertising pitch. Most of the extended warranties are exclusionary type. Unlike bumper to bumper warranty you get on a brand new car, these extended warranties specify in finest detail and finest print, what is covered and what is not covered. It looks like they want to sell you something so complicated that when time comes, they can give you a run from pillar to post with all that legal jargon. What do you do at that time? Fight with them or pay for the repairs and get moving.

After some research, Warranty Direct (www. warrantydirect.com) stood out for several reasons. First they had many types of extended warranty plans. Each one clearly explained so that you can make a reasonable decision on what plan to buy. Easy quote process. Excellent web site. Variety of payment options and plans in case if it is important. One of the plans which covered most of the items was closest to bumper to bumper warranty. Exclusions were routine stuff like brakes, bulbs only. All other parts and repairs fully covered. No fine print and legal jumbo mumbo. Even the price was very reasonable. Like $1275 for 100, 000 miles or 8 years whichever came first. Seemed like less than dollar a day for 4 years coverage. Also impressive was the requirement for them to examine your car before they decided whether it made sense to sell the warranty. Fair enough. If you are serious about selling extended warranty and honest, you want to make sure the car you are going to cover is a fair deal for you and the customer. They waive this examination if you buy the extended warranty when your car is still in the factory warranty. Since my car was out of warranty for close to an year, I had to have this exam and they charge you extra for this. Like $90. They will send an expert mechanic who can come to wherever your car is, does a through check up, takes it for a ride (you can go with him) and then files a report. You will get a copy of the report. If your vehicle passes, you pay the quoted fee and your vehicle is covered under extended warranty.

Luckily there was no occasion for me to make any claims against my extended warranty. My car was in an accident recently and was totaled. Due to this, I remembered another positive point from Warranty Direct. They let you cancel extended warranty anytime and refund you pro-rata. Good feature. I was not sure how it was going to be to get my money back. I went to their web site, called the customer service line. Their rep gave me a fax number to fax my request for cancellation and refund. I did that and waited for a week or so. Then called them again and was told it would take up to 4 weeks. In less than 2 weeks, I see today they have promptly credited the refund to my credit card. No hassles. Refund seems reasonable. I was midway through the 4 year period and I got little more than half the money back. May be because I had not put much miles anyway. Not sure what formula they use. I am happy to get more than half as I go by time and not necessarily how close I was to 100,000 miles.

I can not really say what would have been the experience if I had to claim warranty services if something were to go wrong and I had to have it repaired. You can search Internet and you will find experiences of other car owners. I can certainly recommend them from the point of smooth business transaction and professionalism. Also, not many companies seem to offer the comprehensive plans they offer. Extended warranty comes with basic road side assistance, trip break coverage etc. Prices are reasonable. Seems like a ethical company in the industry which is marred by some many scandals and bogus companies. You can also transfer the warranty to the new owner for a small transaction fee. This should make it very attractive to prospective buyers if you want to sell your car.

If you want better extended warranty, it makes sense to buy the extended warranty from the manufacturer of your car. If you buy it from the dealer when you buy the car, chances are you will pay a steep mark up. But, there are several other dealers who have taken extended warranty seriously and sell the same factory extended warranty at much competitive price. For example, you can buy Toyota or Honda factory extended warranty from say Bernardi Warranty (also a dealer in MA). I have not yet purchased for my new Toyota Camry. But, prices seem very reasonable, extended warranty plans are good (from most comprehensive to very basic) and you can get repairs done by any factory dealer or other mechanic.

All said and done, I prefer "best warranty is one which you will never have to claim". It is more of peace of mind than anything else. Who wants to have the hassles of a broken car. Give me a car which runs well for a long time with least maintenance. Luckily for us, most of the cars these days are like that. May they get even better.

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:51 PM EST

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