How to Handle Laptop Repair Costs

Your laptop is precious to you. You don’t know what you’d do without it, even for a few days. But if your laptop ever needs to get repairs, you’ll have to contend with being separated from it for at least a few days — possibly longer. And then you’ll have to contend with the repair bill shortly after.

How can you handle these repair costs? Here are a few of your options.

Manufacturer’s Warranty

If your laptop is still under warranty, you may not be responsible for covering the repair costs whatsoever. The manufacturer’s warranty should cover any repairs or replacements that are related to manufacturing defects. This coverage will last until the warranty expires. Typically, the expiration date will be a full year after the product purchase.

Your warranty will only offer coverage for repairs for manufacturing defects and nothing else. If the repairs are needed because of accidental damage, like spilling liquids onto your laptop, the warranty will not help you. And if the repairs are deemed to be from wear and tear or personal customizations, you will also not receive any help.

A Credit Card Extended Warranty

If you use your credit card to pay for the laptop, you can increase the length of the original manufacturer’s warranty. Most credit card extended warranty policies offer to double the timeline of the manufacturer’s warranty. In the case that your laptop’s warranty lasted for a year, you would then get two years of coverage before having to pay for certain repairs or replacements out of pocket.

Before you assume that your credit card will help you save on laptop repairs, check the policy. Your card may have certain conditions for the coverage to go into effect. Do your research ahead of time.

A Paid Extended Warranty Plan

When you first purchased your laptop, you may have been given the option to sign up for an extended warranty plan. This is different from the warranty plan offered through credit card benefits. An extended warranty plan through a retailer is a paid subscription that you will manage on a monthly or annual basis. As long as you pay for this subscription, you will continue to have coverage for manufacturing defects, even after the original manufacturer warranty expires.

Paid extended warranty plans tend to offer more protections for customers. So, you may have partial coverage for repairs related to accidental damage, wear and tear and other circumstances that are otherwise exempt from a manufacturer’s warranty. Check your paid extended warranty plan to see what you can expect to pay for different repairs.

Your Options for Repair Costs Without Warranties

If your manufacturer’s warranty has expired, and you haven’t signed up for an extended warranty plan, you will have to handle your laptop repair costs out of pocket. This is where an emergency fund can help.

An emergency fund is a financial safety net that you can rely on to cover urgent expenses, including repairs for your essential electronics. If you don’t have an emergency fund already, you should start putting one together. The sooner that you have this safety net available, the better.

What if you don’t have enough savings in your emergency fund? Then, you may want to consider a borrowing solution like a personal line of credit. With a personal line of credit, you can request a withdrawal within your credit limit and use the temporary funds to cover your urgent repair costs in a short amount of time. If this option interests you, you should get details about what is a line of credit and what you need to qualify for one. The information could come in handy in the future.

It’s possible that your laptop won’t need any serious repairs. It could work perfectly fine for years. But just in case, you’ll want to know exactly how you can handle the repair costs!