Who Needs An Extended Warranty?

I never buy the extended warranty. Who needs it? With most things nowadays by the time that the basic warranty runs out, it's time to upgrade anyway. Besides, most of the time, you never encounter any serious problems that justify the warranty to begin with.

Towards the end of the summer, my Harley started making some funny noises. It sounded like things were a little loose in the engine. I didn't worry about it at first. I really wasn't riding the Harley that much anyway with all of the bicycling that I had been doing. But as fall wore on and I took the bike out for a couple of fall rides it really started to bother me. I finally got to the point where I decided it just wasn't right to ride the Harley until I had a chance to have it looked at.

The problem is that I was riding the Harley so infrequently that it seemed silly to spend a whole lot of money having it fixed. So, I just let it sit for a month or so. I had been meaning to get it in to the dealer for a while to have it looked at but just didn't get around to it until yesterday.

I told the service manager about the noise I was hearing and was fully expecting to have him tell me that there was really nothing wrong and that I was just imagining the noise. Even if there really was a problem I was expecting them to say that just because this is a place where they will bend over backwards to belittle you and make you feel like an ass.

So, I was surprised when I heard the service manager tell me that he heard what I was talking about. I was disappointed when he said it didn't sound good. I was frightened when he told me that it sounded like a piston knocking or slapping. Now fixing a knocking piston on a bike can't be as expensive as a fixing a knocking piston in a car, but still I imagine that we are talking upwards of a thousand dollars. I went home with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Of course, I was going to pay the money to have the bike fixed. This is, after all, my baby. We've been through a lot together. But it made me sick to think that I had let things get so bad to amount to such a costly repair.

There was still some hope. The service manager had given me an off-the-cuff diagnosis and said that he would have one of his technicians look at it in the morning. Maybe, just maybe, the technician would discover that the problem wasn't as serious as the service manager had imagined.

Fast forward to today... I just got off the phone with the service manager. The problem is that serious. But it turns out that in a fit of anxiety over spending $20,000 dollars on a motorcycle that I actually, against all odds, had the foresight to purchase the extended warranty. My bike is completely covered until May of next year. I had completely forgotten that I bought the extended warranty. It seems like such a long time ago that even when I remembered that I had paid for it, I was surprised that it was still active.

So, who needs an extended warranty? I guess I do :)