One Further Note on IBM Service

I blogged the other day about the nice service I got on having my IBM laptop repaired. The second commenter on the post, “Kent,” wrote this:

Why is the co-author of Freakonomics buying overpriced insurance/ warranty for a computer?!

He then goes on to cite our friend Tim Harford as arguing that add-on insurance for things like computers, cell phones, etc., is “grotesquely inflated.”

That may be true — but, for the record, I didn’t buy any such insurance for my ThinkPad. The repair was done under the original manufacturer warranty. It’s interesting to me that Kent’s assumption was otherwise; I’m not sure why that is so.

FWIW, the comments about my IBM experience here, on Consumerist, were in general so pro-IBM that I wondered if they’ve got some BzzAgents working for them. But if that were the case, they probably would have hit the comments on our blog a little harder.