I can remember the old days, the simple days when buying a consumer electronics product or appliance meant that you’d get to the cash register and their big question was “how do you want to pay for that?” Not any more, though: the big question of the twenty-first century is “did you want to buy an extended service warranty with that?”

You’ve heard it too. In fact, you can even buy extended service warrantees here on line. Just Google “extended warranty” and be prepared for thousands of questionable sites pushing various bad deals. Because, don’t be confused about it, in almost every single case, extended service warranties are a very bad deal for the consumer.

But for the corporation, they’re manna from heaven, a windfall of profits that can even be woven into corporate spreadsheets to make the entire business more profitable.

The two biggest companies in this space are…

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