You always hear complaints about Dell's Customer Service and sometimes you wonder if it's worth getting the warranty plan. Well, I've always gone to Dell and purchase my computers pre-built ... true, it's a little more costly than building it yourself, but I don't have the time to fix it. So, I go to Dell for my computer needs and I always get an extended warranty with every computer.

This is where the warranty pays off. My wife's laptop recently experienced a hard-drive failure and I was so glad when I saw that I still had warranty time on the laptop. So I contacted customer service and told them the error message I've gotten from the diagnostics. Dell responded that they're going to send me a blank replacement laptop hard drive within 2-3 business days.