Check your credit card’s guide to benefits before you pay for a store’s extended warranty. Many cards add a year to the manufacturer’s warranty at no extra cost on items bought with the card, so the store’s plan can duplicate coverage you already have. Keep the receipt and warranty in case the item breaks.
The pitch usually comes at the register. You’ve picked out a refrigerator or a laptop, and the cashier asks whether you want to protect it for a few more years. Before you answer, know what your card already covers.
Chase’s Freedom and Sapphire cards add one year to eligible manufacturer’s warranties of three years or less. The American Express Gold Card adds up to a year to warranties of five years or less.
Charge a $900 refrigerator with a one-year warranty to one of those cards, and a breakdown the manufacturer would have fixed in year one is covered in year two. A 2026 survey by the trade newsletter Warranty Week found that refrigerator plans sold by online retailers, which ran one to eight years, averaged 11.3% of the price, or about $100 on that fridge. So pay for a plan only for what it covers beyond the card’s year.
Buying the plan can even cost you the card’s year. Chase’s coverage starts only after any plan you buy runs out and ends four years after the purchase, so a plan that runs through year four leaves the card nothing to add.
To check your own card, open its guide to benefits or call the issuer, and read the limits and exclusions along with the coverage. Chase pays up to $10,000 per item and $50,000 per account, and it excludes used items, software, and motorized vehicles. The benefit covers breakdowns. Theft and accidental damage fall under a separate benefit, purchase protection.
If your card has it, pay with that card and keep the itemized receipt, the card statement, and the manufacturer’s warranty together. When the item fails after the manufacturer’s coverage ends, call the number in your benefits guide before you pay for a repair. The company handling the claim may send you to an authorized repair shop or replace the item. Chase wants the claim within 90 days of the failure.
Before your next big purchase, find out which card in your wallet adds the extra year, and make it the one you hand the cashier.
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