I disagree and would like to see evidence to support this claim. I admit my evidence is anecdotal, but when I assisted with computer repairs at a University, r

I disagree and would like to see evidence to support this claim. I admit my evidence is anecdotal, but when I assisted with computer repairs at a University, regardless of whether or not a user had broken the warranty sticker companies would do whatever was in their power to refuse service or provide improper/inadequate service on machines. As I often worked with foreign exchange students who really needed their machines repair as opposed to buying new ones, I would often act as an authorized intermediary for the students and would work with the manufacturer warranties directly. Numerous times consumers would be accused of having violated the warranty because of "broken warranty stickers" when we hadn't so much as removed the battery on laptops that still had detachable batteries. The machines would be returned to the student having been opened by the manufacturer and then the blame would be put on the student. Combine this with the fact that standard warranties are very short and even a paid for warranty often won't cover the most common damage to portable electronics (water damage), and I guess I'm wondering what you're even paying for. Warranty support is a sham for many companies, and often times the focus of warranty support is to find a way to dismiss the claim rather than honor it. There are some that are very good with their warranty support, but also quite a few that are horrible. Apple, for as controlling and mean as people make them out to be, only have moisture damage stickers inside their products, and their exclusions only include mistreatment of the device and non-certified third party service that causes damage (third party service itself isn't forbidden, just if they wreck the machine, Apple eschews their responsibility). Other companies put warranty stickers right atop screw heads, preventing things like swapping hard drives, RAM, or other easily replaceable components without voiding the warranty, quite illegally as the article demonstrated. So even if there is a cost reduction that can be demonstrated, if it comes at the cost that I can't swap out HDDs on my own without voiding my warranty, I think the extra cost is better, since you're paying far more than the extra few $$$ in order to get the largely non-usable warranty.