Warranty for Surface Tablets – What are your options?

Warranty for Surface Tablets; What are your options?

There is nothing worse than dropping your Surface on the sidewalk and shattering its screen – oh no! Then, trying to figure out if you have the right type of warranty to get a replacement Surface for free or if you’re going to have to pay for a new device – ouch.

In his last post Tim talked about how to get service for your Surface, see How to get Microsoft support for Surface tablet hardware. Today, I want to tell you about the different warranty options you have for your Surface tablet.

When you purchase a Surface, you basically have three warranty options:

Manufacturer warranty (aka Standard Express warranty)
Microsoft Complete warranty
Reseller warranty

1. Manufacturer warranty for Surface tablets:

As you can probably imagine, your new Surface comes with a manufacturer warranty. This warranty is free and it includes the following:

Express Hardware warranty: 1 year (from date of purchase) of service on hardware and covered accessories. What’s covered?
- Type cover
- touch cover
- Surface
- Surface power supply
- Surface pen (Pro models only)
Tech support: 90 days after purchase of tech help on pre-installed software on your Surface. This means only programs that were already there and nothing new that you installed.

2. Microsoft Complete warranty for Surface tablets:

Microsoft Complete warranty can be purchased at the same time as your Surface from Microsoft store.

According to Microsoft’s website, it can be added up to 45 days after purchase via Surface Online Service Center. However, one of my Surfaces is beyond the 90 days from purchase and yet when I registered, Microsoft offered me the option to buy 1-yr Complete for $99, so I’m not sure how that works exactly but if you forget to get one when you get your Surface, that little loophole might be handy. No guarantee it will work, though.

Complete covers pretty much everything on your Surface for 2 years.

Cost: $99 – $159 depending on which Surface you buy

Includes:

Tech support for all questions regarding software.
All questions regarding hardware.
Accidental damage* – even for drops and spills, each subject to $49 deductible.
Hardware replacement.
Personal training and data recovery.

*Note: I have not seen this written anywhere official but I’ve heard reports that Complete will send you replacement hardware up to two times if you damage your device.

3. Reseller warranty for Surface tablets:

Since you can purchase Surface tablets in some stores, you can often also purchase the store warranty for them.

A great example of a reseller warranty would be BestBuy. If you buy your Surface from them, you can get a Geek Squad Protection Plan for additional fee. Here are some details:

Time to buy: at time of purchase or within 15 days.

Cost: varies based on coverage duration

Accidental: $159.99 – $399.98

See Geek Squad Terms & Conditions.

Other resellers may also have their own versions of warranty and service plans.

So, which warranty is the best deal?

It depends on what your needs are but I strongly recommend the Microsoft Complete warranty. We’ve bought it, used it, and were quite happy with it. If you purchase your Surface at a re-seller, you can always add this plan within the first 45 days.

This of course, is all for personal purchases. If you have a Surface covered by a Surface Support for Business, the warranty works a bit differently.

Joanna-