Asurion Warranty and Cloud Backup The Good and Bad

TLDR = Asurion warranty returned my $415 purchase price, and all my data was saved on Msft OneDrive.

My beloved Beelink $415 computer died a month and a half ago. Wouldn't power on. I had purchased the Asurion warranty via Amazon. I'm a sucker for warranties. In this case, it worked with caveats.

I loved this small form factor, Intel NUC style computer. I had upgraded the ram and the nvme. Great price/performance. Alas, a year and a half later, it died - wouldn't power on.

I created an Asurion claim but didn't want to wait for the repair as I had work to do. So I bought a second "identical" Beelink delivered the next day. I took the upgraded ram and nmve, put the originals back in and shipped off the original for repair under warranty.

I put the old nvme into the new computer and -- booted right back up! I was back in business with thoughts that I'd get the original repaired in time for me to send back the second one. I never worried about my data as I have all my data on OneDrive. My "My Documents" and other directories are linked to OneDrive so I don't worry about my data. I also have periodic local backups but would have been screwed if that had been my only data recourse this time.

Asurion held onto my machine for 2 weeks with occasional information free status updates. "We are working on your computer". They have NOBODY to call and talk to. The AI chatbot was no help. And it wouldn't respond to "I want to talk to a human".

I resorted to x/twitter where I got a response and DM's that escalated the effort until, two more days later, they refunded my original purchase.

My second version of Beelink that was the same as the first had dropped $80 in price, so I made money on this deal.

Ultimately the Asurion paid for my computer after 1.5 years of use. So I'm glad I bought it. But I am not thrilled with their lack of human support.

I'm glad that OneDrive among its other uses, automatically backs my data up to the cloud.

I still think the Beelink's are decent computers for the money. I'll withhold final judgment with this second one.