Love them or hate them, extended warranties figure prominently in retail electronics, as well as furniture and major appliances, and of course car sales.

It’s a fact that, as margins on product categories decline annually, retailers need something, anything to get some actual profit margin out of.

It’s also a fact that, by and large, extended warranties have a bad reputation, thanks to the behavior of greasy, unethical companies and salespeople.

Which is a shame. Part of the reason that I was always one of the top warranty salespeople at the retailers I worked at was because first, I worked at places where the warranty was a legitimate value-add for customers, and second, I sold a lot of warranties because I always buy extended warranties on the products I purchase.

Why does that matter, you ask? Because out of all the electronics I’ve bought over the years, the number of service issues where my devices have either been fixed free of charge or replaced under the extended warranty paid off so often that it was well worth the outlay to purchase those warranties.

My being well-looked after as a customer gave me a sense of conviction that made me far more trust-worthy as a salesperson.

But you didn’t come here to read that, you came here for scandal: sordid tales of employees behaving badly. Well, I won’t disappoint you.

Back in the old days there was a store in our district whose percentage of closing warranty sales was heroically large.

At that time an acceptable warranty percent of sales for stores and individual salespeople was 3.5% and 5% was considered good. This store maintained an average monthly warranty percentage of 15%.

Needless to say, that store’s manager and his sales team were held up to the rest of us as paragons, and we were all flogged (metaphorically) and encouraged to emulate their greatness.

That honeymoon lasted for over a year.

Until the audit.

It turned out that store’s performance was built upon not just selling extended warranty on the obvious: TVs, VCRs, camcorders. No, that store manager decided to think outside the box and encouraged his staff to put the hard-sell on customers to buy warranties on things that were unwarrantable.

Things like cheap in-ear headphones (at the time), boxes of cassette tapes, and my personal favorite, TV stands.

Yes, the particle board, black vinyl-wrapped TV stands that CRT TVs sat on.

What breathtaking audacity.

Long story short, the manager was terminated for fraud, and he went from being held up as a good example to vilified as a bad example.

The company then went on to produce a policy and procedure guide for our extended warranty program, something that, prior to this incident, nobody thought we needed.