Margen
89 euros is what they ask you at the till to "extend the warranty" on a 549-euro washing machine. Before you say yes, work out what you already have without paying a cent: since 1 January 2022, in Spain, the legal warranty on goods is three years, not two. It was changed by Royal Decree-Law 7/2021 of 27 April, which reformed consumer law to bring it in line with a European directive, and it applies to everything you buy from that date on.
With the washing machine in front of you, six numbers decide this purchase.
1. Three years of legal warranty, and the seller pays for them. If the appliance does not work as it should, you have three years from delivery to demand repair or replacement, and the party responsible is the shop where you bought it, not the manufacturer. This matters at the counter: if they send you to the official service centre claiming the shop is not liable, you can ask for your complaint to be registered there and then, because the party bound to you is still the one who took your money.
2. Two years in which you have to prove nothing. For the first two years the defect is presumed to have been there from the factory; if the seller thinks you broke it, the burden is on them to show it. Before 2022 that window was six months, so it went from half a year to two years. In the third year it flips: then they can ask you to prove the defect was there from the start, usually with a technical report costing between 40 and 90 euros.
3. Five years to claim from the moment the fault appears. If the defect shows up within the three years, you have another five, counted from the day it appears, to fight it. Taking a few months to complain does not cost you the right.
4. Ten years of spare parts. The manufacturer must keep technical support and spare parts available for ten years from the day that model stops being made. That is the number that really decides whether a 549-euro washing machine lasts eight years or gets thrown out at five because "there is no drain pump any more".
5. What the 89 euros actually buy. If the extension runs from year one to year five, you already had the first three. You are paying 89 euros for two extra years of cover, and only if the contract covers exactly the same things. That works out at 44.50 euros for each genuinely new year of warranty: 8% of the price of the machine per year.
6. What the extension can add, which is little and worth knowing. The legal warranty covers factory defects, not you dropping the laptop or a knock breaking the oven door: a contract that covers clumsiness is selling you something you did not have. Some chains also swap the appliance in the shop within 48 hours, no argument, and there you are not buying the right to a replacement, which is already yours, but three fewer weeks washing by hand. And some policies pay for the third-year technical report, those 40 to 90 euros that would otherwise come out of your pocket. If the paperwork says none of this, the extension is selling you nothing new.
Watch for a cheap tell: a commercial warranty is legally required to state in writing that it does not affect your legal rights. If the seller presents it as the only way to be covered, the very contract they have just handed you contradicts them.
Tomorrow, when you buy a household appliance, do three things that take two minutes. Photograph the receipt with your phone and file it in the same album as your household paperwork, because thermal paper fades over the months and without a delivery date no warranty is worth anything. Write the delivery date in the manual, because that is the one that counts, not the order date. And if they offer you the extension, ask for the terms in writing before paying and look for two words inside: "accidental" and "third year". If they are not there, say no and keep your 89 euros.