Pixel 2, 2 XL Preferred Care Will No Longer Have Deductibles
It's crisis management season over at Google. What should have been a great end to 2017 is turning out to be a PR disaster that no software update can easily fix. In order to show customers that it is confident in the quality of its devices, Google has been encouraging owners of the beleaguered Pixel 2 XL and Pixel 2 to take advantage of the device's manufacturer warranty and get theirs replaced or repaired. Google even extended that warranty from one to two years. That generous gesture, however, has run afoul of those who actually paid to have that warranty extended to 2 years under Google's Preferred Care offer.
Preferred Care is pretty much Google's equivalent of AppleCare+. Pixel 2 and Pixelboook owners pay a one-time $129 fee for certain perks, like 2 instead of 1 year of warranty coverage, 24/7 priority customer support and others. With Google's extension of Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL warranties, regular owners are mostly on the same boat as Preferred Care buyers, and the latter are not at all amused.
And so Google had to make another adjustment again to appease all parties. In this case, it is waiving the deductible fee Preferred Care subscribers have to pay for each of the claims they are allowed to make within the two-year coverage. Normally, they have to pay $79 for that, which brings the total cost of Preferred Care to $208 for one claim, $287 when both claims are used up.
This change in the Preferred Care system was made known only via email, so the support page for the extended warranty still reflects the status quo. Until that is made official, however, Preferred Care buyers should probably still hold on to their seats.
The Pixel 2 XL and, to a lesser extent, the Pixel 2 are being hounded by hardware issues left and right. While none are as craptacular as the Galaxy Note 7, they feel like little pinpricks that make the premium Google smartphones feel less worthy of their price tags and name. Google continues to promise software updates to address these issues, though most of them still remain unpatched.
VIA: XDA