 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Founder |
|
| Headquarters | Brisbane, California |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Karl Wiley (Global president & CEO) [1] |
| Products | Consumer Electronics and Appliances Warranty |
| Revenue | US$1.32 billion |
| Parent | Allstate |
| Website | squaretrade squaretrade squaretrade |
SquareTrade Inc. is an American-based extended warranty service provider for consumer electronics and appliances [2] headquartered in San Francisco's SoMa district.
Co-founded in 1999 by Steve Abernethy and Ahmed Khaishgi, SquareTrade launched as the first online service for resolving e-commerce disputes. SquareTrade worked with online marketplaces, such as eBay, utilizing an online negotiation tool to automate the dispute resolution process between sellers and buyers. Between 1999 and 2001, SquareTrade raised $15 million in funding from JP Morgan Partners, Weston Presidio Capital, and Draper Richards. That same year, the company launched a merchant-verification service, the SquareTrade Seal. [3] [4] Both original services have since been discontinued. [5]
In 2006, SquareTrade began offering consumer protection plans for portable devices, appliances, and other electronics, both online and through large retailers. That same year, PC Magazine ranked it number 93 on its list of the "Best 100 Web Sites of the Year." [6] In 2012, Bain Capital and Bain Capital Ventures announced a $238 million investment in SquareTrade, which was the second-largest venture capital deal of the year. [7]
The company's underwriter has been AmTrust Financial Services, Inc., but as of 2013, SquareTrade was shifting toward Starr Indemnity. [8]
SquareTrade was acquired by Allstate in late 2016, for $1.4 billion, [9] joining Allstate's suite of consumer asset protection services.
In late 2016, a class-action lawsuit was filed against SquareTrade, accusing the company of selling protection plans for products that were not eligible for coverage, which customers only discovered when filing a claim. [10]
Koninklijke Philips N.V., commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is still in Eindhoven. The company gained its royal honorary title in 1998.
Toshiba Corporation is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard disk drives (HDD), printers, batteries, lighting, as well as IT solutions such as quantum cryptography which has been in development at Cambridge Research Laboratory, Toshiba Europe, located in the United Kingdom, now being commercialised. It was one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment. As a semiconductor company and the inventor of flash memory, Toshiba had been one of the top 10 in the chip industry until its flash memory unit was spun off as Toshiba Memory, later Kioxia, in the late 2010s.
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. These products are usually referred to as black goods in American English, due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including the bathroom type.
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983.
Haier Group Corporation is a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells products including refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, dryers, microwave ovens, mobile phones, computers, and televisions. The home appliances business, namely Haier Smart Home, has seven global brands – Haier, Casarte, Leader, GE Appliances, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua and Candy.
The Allstate Corporation is an American insurance company, headquartered in Glenview, Illinois since 2022. Founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co., it was spun off in 1993, but was still partially owned by Sears until it became an independent company completely in June 1995. The company also has personal line insurance operations in Canada.
An extended warranty, sometimes called a service agreement, a service contract, or a maintenance agreement, is a prolonged warranty offered to consumers in addition to the standard warranty on new items. The extended warranty may be offered by the warranty administrator, the retailer or the manufacturer. Extended warranties cost extra and for a percentage of the item's retail price. Some extended warranties that are purchased for multiple years state in writing that during the first year, the consumer must still deal with the manufacturer in the occurrence of malfunction. Thus, what is often promoted as a five-year extended guarantee, for example, is actually only a four-year guarantee.
In law, a warranty is an expressed or implied promise or assurance of some kind. The term's meaning varies across legal subjects. In property law, it refers to a covenant by the grantor of a deed. In insurance law, it refers to a promise by the purchaser of an insurance about the thing or person to be insured.
Circuit City Corporation, Inc., formerly Circuit City Stores, Inc., is an American consumer electronics retail company, which was founded in 1949 by Samuel Wurtzel as the Wards Company, operated stores across the United States, and pioneered the electronics superstore format in the 1970s. After multiple purchases and a successful run on the NYSE, it changed its name to Circuit City Stores Inc.
Dixons Retail plc was one of the largest consumer electronics retailers in Europe, which merged with Carphone Warehouse in 2014 to create Dixons Carphone, which was renamed Currys plc in 2021. In the United Kingdom, the company operated Currys, Currys Digital, PC World, Dixons Travel and its service brand Knowhow.
Asurion, LLC is a privately held company based in Nashville, Tennessee, that provides insurance for smartphones, tablets, consumer electronics, appliances, satellite receivers and jewelry. In 2014, the company operated in 14 countries and had 49 offices with 19,000 employees serving 280 million consumers.
Lemon laws are laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance. Although many types of products can be defective, the term "lemon" is mostly used to describe defective motor vehicles, such as cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
Blue Coat Systems, Inc., was a company that provided hardware, software, and services designed for cybersecurity and network management. In 2016 it was acquired by and folded into Symantec and in 2019 as part of Symantec’s Enterprise Security business it was sold to Broadcom.
PlumChoice was a privately held corporation with headquarters that was located in Lowell, Massachusetts. PlumChoice was a provider of cloud and technical support services to consumers and small businesses. In 2018, The Allstate Corporation acquired Plumchoice and merged them into Allstate's SquareTrade division.
Reliance Digital is an Indian consumer electronics retailer. It is a subsidiary of Reliance Retail, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries.
Currys plc is a British multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company headquartered in London, which was formed in 2014 by the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse Group. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Kenmore is an American brand of household appliances, cookware, floorcare, grills, HVAC equipment and other home items owned and licensed by Transformco, an affiliate of ESL Investments. Previously they were a subsidiary brand of Sears Holdings, but after Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018 they were acquired by Transformco, formed in 2019 after acquiring the assets of Sears Holdings Corporation.
Trinseo is a company focusing particularly on the manufacture of plastics and latex binders. Trinseo was part of the Dow Chemical Company until Dow grouped several of its businesses for potential sale in 2009. In 2010, under the name Styron, those holdings were sold to private equity firm Bain Capital for $1.63 billion. As of 2016, Bain sold all of its stock in Trinseo, grossing $1.69 billion for 37,269,567 shares, resulting in Trinseo's “full independence as a public company.”
In the early twenty-first century; foreign investment, government regulations and incentives promoted growth in the Indian electronics industry. The semiconductor industry, which is its most important and resource-intensive sector, profited from the rapid growth in domestic demand. Many industries, including telecommunications, information technology, automotive, engineering, medical electronics, electricity and solar photovoltaic, defense and aerospace, consumer electronics, and appliances, required semiconductors. However, as of 2015, progress was threatened by the talent gap in the Indian sector, since 65 to 70 percent of the market was dependent on imports.
Right to repair is a legal right for owners of devices and equipment to freely modify and repair products such as automobiles, electronics, and farm equipment. Right to repair may also refer to the social movement of citizens putting pressure on their governments to enact laws protecting a right to repair.
