As we've seen many times before, counting on a store like CompUSA to honor even one of their extended warranties is a dubious proposition. "About a year ago the plastic edge supporting a battery door hinge on my HP850 Camera broke," wrote one CompUSA customer with a recent example. "The camera was just one and a half years old, and I had a CompUSA extended warranty on it. They looked at the camera and told me that a plastics problem was considered to be cosmetic. They wouldn't honor the warranty or refund the warranty cost even though they agreed that the camera was now non-functional due to this 'cosmetic' problem. I finally had to do my own workaround by attaching an aluminum plate to the camera bottom with a machine screw, leaving a nice-sized lump on the bottom. Needless to say both, CompUSA and HP camera have lost a customer on this one."

Another store that's proven not to be the best in this regard is Best Buy. "I bought a flash MP3 player from Best Buy about three months ago," wrote another reader. "The salesman touted their extended service agreement for $10. He said I could just bring it back in for so little as a scratched display crystal." When the unit turned out to have an annoying but non-fatal defect, the reader took it back to the store. "I waited in line for the next service associate for about 10 minutes. It took her not more than 30 seconds to pull out my copy of the service agreement and point out the written statement that the unit was not returnable to the store, but had to be mailed to Best Buy in some other city. I objected that when I bought the unit I was verbally told I could return it to the store. She said no, they used to do that, but not any more ... Best Buy gladly sold me this contract for $10 and some sweet verbal promises. When the time came to make good on them, they flat out refused to do as promised."

Reader comments in a recent discussion, however, singled out one retailer as having far better return policies and practices that the rest: Costco. "I buy all my electronics at Costco," wrote one reader. "Everything except computers you can return at any time, period, no questions asked, while computers are limited to six months. Occasionally I'll get something that's a lemon or just doesn't perform well, and back it goes. I then turn around and give them lots more business."

A number of readers said they'd avoided the computer service hassles we often see by buying at Costco. "About a year ago, my company needed a one-off laptop, and needed it quickly," a reader wrote. "We bought it at Costco. About two months later, the display panel died. We brought it back, no problems. Costco's six-month, no-questions-asked policy is a wonderful thing."

In fact, maybe all this high praise for a company should make me a little nervous. "I buy everything I can at Costco or Costco.com," wrote another reader. "I stopped supporting the stores with horrible return policies years ago, even though it is very rare that I return anything. I hold Costco in high regard for many reasons. Check out this ABC News 20/20 report on the company and you'll be amazed. If other companies shared some of Costco's traits, we wouldn't have a need for the GripeLog."