Depends on the channel partner/purchase -
Consumer versus business. You can still get business support if your team ordered consumer level products on a business channel - but don't expect the remote techs to care about your issues on lesser quality products.
Can go both ways. But the business support will usually always have better results.
If you want to save money, buy the warranty pre-purchased on the units from eBay.
Some sellers are offering like-new 3yr + ACC w/WWAN-ready on ThinkPads for around $1K.
When in IT or development or whichever demanding profession, just get the extended plan, why waste several hours trying to fix your own stuff when the rest of your team is wondering why you tried to save $300 on short term?
Service plan runs for 3-4 years - that's a long time for on-demand support for a few hundred dollars.
Many large IT firms with reputable enterprise support tools will charge thousands of dollars before they even consider your business an investment to them.
The remote techs have special tools that can detect BSOD's faster than most and have access to upper tier engineers that can escalate issues.
Most of the time, they won't care about your particular business or your clients, or the time you've lost, and more so that they've taken care of your 'problem' so they can close the case and move onto the next project/issue with someone else.
Consumer level IT support in business environment is mostly trash.
Your BIOS could be bricked, and the techs, not to mention potentially hours of hold time, will tell you that it's a different issue, for example - as if the quota is to prevent computers returning to their repair facilities?
At a certain point in your career advancement, laptops will be like tools that need to be resharpened or disposed of; so might as well see if the balance plays out with warranty and overlap with a second spare unit if the first product goes defective. Just because you send a product in for repair, or that a part is over-night'ed, that it will be coming back, or that the right part was guaranteed when it arrives next business day.
One thing I do want to add, is the consumables warranty - why the battery warranty exists?
For some reason, the battery life sucks hardcore, on a the T-4xxS lines and on the ThinkPad Yoga X1 series, it's wildly random. Like, seriously, WTF is going on, how did HP and Dell get it right on the Elitebook and Latitude models, and Lenovo on their flagship products, did not?
...Year after year, we keep testing these products, and the battery life just blows? Like, what is going on in R&D and QA at Lenovo, Asia?
There are some defects in boards that cannot be seen by software tools if ever a remote tech helps you out, just FYI, someone will be the luck of the straw.
If you need to escalate, go talk to customer service on social media. Open a ticket somewhere else, but attack it at different angles if the extended warranty service isn't taking care of you. The ideal situation is to just use the company credit card and buy a new computer, but sometimes it doesn't always work that way, because the units are leased, or the contract requires you go through the manufacturer's warranty team, or whatever the run of the river is.
This works out in the opposite direction if you know the aspects of your issue/product even slightly better than the remote service technician and you try and sound smarter than them?, don't do that, just let them run the tools, and then patiently ask what you think they could escalate and do - to help speed up the situation in your favor.
If they send you to a supposed sup's voice mail, or don't know what to do, call back and get a different technician and on a different ticket if need be, but they'll find your ticket(s) eventually.
Just some things to know. Everything can go right with an extended business warranty on a laptop, and occasionally, everything can go wrong with it. It's a fancy word for "insurance."
Expectation versus anticipation.