Surge Protectors are they worth it?

I have recommended the insured surge protectors to some of my customers when they mention lightning damage to electronics in the house but is it really worth it?

I was talking to my dad the other day about surge protectors and how we should buy some to provide them to our customers.  I come across customers who ask about lightning damage or whom have had lightning damage in the past and I tell them (yea you can buy them at any store) but I never have them on hand.  As we were talking about this he hands me the box that his came in. 

I am not going to name any names cause this is most likely the norm for all insured surge protectors but I opened the box for this surge protector and found that the warranty paper was inside and decided to read it. This is what I found.

After reading the part that I marked in red I thought to myself ... what good is it to buy one of these then.
Why pay the extra money for an insured surge protector if they do not even cover things that we buy them for?  Well I can say that having the extra protection does help for some situations so paying another 10 dollars to have more protection may be worth it to ya.

I was wondering what 750 joules meant so I looked it up and what this means is "1 joule is 1 watt of power per second" so if you normally have a 40watt bulb in a lamp this surge protector will protect it from getting a surge of 750watts of power all in one second. 

In my opinion yes it is worth buying a 20 dollar surge protector for your 500 dollar laptop or your 1000 dollar big screen tv instead of buying a 5 dollar power strip that won't protect you at all.

I am the local geek and yes I do approve this message.

Chris Long
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