Staples Inc / Federal Warranty Refused to Refund $250 "Refundable" warranty Silverdale Washington

This story concerns my troublesome experience with Staples Inc. They refused to pay back my $250 "refundable" three-year warranty I purchased with a $500 HP laptop on August 29th 2010 at their location in Silverdale, WA. I did not use my warranty, in spite of having a large crack in my screen that keeps getting larger for over a year and overheating issues with my laptop for over a year and a half. The reason I did not claim the warranty was that I figured that I would be better off putting the $250 towards a new laptop once the three years were up.

Federal Warranty serviced Staples in this issue, and is the company I communicated with over the phone for this warranty. The company has said that my warranty "expired" on 9/29/2013. This is due to some 30-day expiration date after the warranty expires -- in other words, I have to file the claim within 30 days of the warranty expiring on the refund I receive on something I bought and never used.

In other words, my claim drops from $250 to $0 in just one day. I would have never purchased the warranty if I knew of such an unreasonable 30-day window that I would have in three years to claim my $250.