I've had two extended warranties. Both were on Ford Contours. Both were through or sold by the dealership, I bought the car from. The first one was an aftermarket. It was '96 and $1200 for 5 years up to 90K miles. The car had 18K on it at the time. The remainder of the factory warranty was up to 36K. I did have tranny problems on the car. A long story. It should have been convered by the factory. It was covered by the extended waaranty. The dealership messed it up worse. Some years latter, I had another dealership replace it. The extended warranty cover it.
The other one was around '03. The car had 18K on it. It might have had some of the factory warranty left. I paid $600 or so. It was a Ford extended warranty. It was for 5 years, possibly 75K miles. The manual tranny did have problems and they replaced it. They also covered a bad alternator. That went bad latter, within a year, and was replaced by that dealership.
So I got my money out of it or more, both times. The second one, I had to secure the work with a credit card. Then they would start the work. I don't remeber on the first one. I do remeber on the second one, they offered a higher cost one. I think a reported reliable after market one was $550 or so. They came back with the $660 one and I took that.
Now if your asking about the recent ones advertised on TV, I wouldn't know. I realy don't trust them.
Tom