Using credit cards in the US give a pretty high level of consumer protection (over and above usual consumer protection laws) although not as much as buying an explicit warranty.
http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...
Check your cardholder agreements. Mine do.
Only some of us haven't kept those in many, many years. And the one I had back then certainly didn't have such things, but it might have changed since the late 90's. For myself personally, it doesn't seem worth the hassle. Another bill every month that is non-necessary when I could just save some money to cover such things or get it repaired. It kinda sucked not having an actual card in the US, but here it isn't.
Is this sort of thing common on credit cards nowadays? I saw two replies mentioning their banks, and I'm now wondering how widespread such a thing is.
Yeah, you can autopay on debit cards too, but I don't trust that as much.
Purchase protection is pretty common on good credit cards.
This is in addition to a year of additional warranty protection and various other purchase protections.
Purchase protection took care of a theft I had in my house last month. They just needed a receipt and a police report, and the purchase price was refunded a few days later.
VAT in the EU (or anywhere else really that has the concept of VAT) normally affords no additional consumer protections on its own. It's a tax, not dissimilar at a high level to sales tax in the US, applied to goods or services at time of sale.