Aftermarket Car Warranties Stories

[ZZman]

I saw the "US Fidelius" commercials on TV and how they are going up to covering cars with 200,000 miles. I was a little shocked. I then did a search and saw some complaints about them not paying claims, and other issues.

I bought an aftermarket warranty once and used it and had no issues.

What has been your experiences if any? Good, bad, ugly?

 

[cheetahdriver]

on the cayenne forums where i hung out before mine went back under the lemon law, this would be the point at which we would alll chorus "que the Five-Oh theme". one of the mods had a aftermarket policy from a company in Hawaii, when it went bust, he got back about 45 cents on a multi thousand policy.

while the porsche's are expensive to fix and tend to break easily, the policies were all priced accordingly with all the companies (ie, in the 5-8k range). however, nobody had a good experience with any of these companies.

 

[saaber1]

This is an excellent idea for a thread! I heard one horror story from warranty direct for a boxster. I'll try to hunt it down. They denied his warranty instantly and it was obviously a warrantied item and the dealer even verified it. As I understand it, by automatically denying the coverage the frist time a certain percentage of customers just give up, saving them loads of money. Only the customers who persist and threaten to sue etc. they actually start talking about paying. It's a total scam for some companies. Maybe there are some real companies out there that will actually do what they say they will do however. It sure would be nice to find out which companies are scammers and which, if any, are real.

 

[John_K]

I never get them, but I have friends who buy extended vehicle warranties (don't know from where) and it always seems that when something happens, "that isn't covered."

Waste of money in my book.

John

 

[saaber1]

Ok I found a somewhat positive and a totally negative story for warranty direct on the same type of car, a boxster. Here is positive:
My Warranty Direct experience after IMS failure
This will be a bit of a long thread, but I try to provide all my details here.

In the 2nd week of May I brought my car to the shop with a "funny noise" coming from the engine. I heard a rattling noise at around 3,000 RPM. A few days later I got the dreaded call from my mechanic, it's intermediate shaft failure. The noise was the timing chain which started to rattle as the intermediate shaft started to come off balance. My shop took off the oli filter and said it "looked like a gold mine in there". This was only 5,000 miles after the 45k mile service where the oil filter was still "clean".

I had bought the car in 2006 with 15k miles and 3 months left on the factory warranty. Before the factory warranty ran out I decided to purchase an extended warranty from Warrant Direct. I chose the "Major Breakdown (MBI)" option which cost me around $2,600 (no deductible, covers for either 7 years of when the car reaches 100k miles).

So far they had paid for: CV boot, signal stalk, and rear main seal.
The general tendency I witnessed: the more expensive it got, the more "difficult" WD would get, so I was wondering how difficult it would get this time.

To cut a long story short: I got my car back last week and WD paid

So here's the "lessons learned"

As soon as you file the claim, WD will try the following approaches:

a) they will try to find SOMETHING where they can claim you did negligence. In my case there was nothing to find. I did ALL Porsche major and minor services and even changed my oil every 7,500 miles, all well documented. If you buy an extended warranty you MUST do all these services; otherwise you wasted your money on the warranty.

b) they try to stall you: Everything takes forever. They have all the time in the world. And my guess is they either hope you give up calling or that you get angry and use the wrong language on the phone so that they have cause to terminate your insurance.

In my case I got lucky as the owner of the shop where my car was did all the negotiating with WD and so saved a lot of hassle for me. In his shop he has to deal with extended warranties all the time and I asked him if WD is any better or any worse than other extended warranty companies he has to deal with and he said that they're all about the same, WD seem to be a bit better than others.

So in summary:

Plus:
* They finally paid

Minus:
* They nicked and dimed the shop where I had my car and did not pay for all the labor it took to get the engine replaced, so I got stuck with the difference
* Even though the car was out of action for 6+ weeks, WD will only pay for 3 days of rental car
* Would I buy warranty from WD again - Yes
* Was it painful to finally get them to pay - Yes

 

[saaber1]

Here is the negative story:

I spun a rod bearing on my 2001 986 Boxster which is covered by the XtraCare + package offered by Warranty Direct. See attachment for PDF of the service contract. They were notified and asked me to provide copies of service records, I did not have them on me initially, and they denied the claim. I then contacted my garages and got my records and forwarded them to Warranty Direct. They then reopened my claim. They sent inspector down to inspect engine and he wrote the following inspection report (which they provided to me upon my subsequent request for the reason they turned my claim down)

The service contract states that "All internally lubricated engine parts" are covered, and even mentions bearings specifically. As you can see on page 3 of the inspection report, their own inspector clearly states under Cause of Failure - "The condition of the engine is consistent with the failure of the #2 rod bearing resulting in subsequent damage to the engine from continued operation and a loss of oil pressure DUE to the #2 rod bearing." I pulled over within a couple of hundred yards when the failure occurred, I had to have time to brake and get over.

The engine teardown showed metal shavings in the oil which they say kept the oil from flowing (obviously again, if metal was in the oil, it originated from a failure of one of the "internally lubricated parts" which contract says they cover.

Warranty Direct is telling me that they are denying my claim based on "lack of lube" and that "oil leaks were long term and not addressed in a timely manner." I check my oil via stick every Saturday morning and have NEVER had a bad oil leak that caused a real low level. I did have a Rear Main Seal replaced two days before the failure by Warranty Direct upon recommendation by my dealer.

I wanted to post this so everyone would know that upon a MAJOR claim, that they will fight you tooth and nail. On the minor ones, they have been fine so far, but when my family and I need them the most, they are bailing on me.

I am going to have to take them to arbitration to get something done. That won't be immediately as I don't have deep pockets (arbitration through the American Arbitration Association is going to cost me $1050.00 to file and get started), and my family's Christmas will come first, and I had to buy a beater car to drive until I can afford to fix the Boxster (which I need to do first as I need my good car back) and I do plan on getting it fixed out of my own pocket and seeking reimbursement from Warranty Direct.

I am considering an engine from a board member as well as one from Oklahoma Foreign. That looks like the engine is going to run me from $5800-7500 delivered, and then I'll have installation on top of that as I'm not the most handy person in the garage.

Sorry if I'm [censored], I'm just really, really, really bitter right now toward a company that previous to this had treated me OK and whom I've given countless references to in the past. This whole situation has been extremely frustrating and I just need to get some of it off my chest.

I'll be back amongst my Boxster brethren eventually, my family asks me if I've gotten enough of Porsche now, but my beef is not with Porsche, as Porsche has given me many years of enjoyment and smiles and permagrin, my chagrin is with Warranty Direct.

Take care and thanks for listening to me ramble.

RESOLUTION

"FINALLY HAVE A RESOLUTION. On December 10, 2008 (yesterday), we had a scheduled arbitration hearing in New York. During the hearing, they asked for an opportunity to settle, and after mutual negotiation, they agreed to what my lawyer and I felt was a fair settlement and I accepted via my lawyer. It was entered into the hearing and they will be paying me $12,972.++ within the next 30 days.

It took 13 1/2 months, and 1 more until I actually get the $$$, but I had no intention of letting them out of their commitment that they contracted with me for.

They had to pay their arbitration fees as well, so in the end they will be paying out more $$$ then if they had initially honored my claim in the beginning.

This Christmas will be so much better for me and my family now then it was last year.

Take care and thanks to everyone that made suggestions or had words of commisseration or support,

Mike"

 

[c3po]

Back in 2006 I was going to buy a Mercury Marauder from a guy that only had 5000 miles on the car. He had an extended warranty that he paid $2500.00

This was not the Ford ESP, but a 2nd or 3rd party warranty, he was going to transfer the warranty to me, I told him to get his money back since I did not want it, I should never have opened my mouth and just went and bought the car and let him transfer the useless warranty.

He called me back 2 days later and was upset, the warranty company would not give him his money back, he went to the dealer and said I thought you sold me the Ford ESP Warranty, I did not get to buy the car since he was going to sue the dealer.

He told me that it took him almost 20 minutes with the phone ringing before the warranty company picked up the phone.

The reason some dealers sell these useless warranties is because they get a big commision, the other problem with these warranties is that the company can go out of business and you are up the creek. These companies are fly by night, kind of like when the circus comes to town, and then leaves a week later.

My Lincoln Mercury Dealer stopped selling these warranties because when someone had a warranty claim, they had to call up the company and wait for a representative to come out, this sometimes could take a week or two.

The only extended warranties that are any good are the manufactures extended warranties.

These 2nd party warranties are all scams, my Marauder is now 5 years old and they still call me. I told one guy that I had 400,000 miles on my car, he came back and said we can warranty it up to 500,000 miles, please.

I always tell them if you want to do business, meet me up at the 7-Eleven that is a mile from my house, if they are not willing to do that, I tell them to call back when they agree to meet with me. These 2nd party companies are boiler room operations, when they call I can hear other guys talking on the phone in the backround.

 

[pcoxe]

I've read some of the warranties. They specifically cover items that rarely fail, like an engine block casting. How many cars have you seen stranded because the engine block went bad? Or brake calipers - excluding leaks/seals? What else is there to fail on a brake caliper except the casting itself? I don't trust aftermarket warranties.

 

[PT1]

I bought an extended warranty once from a 3rd party company. Once I hit the cost of the policy in repairs...they denied any claims. I'll never get a 3rd party one again but may get a factory sponsored one. Depends on the cost. That said, I have had better luck with vehicles putting the money towards preventative maintainance.

 

[Virtuoso]

The only extended warranty I ever bought was uesless - the only part that failed on the car during the period was the EGR valve; and of course that wasn't covered.

 

[Chris142]

My boss has a motorhome and has an aftermarket warranty on it.

The AC compressor sprung a leak from the front shaft seal.

We looked at the warranty paperwork and it said that it did cover the AC compressor so he called up the warranty company.

The represenative asked what happened to the compressor and my boss told him that the front seal was leaking.

The represenative then told my boss to read the small fine print. The coverage does not cover any seals.

So they were able to snake out of that repair.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Find a good, honest mechanic.

 

[Bill888]

My wife bought a used 02 Sebring Conv. with an extended Chrysler Corp. warranty. IIRC, we paid a $40 transfer fee. Once the car went off of its original warranty, we had a nasty electrical problem and took the car to the dealer. They failed to fix it in the 2 weeks they had it (we left it while on vacation.) I finally fixed it myself (faulty battery ground connection!) but I did learn this: Even if it's a factory warranty, Chrysler Corp dealerships get nothing for diagnosis of the problem, only the parts/labor to fix it. Hence, they will not spend much time trying to diagnose a problem. Sadly, IMO the extended factory warranty is just a waste of money.

 

[PandaBear]

All extended warranties, factory or not, are waste of money. If you are going to spend the money, it is better to save it in a jar for the rainy day, or spend the money to buy a more reliable car (after doing the research).

Even better, learn how to fix most of the wear/tear items and spend the money on a set of good tools.

 

[sciphi]

My aunt got the factory extended warranty on their old Windstar. In 150k miles that vehicle went through 4 transmissions. All covered by the warranty.

 

[bdcardinal]

the genuine Ford ESP is one of the best extended warranties out there. if you have a ford vehicle, the service writer can run parts coverage right there at his/her computer. the tech gets paid for diag, and all labor the same as factory warranty.

 

[MrCritical]

Aftermarket warranties are a big risk and they go out of business daily.

Dealers sell them because there is a higher profit margin on them that the one the manufacturer offers.

Agreed that you can probably put the money away you would have spent on the warranty for repairs, but no one will do it. And who's gonna put back $12k for a Porsche engine or $20 grand for a tranny in a Nissan GT-R?

 

[Norm Olt]

When we purchased the SVX new in 1992 (1st year of production) the salesman virtually INSISTED that we purchase the $50 deductable 7-Year/100,000 mile Extended Warranty Contract for $1,200(I forget with which company), with the written provision that if we made no claim on this warranty (which piggybacked the Subaru factory 5-Year/60,000 mile warranty) at 7 years OR 100,000 miles the dealership would refund 100% of the warranty cost: the transmission was replaced under the factory warranty @ about 57K and I got a check for $1,200 from the dealership 3 days after the 7th year period expired!

Cheers!

 

[PT1]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear

Even better, learn how to fix most of the wear/tear items and spend the money on a set of good tools.


+1 I heard that...simple maintenance done yourself will pay off huge versus an extended warranty.

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
All extended warranties, factory or not, are waste of money. If you are going to spend the money, it is better to save it in a jar for the rainy day, or spend the money to buy a more reliable car (after doing the research).

Even better, learn how to fix most of the wear/tear items and spend the money on a set of good tools.

I got 4 additional years and 40,000 additional miles coverage on my Corvette for $1100 from GM. What do yo8u think the odds are of a high end GM product going that far with less than $1100 in repairs?