Warranty extension. Is it worth it????

[CAELBLUE1]

IMHO an absolute waste of money buying extended warranties. I have a number of friends in the car business who rub their hands together everytime someone is silly enough to sign up for an extended warranty. Way too many outs and conditions and not worth it in the end. Save your coin and when she is out of standard warranty splash out and give your rig a nice lift kit and tyres.

[jklad]

As others have previously said, just be sure to go over the fine print very carefully!

I bought a second hand Falcon some years ago from a major Sydney dealer which came with a 1yr new car-style warranty; all good, had a couple of things fixed no worries. Was offered an extended warranty when the first one was due to expire and, wrongly assuming it was the same as the warranty that was expiring, stupidly took it without even reading through the contract boooklet. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!

A few months later the electric windows and the brake lights stopped working so took it in to get fixed. In both cases the switchgear was at fault so unfortunately wasn't covered under warranty so the dealer informed me. Pretty pissed off, I asked him what else wasn't covered by this extended warranty then and he calmly turned a few pages into the contract to a page covered in tiny print and asked me to have a read. Each major vehicle assembly (engine, gearbox, transmission, brakes, steering, interior, etc) and sub-assembly was listed in a bold heading, with a list of parts detailed underneath in both plain print and italics; the parts in plain print were covered by the warranty and the ones in italics were not covered.

Needless to say italics filled the page and there seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to what was covered and what was not. For example for the exhaust system the manifold, cat, muffler two and tailpipe may be covered while manifold bolts & gasket, engine pipe, mounting brackets and muffler one may not. On the cylinder head valves, rocker arms and head gasket may be covered while valve springs, pushrods and rocker cover gasket were not; you get the idea. I basicly cut my losses, threw the contract in the bin and bought a workshop manual. Did all my own servicing and repairs from then on and became a pretty good paddock mechanic in the process.

So yeah, read the fine print.

[glend]

Dan if you invest that money now (instead of paying them for the extension) then by the time your warranty has expired it will have grown to over $2050 at the end of three years (just on current term deposit rates). They will make significantly more out of your money over that period (for themselves) if you pay it up front. Look at the coverage, and think about what sort of spares and replacement parts you can buy for that money as you require them over the years after warranty.

[dan84]

It's sorted then. No extended warranty.
Still have the remanding 2yrs warranty anyway.
All is good, just have to wait on delivery from interstate now

[ibrocun]

Originally Posted by dan84

It's sorted then. No extended warranty.
Still have the remanding 2yrs warranty anyway.
All is good, just have to wait on delivery from interstate now

I think that's the right decision. First because I'm sure the fine print says you can't wheel it and expect coverage.

Second, they have crunched the numbers. They know what it's likely to cost them to repair or replace failed components on your Jeep (assuming that you are not "abusing" it). They are assuming that it's going to cost them less to keep your Jeep running than you are going to pay them. They are banking on it so to speak.

But it would be wise to assume that it's going to cost $1690 over the next 36 months just to keep your vehicle in good repair and budget it. If it costs less than that, spend the balance on fun stuff.