I want to buy an extended 3 yr warranty for a used car to cover mechanical and electrical breakdown. I have been offered a ford backed one by GK ford for £400 for 3 years. Is this a good deal? where else is worth looking?

cheers

Bit of a sweeping statement, but generally these extended warranties tend to be a waste of time and money as often they will wriggle out of any payouts by referring you to an exhaustive list of details in the terms and conditions.

Also, some traders will offer these as an attempt to prevent themselves having to pay for any issues which arise with the car, when you have statutory rights for a claim against a trader anyway.

They are very restricted, I had a ‘platinum’ warranty thrown in with a car I bought, wasn’t until I read the small print that I realised it didn’t cover anything if the car wasn’t serviced within manufacturers guidelines (plus or minus 10% of the miles or 12 months) which meant it was void before I walked off the forecourt as my car was missing its first service print out, it didn’t cover any electrical faults, no wear and tear items such as clutches, didn’t cover ancillaries such as air con, repairs had to be pre-approved and at approved garages, there was a maximum hourly rate for the labour which ruled out main dealers, you get the picture. Just be careful and read the small print!

as above- not worth the paper they are written on.

If they were good value they wouldn’t bother selling them.

How old is the car? I work for a franchised dealership and if we sell an extended warranty whilst the car is still in its manufacturer’s warranty, then the extension is just that, an extension with no loss of cover (except the radio system, strangely).

However, some 3rd party warranties have claim limits, either a maximum per claim or in total. Best start by asking for a policy booklet before deciding which one to go for. Be aware that as a car gets more and more miles on it, then a number of things will not be covered due to ‘wear and tear’. Also, most aftermarket warranties will not pa for diagnostic work to be done. So if you have a fault and it is not clear what it is, a garage may ask you to pay the labour of finding the fault before they approach the warranty company to pay for the repair.

As a rule, you’ll get what you pay for, a cheap warranty won’t cover much but a dearer one is more likely to give you better cover. Search for ‘mechanical breakdown insurance’ and see what you can find.

In general additional insurance policies aren’t worth the money. They have to take more money over a period of time than they are likely to pay out. Long term you are almost always going to be better off if you never take out an extended warranty on any product you buy and sort out the losses yourself.

got one on our 3 year old (when we bought it) golf.

So far it has covered about £1000 of repairs and cost us £340 so it’s worked for us.

Check and check again what it covers and what it excludes. I’m always prepeared to phone the warranty company direct if they refuse a payment to check it’s not the garage being dumb (and they often are)

recently for instance they wouldn’t pay out for a couple of oil seals, the garage told me this was because they were ‘minor parts’. This turned out to be utter tosh, it states in the customer booklet that external oil seals are not covered, i was happier with that explanation.

As a rule, you’ll get what you pay for

Or with an extended warranty, on average a little bit less.

So far it has covered about £1000 of repairs and cost us £340 so it’s worked for us.

How much of that in the first 3 months?

all outside the first year of warranty that was included

it’s like any form of insurance, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

car is just o/s manufacturers warranty, 33k old, FSH at main dealer on time

there is good and bad out there. take a look at the policy handbook which will tell you what is and isnt covered and think about what might actually go wrong and consider if that would be covered. one of our cars has a Lloyds policy on it and they replaced a broken spring no problem (plenty scope for wriggling with something that’s expected to wear out with age but they didn’t) however that policy has a specific exclusion on body wiring loom which is a bit poor. also had a pair exhaust manifolds replaced on a Vectra a few years back with a dealer supplied AA policy (that was a very expensive repair too)

anything the dealer sells you will include a LOT of commission but dealing direct with a warranty company wont always save you much. best advice is get a couple of quotes and handbooks from a couple of companies and make a decision based on that.

re your original question, assuming the level of cover is good (and being manufacturer backed id expect it would be) £400 seems like a pretty good deal

We have an 05 Renault Grand Espace – what we actually have is a sthi car and a great warrenty – we extended the original renault warrenty at a cost of £800 for 2 years and it has cost Renault a small fortune, well over £4,000 ( turbo charger, power steering system, injet manifolds twice, water pump.). The warrenty ends in March this year (can’t be extended again unfortunately) and we will be selling the car asap. The one condition was that we did have to keep up the service record.

Apparently it is “Autoassure” mechanical breakdown warranty gold cover

anyone know anything?

Just when you thought it couldn’t get better or worse ( depending on which way you look at things) the conrod in piston number 3 exploded , driving straight through the main engine block and piston number 4 – the bottom line is £6,500 for a complete new Renault Engine including fitting !!!!!

That warranty is looking pretty dam good now.

So I will shortly be selling a Grand Escape, ’05 plate with a brand new engine if you want one.

The warranty ends in March.