Positive experiences of used car warranties

Hi all in the process of buying a fairly expensive (for me at least) Ford Toureno Custom MPV. The dealer (ford main dealer) is offering a RAC Platinum Plus warranty. Unsurprisingly when you google it you only see bad stories about it, as I imagine the people who were happy didn’t jump on trust pilot to rant about it.

So has anyone had a good experience from a car warranty (RAC or other) – or should I just ignore it and rely on statutory rights as they’re all a pile of crap.

Can they offer you a Ford warranty?

We had a Gold Ford warranty with our Kuga and they replaced the heated screen with no quibble. Some elements had failed on the drivers side.

Lol I’ve literally just got off the phone to the ford protect warranty people trying to put a claim for a faulty heated windscreen on the car we bought 2 months ago. They’re not making it easy to claim, It’s taken a few days to find out what the actual process is, and I’ve only found out today that there will be a diagnostic fee to check that the windscreen isn’t working as it’s supposed to.

They sent a warranty extension quote the other day and I was considering it but based on these interactions I’m going to save the cash and put it towards repairs instead.

They didn’t mention a ford warranty (the van is two months out of the standard 3 years I think) and just pushed the RAC one, so I presume not. I might call ford tho – good shout.

I had one with a company called auto guard (I think). Alternator went on my car and they stumped up 800 quid to fix no issue

the warranty cost me about that over 2 years however, so not convinced it saved me any cash!

A had a 3rd party warranty (ie not main dealer) on a fiat coupe 20v turbo about 20 years ago, it paid for an entire new engine after the original engine put a conrod through the side of the block. I was expecting a major hassle, but it was super straightfoward. Unfortunately it was so long ago that I cant remember the warranty provider.

I think I’ve used auto guard before when a water pump failed on my old BMW 130i.  Total cost was about £800 and it was fixed without any trouble.

Isn’t there some sort of Consumer protection law that protects a buyer for something like 6 months now anyway which sort of renders any of the “pay x amount for 6 months warranty” thing kind of obsolete?  The garage will need to fix it regardless?

I might be oversimplifying that or be completely wrong though.

One of our more recent cars had a catastrophic gearbox failure within 3 weeks and the garage fixed it without question at a cost of about £2.5k.

Same as Mr Badger, bought a 3 year old car from a supermarket and paid about £500 for warranty (this was many moons ago)

I hoped something would go wrong so I got my money’s worth and sure enough 3 months in it needed a new MAP sensor, a job Audi charged over £800 for. Probably went wrong due to steam cleaning under bonnet pre sale. Prefer cars with good honest muck on them

@prawny

Sounds like you got a 3 month bog standard thrown-in warranty with the car, if they are offering an extension after 2 months. You may have other rights though if the car is that new to you.

Ours was a 3 Year all-singing ‘Gold’ job. Added when we bought the car when it was 2.5yrs old.

We had to pay a diagnosis cost at the local Ford dealer, but that was refunded when repair was approved.

I’ve had that warranty and used it.  Things you need to know:

1. You can use any garage who’s prepared to deal with it not just from their list.  You can to pay for the investigation first, then the garage has to negotiate with the insurance company and tell them what’s wrong and they agree with them.  Many garages can’t be arsed and won’t bother. However, you can also get stuff done then retroactively claim yourself.
2. The list of things not covered is quite long – turbo or air intake problems for example which are quite common on diesels.
3. They will only cover the cost of the part and the labour required to replace the part, and NOT work spent removing stuff to get to the part – which is a con, tbh.  In each of my claims they only coughed up about half the total bill or just over.
4. Everything is framed in terms of ‘replacing a part’. If something just has to be fixed or refurbished, the poor phone operatives get very confused. If you have a part that was fitted incorrectly for example, then they won’t cover anything. A friendly garage can help here by phrasing things appropriately, but you need to be lucky to find one of those.

I just about broke even.  Some gambling is required. I think the A/C compressor is covered; my car developed a slow A/C leak which I suspect was from the compressor, however I decided to put some leak stop in it which has worked.  If that fails after the 2 months I have left on the warranty, I’ll be out of luck. If I had taken it in, the cost of the work would probably have cost much more than the stop leak fix.. but I did it because I needed the car at the time, and now it’s not leaking any more so…

@the-muffin-man this is exactly the issue with mine, its feeling like a battle at the moment going to try a more local dealer than the big franchise we bought it from. They don’t seem particularly interested now we’ve got it

Dealing with the RAC for the platinum cover on mine was very frustrating, and then I discovered that my local garage is part of the RAC network but just doesn’t pay to appear on their list of providers. I’d go and talk to whichever garage you might be likely to use to see if they’d recommend it and if they’ll go to bat for you if something breaks. My garage did and the cover ended up saving me a fortune when the fan on the aircon needed replacing.

Also worth noting that it’s worth finding a garage that deals with vans on a regular basis – they don’t all have the height needed on all ramps to use a van, so if you can find a van specialist with RAC connections you’re more likely to actually get in when you need to. Before I realised all this, I had to drive miles to get my van into a garage that had paid for the RAC listing AND had van space.

Just had all the front suspension replaced on our car by the main dealer. Warranty is not cheap (£800/yr) but covers the car for 15 years/150k miles. Will be renewing until it has reached the threshold – if we keep it that long. the work has more than paid for the next few years already.

The three year RAC platinum plus is £950 for three years, the ford extended warranty is basically that per year. Now that either tells me that the platinum plus is not going to pay out easily or that as the van is coming from an RAC approved place and has passed their “82 point check” they reduce the risk vs me just buying something on the net.

Hmmm.

Interesting chat as I am (probably) about to buy a 19 plate Focus. Its a little older than I was planning but silly low miles. Dealer has offered me 2 years warranty at £699 but I have not seen detail of this yet. Also not sure what network they use which is an issue as dealership isn’t local to me.

I used Warranty Direct before but didn’t have reason to claim.

Isn’t there some sort of Consumer protection law that protects a buyer for something like 6 months now anyway which sort of renders any of the “pay x amount for 6 months warranty” thing kind of obsolete?  The garage will need to fix it regardless?

Yes, Consumer Rights Act.  Buying a used car from a dealer, you have the same rights as buying new.  If it goes bang within six months the fault is deemed to be inherent unless the seller can prove otherwise.  In a private sale all bets are off and it’s caveat emptor, but they don’t generally offer warranties.

IME most extended warranties aren’t worth the paper they’re written on whether you’re buying a car or a toaster, it’s just an excuse to rinse you for more money.  But the devil is in the detail, read the small print to work out whether you think this specific policy is good value.

Just had all the front suspension replaced on our car by the main dealer.

What happened to it for the warranty to deem in necessary to replace?

I got a 3 month Autoguard warranty with my current Vw Golf(remember thinking it was probably useless) had an overheating issue. Common fault on water pump apparently. Paid up for new pump no issues !

These are not really warranties .  They are insurance.

As above, had an autoguard warranty and it paid for a water pump that went with no hassle at all. Went to an approved garage, gave them the approval code, didn’t pay a penny, got the car back the next day.

Have a Peter Vardy one on the current car that looked good from the reviews and brochure but haven’t had a chance to put it to the test yet.

You can use any garage who’s prepared to deal with it not just from their list.  You can to pay for the investigation first, then the garage has to negotiate with the insurance company and tell them what’s wrong and they agree with them.  Many garages can’t be arsed and won’t bother.

That’s my experience: most decent garages dont want the grief. So I was left paying a tow truck to move a broken car between garages. Next time I’ll save the insurance premium into a kitty and soak it all up!

Had a second hand mini as a commuter, bought from a local dealer. They threw in a third party warranty, I think the warranty  company I actually ended up dealing with was called “Assurant” but I recall it was branded as RAC on the leaflet.

Anyway, ended up needing a water pump and brake servo following a few fault codes after 7 months of ownership. The warranty company covered it via an independent garage, to the tune of around £1300. That was for a sub-5k car, and I didn’t have to jump through a load of hoops or deal with any attempts to wriggle out of it. So that was better than the alternative of me footing that bill!

As unlikely as it seems, Arnold Clark autocare warranty was a great bargain for us on a car just out of manufacturer warranty. Think it was £400 for two years starting after the manufacturer ended, had a sensor fail that due to labour was quoted at £450 – quick call from service desk while booking it in and all paid off directly to dealership.
Paid for a broken spring at next service then decided to just see if it might have been covered when i’d got home – bizarrely as i would have expected that to be counted as a consumable/wear and tear item on a 5 year old car, that was covered too and i got a refund no questions asked.
Many years ago i did a brief stint trying to sell cars for them (never again) and a customer did end up with a full to end engine rebuild with the same warranty on a £5k car.
Extremely competitive, I’m not really sure how they make money on it, but obviously only available through dealership sales and you have to get it serviced there too.

These are not really warranties . They are insurance.

The two are not mutually exclusive. An insurance company can underwrite a warranty risk.

For instance, the BMW extended warranty is underwritten by Allianz. So it is an insurance product indeed that offer warranty benefits.

These are not really warranties . They are insurance.

Yes, legally speaking they’re insurance and they tell you this.

Just scanning through the chat history on the Alfa WhatsApp group and the RAC platinum policy seems to be ok. Obviously they’ll try and wiggle out of things but none of the horror stories like I’ve read about with motoreasy (who only pay out the remaining percentage value of the component based on its expected lifetime) or warrantywise.

Issue can be time to get approval. I had a Mini with a knock sensor warning light. Warranty company thought BMW had said 8h labour but BMW garage had said 8 units (a unit is 30minutes) which is the time stated in the official maintenance manual.

Garage got very upset with warranty company for accusing them of inflating the cost, warranty company then insisted on engineer visit who confirmed work and costs. Took about a week with me stuck in the middle without the car.

The car I’m looking at currently can come with RAC Platinum cover. 3 years for £799.

Seems like a fair chunk of cash but it’ll be small potatoes compared to a blown turbo or DSG gearbox.

They cover a very long list of components for sudden mechanical breakdown but not anything that was caused by ‘wear and tear’.  Surely you can claim that almost everything is caused by wear and tear? It just seems like a perfect escape route for them.

it’ll be small potatoes compared to a blown turbo

It might not cover the turbo.

Look at it this way – if you are spending say £15k on car, and there was another one at £16k that someone promised to fix if anything really expensive went wrong, which would you choose?

The problem is the ball-ache you end up having to go through to get some things approved.  If you have a specific failure like a coil pack or something then it’s easy. Something more subtle and it’s not.

Got a years Volvo select warranty on a 7yr old V40, glad I did as they fixed the litre every 2k miles oil consumption problem, took a bit of getting there – had to prove the problem 🤔 but in the end about £5k worth of work done on a car that cost £9k

Ive got the RAC warranty on my RS4.

Im about 4k of repairs (paird for by them) since i got it last year. Its covered suspension arms, gps units, brakes and thermostat so far.

It doesnt cover main dealer costs or diagnostics work.

@ewan the van is coming from an RAC approved place and has passed their “82 point check”

Mine was supposed to have that. When I got the van (it was delivered, I hadn’t seen it before I got it) they hadn’t even ticked all the boxes on the checklist. RAC was basically not interested and the response was ‘have a hundred quid for your trouble or return the van’. The warranty with the assistance of my helpful local garage has been much more valuable.

Citroen were good to me. Bought the car used. About a year later it started leaking oil. They didn’t hesitate to fix it and didn’t ask me for any paperwork etc. Just a simple phone call and booked in. Turned out to be a faulty crush washer but I couldn’t see where the leak was coming from.

I’ve always chosen to save my money after a bad Warranty Direct experience in 1996…

Plus, I’ve got a garage who I’ve gone to for over a decade, knows me by name, and is just so reliable and honest.

I’ve not regretted that decision.

I’m currently claiming a new window switch from Cinch under the three month cover from them – and the main dealer is being utterly awful. I may just sack them off and get my garage to fix it.