New car extended warranty cost/value?

[FinanceDude]

FD, lemon laws are only for the first 18 months at least in NY. Some states may differ but lemon law buybacks are always under the factory warranty. So yes you only see the problems when the car is newer if it has problems. But I disagree with you as to repairs. No one can tell when a car is going to break. The average car has 14000 moving parts so how can someone say that if it doesn't break in the 1st 3 years it won't break later. I think that's silly IMHO.

You are correct that what mechanics are paid has nothing to do with weather a customer should or should not buy a warranty. But some dealers would rather not sell warranties because of the extra money made in the shop with customer paid labor being so much higher. Case in point is the maintance warranties that are offered from the manufacturer, most dealers don't even offer them and they are great deals for the customer who has their services done at the dealer.

When I worked F&I we ALWAYS offered to extend the manufacturer's warranty at point of sale. As a matter of fact, I kept an old cheesy card file, and would call folks about 2 years in and offer to extend their warranty at that time, and I got a lot of takers...........

As far as lemon law goes, it usually is 12-18 months. However, there are provisions under something called the "Magnuson-Ross" Act that gives a customer the right to claim damages from the manufacturer past the lemon law. I have seen awards of anywhere from $2000 to giving the customer their money back..............

I remember getting into several "discussions" with the service manager about how the sales department was "killing" his bottom line with all the extended new car warranties and used car warranties we were selling............

That doesn't change the fact that my personal choice is not to buy one.............but plenty of them are sold out there............

If I ever bought a Jaguar, BMW or Mercedes, I probably would buy an extended warranty........as those cars are known to have expensive repairs........

 

[Gearhead Jim]

GM and Toyota (probably others) extended warranties can be sold by any dealer, not just the one you bought the car from. We had a 2001 and now a 2006 Chevrolet Corvette, purchased from a local dealer. But both times we bought the extended warranty from Fichtner (note the odd spelling) Chevrolet in Laurel, Montana. Best price we could find.

On the Corvette, and probably on your Vibe, you can buy the GM extended warranty at the new car price just so long as your car has less than 12 months/ 12k miles. If you do, THE MONTHS/MILES ON YOUR CAR GET ADDED TO THE EXTENDED WARRANTY TERM. Our current 'vette had 11,500 miles but only 8 months (yes, we like to drive it a lot) when we bought the 84 month/84k mile warranty; so the coverage goes to 95,500 miles and 92 months. GM seems to be the only company that adds the months/miles this way.

As noted above, an extended warranty is like insurance. It is a good deal only if you can't afford the repairs that it might cover, or you have reason to believe you are more likely than average to have problems. Since I drive the car pretty hard at times, I got the warranty. At about 60k miles on the 2001, it developed a series of intermittant electrical gremlins that probably would have cost more to fix than I paid for the policy. Each time something started going goofy, I'd just drop it at the dealer and say "fix it, call me when you're done." That attitude alone was worth the price.