Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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Also I have read good and bad reviews of this company, any thoughts on them?
Thanks in advance for any advice!!
PS...Anyone know where the user picture comes from and how to change it??
Al
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Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
Just kidding !
And all these 3rd party ext companies are scams and sleazy !
Have you done any research into this topic?
Sure have, & I've learned that almost every expert on personal finance recommends against EWs. Long story short, if you build up your savings & pay down your debt, as you should, you should have no trouble dealing with the occasional big repair bill.
Manufacturer-backed EWs are certainly better than 3rd party service contracts, but nothing beats a big fat FDIC-insured savings account in your name.
A few years later, when I was preparing to trade in the car, I pulled the EW paperwork from the closet shelf & tried to call the issuer. (I wanted to find out if the contract could be transferred to the next owner.) No one answered the phone; the company had gone belly-up.
That was my 1st & also my last EW. After that, I decided to self-insure.
75% seems high. What brand of cars you sell? High reliable cars like Toyota and Honda have low priced extended warranties, so they may sell high numbers due to the value. Chrysler and Kia may sell high numbers because they aren't as reliable.
And I'd rather tuck that grand away in one of my bank accounts. I just can't see the point of paying you a thousand bucks today so that I don't have to pay for a repair that might be 3, 4 or more years down the road. It just doesn't make financial sense to me. Why should I let you earn interest on money that can be in my bank account, earning interest for me?
Maybe I've just been lucky, but the most expensive repair bill that I've ever faced - about $1500 - was for an 11-year-old car. As far as I know, no EW will cover a car that old.
I'm a hard-core fiscal conservative, & I just don't believe that you can purchase financial peace of mind. The only way to get it is to pay down your debts & build up your savings & investments. Once you've done that, you'll find that you really don't need an EW. (Does anyone here think that Bill Gates buys EWs on his new cars?)
There are no shortcuts.
It's too easy to "love 'em and leave 'em". Like all good business, it's about working hard, meeting expectations and delivering value. I think this is possible with an extended warranty. Plenty of people are ready to spend money on them. We just have to make sure they get what they pay for before, during and after the sale.
And, like everything else, you get what you pay for.
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
And always the manuf ext warr is the best. :surprise:
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
You know the opinion of Edmunds posters about these 3rd part warr.. No wonder the AG's are going after them.Also , if there are no ulterior motives-- let us see how long he remains in this discussion and answers questions when he knows that he cant divulge his company`s name.. I know where my bet is !! :P
Well, I've been buying cars since the early 70s, & I can tell you from personal experience that today's cars are vastly more reliable, even with all the new technology. My wife's loaded '07 Lexus has been problem-free, unlike my '78 VW Rabbit with no A/C, crank windows, stick shift & an AM radio.
As far as reliability is concerned, the low point was the late 70s through the mid 80s. It's because cars are so much more reliable now that the EW business is so profitable. You would have a much harder time buying an EW today if cars were still as bad as they were 30 years ago.
But there's another, more important point. EWs are a form of property & casualty insurance, & any expert in that field will tell you that you should buy insurance only to protect yourself against truly catastrophic losses & self-insure against all other losses.
After seeing a "minor" fire that took our local fire department 1 truck & 10 minutes to extinguish do $150K in damage to a neighbor's house, I now carry the best homeowner's insurance available in my area. A loss of that magnitude would ruin me, & I'll pay what I have to for the highest level of protection. But a $2K or $3K auto repair bill won't change my life because I maintain a contingency fund to cover that & any other unexpected bill. Sure, I'll be grouchy for a week, but I won't have to skip my vacation or postpone my retirement.
Frankly, it's irresponsible not to follow the experts' advice & build up an emergency fund. What will you do if you need a new roof or a hot water heater, or if you have to post bail for your brother-in-law? Are you going to buy a separate EW for each of these contingencies? The cost would be prohibitive.
For real peace of mind, you can't beat cash.
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
Al
I don’t want this thread to get hijacked on whether my decision to buy or not to buy a 3rd party warranty. That decision is made. I am now looking at the least expensive place to buy this particular Mercury Insurance coverage.
If you have a person and company name for me to contact, you can email me at tampaone@gmail.com
I am located in Florida but think it will be much cheaper if I can buy it out of state
Thanks in advance...
I've been on the phone calling many other credit unions and looking at places, but it looks as though many of the MBI (mechanical breakdown insurance) companies specifically exclude the Land Rover and some Mercedes and BMW cars from their policies.
The Wachovia insurance has been bought by Wells Fargo and is only available at time of purchase, as are several others. Can anybody recommend an extended warranty or MBI that I could buy as a third party?
thank you.
So my two questions are, are these warranties very often financially advantageous? If they are, when is the best time to buy one?
Thanks so much for any advise you can provide. I guess a related question is whether new Altima's tend to have serious problems around 50,000 miles or so.
So, put it like this: you are exhausting the warranty period WHILE your car is ALREADY covered under the manufacturer's warranty.
I know, the warranty company will tell you its gonna be cheaper to buy now since your car IS under the manufact warranty.... but you can get the same deal (cheaper) up until you have 1000 miles left on your manufct warranty..............
As another suggestion you can wait until you are about 5 months away from the original factory warranty then shop around. Do a comparison and see what works best for you. Nissan does make great vehicles, but like anything else nothing is ever trouble free.
Wow, a 1,000 price difference! So I think you are saying that the best prices are at the end of the year for warranties, just as they are for cars. I never would have thought of that. Thanks!
At the moment I'm trying to decide whether ANY extended "warranty"/service contract is worth the paper it's printed on. I've been diligently researching/surfing the net and I've found countless warnings against buying from a "third-party" provider. The "wisdom of the crowd" appears to be strongly in favor of buying a plan "direct from the manufacturer". In reality, of course, that means buying from the dealers who control the marketing of their company's warranty products (and whom, of course, we all love and trust so much...).
OK, sounds like good advice, maybe, assuming the manufacturer is concerned enough about protecting its brand's good name to live up to the terms of the contract. (Any suggestion that they might try to weasel out of something is, of course, utterly preposterous!)
But here's my situation -- I own a 2009 VW Jetta TDI, which I love driving and would like to keep driving as long as I (and it) can. Volkswagen, via its dealers, offers drivers an extended service contract (called the "Drive Easy Program") that has the VW logo emblazoned on top. By reading the fine print at the bottom, however, one discovers that the contract is "administered" by "Fidelity Warranty Services, Inc.", nominally located in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Now to me, that sounds like a 3rd Party! And if you Google that company's name, you can find the same kind of horror stories from outraged and frustrated customers as you'll find regarding Warranty Direct and other after-marketers. (I know that some of you say that Warranty Direct is the best of a bad lot, but still...)
So my first question is, given these facts, does anyone have any anecdotes to recount regarding "Drive Easy" and/or Fidelity Warranty? (Please don't tell me that "Fidelity Warranty" is just another name for "U.S. Fidelis"!) Second, does anyone have reason to believe I'd be any better off going with VW's own "company plan" than I would be with some other? And lastly, out of curiosity, is VW unique in outsourcing the "extended warranty" it offers its customers, or has this become the norm in the auto business?
I'd appreciate any tidbits of your collective wisdom.
It's a very rare instance in which a member has recommended a third-party extended contract.
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
I've never shopped for one before, so I'm just trying to understand what the term "manufacturer's" means, and how it differentiates itself in practice. Is the assumption that dealers' service depts. are more likely to try to accommodate customers who have purchased a service contract through the dealer?
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle