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To Warranty or Not?


CarMad
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So my car has just turned 3 and BMW want to offer me (or the warranty company) another year of cover. 

 

If I don't have an excess they want wait for it £945! if I have a £250 excess it drops to just above £600 and that includes full emergency cover as well. 

 

Thoughts what does everyone else do? I did it for a year on the 330i but that was only £400ish this is somewhat more! :uhoh:

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Touchwood, I have never had nor (more importantly) never had a need for a waranty on any of the cars I've owned.

 

Admittedly, most warranty companies wouldn't touch any of my cars anyway, but usually and hopefully any issues with the car have been ironed out already by previous owners and the rigorous mileage testing!

 

 

On any of your previous cars, have you had need for the warranty?

Has anything on the 5 gone wrong now with the existing warranty covering it?

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Forget any other warranty other than bmw.

I will be paying for an additional year in October. Headrest airbag replacement would have cost £1700 if it wasn't in warranty.

If you take the pay monthly option it rolls over at the same rate annually. Pay yearly and the price goes up each year.

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On our new cars (when out of warranty) we have always used the manufacturers warrantly thereafter.

Peace of mind.

Not the cheapest, but it covers all corners in hopefully all eventualities.

The biggest bill being on the turbos on our 135i, £250 excess on a repair bill of some £2k.

If you can afford it, do it.

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Yeah I think I might go for it as some of the things can be rather expensive to fix, the rear self leveling suspension for one I've seen can be an issue. 

 

Also having had the alloy replaced under warranty already and they would have been fairly costly I think I will do it but with the £250 excess. 

 

Cheers all good food for thought. +++

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Just for the peace of mind I would also go for it .... £250 excess isn't too bad when you consider most insurance policies are about that figure too, and you can be sure if they are any problems it will bea lot more costly than the premium plus excess  (although I hope you don't need it) +++

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On our new cars (when out of warranty) we have always used the manufacturers warrantly thereafter.

Peace of mind.

Not the cheapest, but it covers all corners in hopefully all eventualities.

The biggest bill being on the turbos on our 135i, £250 excess on a repair bill of some £2k.

If you can afford it, do it.

But I bet all the warranties have cost a lot more than the £1750 you saved.

 

I've always just put money to one side - well not really but when you need to spend you do. I guess the closest I got to being burned was my porous engine on the S4 which would have been £5k.

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You all remember me rebuilding the 996's engine last year?  Probably the worst kind of out-of-the-blue bill there is?

 

The total cost of that was about the same as the accumulated Porsche warranty costs would have been, up to the year it happened.  And I had the money in my bank account for those years instead of in Porsche's account. 

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I see the logic and I do the same with house cover for the boiler. 

 

Over this house and the last I've saved enough not needing to call anyone out (ok I have once in the new house) to save the cost of an entire new boiler plus fitting. 

 

As you say for the car most bills will probably be small but its the ouch once that I really don't want to have to fork out for and I get the emergency cover thrown in (well kind of).

 

They are going to call me back later in the week so I will make a final decision then. 

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its the ouch once that I really don't want to have to fork out for and I get the emergency cover thrown in (well kind of).

 

There's logic in that.  My approach is to insure stuff when I can't cover the potential payout from savings - so basically the car's road risks, the house/contents, my professional indemnity and my employer's liability.  For the rest, I take the view that the time-averaged cost of the payouts must be less than the premiums, else the insurance company wouldn't offer the policy.  Therefore, the fact that they're offering the policy is proof I don't want it. 

 

The nice thing about this is that the more aggressive their sales tactics, the bigger must be the markup, and the more convinced I am that the policy can't be good value :grin:

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The worst thing that can happen to a boiler is a £2k bill for a new boiler. I don't do a warranty or service plan for the boiler as we have a very good plumber.

 

Modern, complex cars with electrical gadgets galore are a different kettle of fish. The bill could be kicking £10k for a new engine. I will pay for that peace of mind!

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I'm winging if and hoping for the best with the 330d, which was three years old in September. Can't remember what the offer was for another year but if struck me as a big high. And I'll probably be shifting it before it's four years old.

 

Why?!  Hardly winging it - its a beautifully built machine!  +++

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Do it, without hesitation.

 

Central Information Display module part and fitting - £1,200.  That's the iDrive module to you and I - and mine went on the 6 series.

 

On a 5 GT you could be looking at a very expensive failure like that, or worse. 

 

Take the excess option and do it.  At £600 it just is a complete no brainer.  Put it this way, a fuel pump replacement and labour on the Z4 35i would have been £550.  It doesn't take a lot to get to £600 of repairs.

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If you get the BMW Warranty and do decent mileage pay it monthly not annually. I know it's slightly more expensive but this is offset by the fact that the price doesn't take a massive hike at 60k+.

 

Mine's on 110k miles now :o and still covered by the warranty - they pay out easily too, never had any issues. 106k miles they replaced al the O2 sensors at about a grand for example, didn't question anything.

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Other stuff done under warranty - rear suspension arms, all the coil packs, throttle actuators (I actually paid for this as they said it wasn't covered, then they changed their minds - about 2k worth!), some random electrical stuff. Been worth its weight for me.

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No more/less so than any others I imagine. Not sure mine is really designed for the kind of mileage I do to be fair.

 

Also, BMW just make it so easy. Honestly the fact it costs me 1k a year extra just to make everything go away - it's fine. A complete opposite of any experience I've ever had with Audi where I had to fight for every bloody thing.

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I went for it in the end. 

 

I went for monthly payments so will see if they increase over time, hopefully not. And I've gone for the £250 excess as I'm hoping not to use it but if a big bill does come then this will help prevent a bigger hit. 

 

Hopefully I don't have to use it but its there and I also went for the full recover pan euro option as well as I think next year we will be taking it for a long walk across europe with the kids as the eldest will be in school. 

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