Extended service contracts

[mikeinaustin]

My car should be here next week. I usually keep my cars a very long time, if not forever. I can do most things myself, but major things i cannot. I know bmw offers extended service contracts of various types though they are rather expensive as far as msrp goes.

i can across this:
http://www.checkbook.org/auto/extendedservice.cfm

searching the internet, lots of mb people say lisa is good though hard to get a hold of. i have not tried yet, don't even know if she is still selling service contracts. any of you have experience with her? this courtesy motors place looks to be an authorized dealer for a whole lot of cars including mb and bmw.

http://www.chicocourtesy.com/index.htm

[Chuck76]

How much are they asking? My extended service to 100k was 2.2k

[teagueAMX]

Originally Posted by mikeinaustin

My car should be here next week. I usually keep my cars a very long time, if not forever. I can do most things myself, but major things i cannot. I know bmw offers extended service contracts of various types though they are rather expensive as far as msrp goes.

i can across this:
http://www.checkbook.org/auto/extendedservice.cfm

searching the internet, lots of mb people say lisa is good though hard to get a hold of. i have not tried yet, don't even know if she is still selling service contracts. any of you have experience with her? this courtesy motors place looks to be an authorized dealer for a whole lot of cars including mb and bmw.

http://www.chicocourtesy.com/index.htm

I'm sure there will be various opinions on this, but I just had a bad experience with a non-factory extended warranty. I'm to blame for not researching it more thoroughly, but I trusted the salesman and in retrospect I'm not sure why he didn't sell me a regular factory extended warranty.

My issue is nowadays is the non-factory extended warranties are sort of like the health care insurance plans in the sense that every penny has to be approved by a clearing house. The one I bought was a major plan but it's managed by a company in Chicago that runs about 350 such plans. They were hard to get in touch with, partly due to the time difference and nitpicky as hell, even to the point that they wouldn't pay for differential oil or gaskets unless certain other conditions were met. Each step of the way required justification and my dealer didn't help either.

I had to go down there about 5 times to inspect parts, give them instructions call the insurance carrier, etc., all to make sure I avoided out of pocket expenses they wanted to pass back to me.

I made up my I would never purchase one of those warranties again and would only settle for a warranty like BMW's. I know it's not perfect either, but it's a lot better than dealing with a company like Blue Cross in the middle of surgery and the surgeon has to call the PPO to get permission for each procedure. It went sort of like this - imagine yourself on the operating table:

Surgeon: Ok, so I've opened up the patient but it turns out it's not appendicitis after all. Well have to close up the patient.

PPO: Fine, but we won't pay for the needle or the thread, and since you're saying you diagnosis was wrong, all those tests you asked for have to be paid by the patient.

Surgeon: What about the anesthesia?

PPO: Nope, not covered either.

Surgeon: Well I have to close him back, you know.

PPO: Whatever. That's between you and the patient -- click.

Anyway, you get the idea.

[mikeinaustin]

Originally Posted by teagueAMX

I'm sure there will be various opinions on this, but I just had a bad experience with a non-factory extended warranty. I'm to blame for not researching it more thoroughly, but I trusted the salesman and in retrospect I'm not sure why he didn't sell me a regular factory extended warranty.

My issue is nowadays is the non-factory extended warranties are sort of like the health care insurance plans in the sense that every penny has to be approved by a clearing house. The one I bought was a major plan but it's managed by a company in Chicago that runs about 350 such plans. They were hard to get in touch with, partly due to the time difference and nitpicky as hell, even to the point that they wouldn't pay for differential oil or gaskets unless certain other conditions were met. Each step of the way required justification and my dealer didn't help either.

I had to go down there about 5 times to inspect parts, give them instructions call the insurance carrier, etc., all to make sure I avoided out of pocket expenses they wanted to pass back to me.

I made up my I would never purchase one of those warranties again and would only settle for a warranty like BMW's. I know it's not perfect either, but it's a lot better than dealing with a company like Blue Cross in the middle of surgery and the surgeon has to call the PPO to get permission for each procedure. It went sort of like this - imagine yourself on the operating table:

Surgeon: Ok, so I've opened up the patient but it turns out it's not appendicitis after all. Well have to close up the patient.

PPO: Fine, but we won't pay for the needle or the thread, and since you're saying you diagnosis was wrong, all those tests you asked for have to be paid by the patient.

Surgeon: What about the anesthesia?

PPO: Nope, not covered either.

Surgeon: Well I have to close him back, you know.

PPO: Whatever. That's between you and the patient -- click.

Anyway, you get the idea.

basically she says its $2500 for 6/100k and $3000 for 7/100k. my local bmw dealer wants $3300 for 6/100k.

so this has me thinking...assume 6/100k. this warranty (extended service plan really) only kicks in after the 4/50k expires. so you are paying $2500 for 2 years of additional coverage. i have no experience with bmw cars, but i know from other cars that $2500 is a lot of major repairs to occur in just 2 years. i would guess at least 3 major things would have to fail to break even.

now i of course realize, it only takes 1 failed transmission to cover the $2500, but that could also occur 2 days after the 6 years and you are out of money as well.

so what do you guys with bmw experience say? is $2500 for 2 more years of coverage reasonable?

[Memphis1]

i don't recommend it unless your 110% sure you're gonna keep your car that long... i'm bad when it comes to "wanting the latest toy" so i never bother to do it...

[mikeinaustin]

yes i will be keeping car for an extremely long time. i would guess 10 years min. so, who here knows the cost of fixing bmws? for instance, what does an ac compressor run? head gasket leak? dead abs computer? etc, etc, etc.