I'm looking for as much real world knowledge on this as possible as I'm considering swapping my S that I love for a newer one for the simple sake of a Warranty.

The indie Dealers all seem to "work with" these different Warranty companies, I've gotten good recommendations for AAA and Mercury which sadly no Dealer has mentioned yet.

They all do the "Gold" or "Platinum", etc. packages, from around 3 years/30K/$3K to 5 years/50K/$5K.

I'm just very concerned that if I shell out the dough for mainly Suspension assurance, I wouldn't get screwed if something did happen. Also these Warranty's seem to state "Mechanical Breakdown Coverage" as opposed to "Wear And Tear Coverage".

Any help would be so appreciated.

 

I purchased my car and warranty in November '07. Found it while researching on benzworld, part of a group buy. The company is called Interstate and I got the Tech+ package which covers 36k miles or 3 years. There was a package above this which covered more components on the vehicle but the term and mileage was 2 year/24k. I was lucky to have purchased the vehicle right below the mileage limit, which was 75k. I paid just under $3K including the discount for the group buy.

After driving the car around for a month or so, the seals startd to fail on the front air shocks. I had done a good deal of research on these cars before purchasing so I wasn't surprised by this, it was a FL car and NYC roads are torture to say the least. My surprise came when the dealer told me the warranty company didn't cover the seals. I was very persistant with the broker who sold me the warranty and hosted the group buy and made sure nmerous times that the deal repair would be covered under the warranty package I had selected. He insisted it was covered but I guess he never confirmed this with the actual warranty company. We all went back and forth for a few days until finally the broker ageed to pay half of the charge for the seals repair (getting him to make good on his promise was a whole other story). On the positive side, the dealer replaced a control arm and transmission seal at no cost to me. There's also a $100 deductible when you bring the car in for repair. So I ended up paying about a third of the final cost of the bill.

Overall I'm happy with the piece of mind it gives me. If I were to do it again, I'd try to talk to the shop first and ask them to replace the entire strut assembly rather than repairing the seals. For some reason the strut itself is fully covered, however the seal kit was outside the scope of the warranty. When I spoke to the broker and warranty company they wouldn't really confirm this was legit but also never said it couldn't be done. Replacing 2 struts would already pay back the cost of the warranty, plus some. Less than a year into the warranty I've recovered over a third of the initial cost of the warranty.

One thing to notice also is that the warranty company can check to make sure you're following the manufacturer's maintenance schedule. If you do the work yourself or at an independent shop be sure to save all of your receipts.

Hope this helps

 

Thank you so much for that help man. Looks like whatever Company I go with, before I do anything I'll have to contact THEM personally instead of just signing the papers with the Dealer, and have an in-depth about what would be covered on my specific car.