Is a 3rd Party Warranty on an Alfa worth more than the paper it's printed on?

[bix]

Hi all,
I was interested to know if anyone has ever needed to claim from a 3rd party warranty plan for parts and/or labour for their Alfa?

I recently purchased a second hand Alfa and was sold a 3 year warranty plan which covers most components to a maximum value (eg. Gearbox to $3000.00). There are a number of conditions such as servicing every 6 months and sending the service receipts to this company within 7 days which, if not followed, could invalidate the warranty. I've started off being diligent, so we'll see how that goes.

I have heard recently that some people have had difficulty in getting claims fulfilled ("oh, the fine print says...."), so interested to know what my chances are should the cambelt snap and bend all my valves!

[Darryl]

No experience on an alfa. Plenty of experience with a Jag.

1) Its always a fight to get them to pay for anything
2) I had a catastrophic lean out, burned valve, burnt piston and they basically refused to pay for it (they paid for some insignificant part of the job, claimed that the rest was "consequential damage" of the original fault so not their problem). Note that the part they paid for was about $300 and the total repair bill was about $4500.... And the claim limit if interpreted sanely was $3000.
3) They will want you to do stupid things like drive your car with faulty brakes to the outskirts of the other side of town to their favourite cheap brake repairer, who will turn out to never have seen your model of car before and keep it for a week and charge more than it would have cost to buy a refurbed part from a specialist supplier retail and have it fitted by any muggins down the road....

That said, I did, based on cost of policy and what they paid out, get more than my money back - but I did get the warranty of a dealer who I knew and sold it at cost (the std cost of these includes a massive dealer commission). The issue is, that if you are relying on it saving you from the big scary bills, its likely they will buck up and try to find a way out of it just when you need the job done urgently.

Also, there tend to be multiple grades of policy and they list exactly which bits they are covering, down to which internals of the transmission etc - it can turn out, regardless of the limit $, that they have only covered the bits that don't fail...

This was all a few years back. I hear they haven't gotten any better, but you need to adjust the $ in the above upwards to reflect increases in parts and especially labour since then...

[L4OMEO]

My experience is similar to Darryl's. We had a warranty included with the deal when we bought our 156, and also purchased one a few years earlier when buying a Landrover. While both appeared quite extensive and inclusive on the surface, they were cleverly worded and very open to interpretation. Sure enough, we had problems making claims in both cases. With the Landy, while each component was covered up to what appeared to be a reasonable maximum, deep within the policy was a clause which set a total maximum that would be paid out under the policy - once that was reached, no further claims. We reached it in our first claim when the steering rack allegedly cost well into the thousands to replace.

With the Alfa, in the end we elected to stop having it serviced by one of the three approved mechanics (all Holden dealers) and forfeited the warranty, because in our eyes the the value of the warranty was less than the value of having an Alfa specialist look after the car.

Having said all that, the warranty you received might be great. I'd just recommend that you read and understand it all before feeling too assured by it's cover.

Cheers
Rory

[bix]

Thanks for your feedback Darryl and L4OMEO. This aligns to what I have heard.
Reading the "claims procedure" in the warranty book, if the car needs repairs, it needs to be taken to an authorised pre-approver to receive an authorisation number and only after that, you can graciously take your car to the authorised repairer. The problem I see with this is four-fold.
1. if the car is broken down, it's going to be painful to get the car to the authorised pre-approver and then to the authorised repairer.
2. Receiving the approval for repair could take time, therefore the car could be out of action for a chunk of time.
3. if the car is not broken down and you drive it to these locations, you could be voiding the warranty by "failing to minimise damage by continuing to drive".
4. if you would like to get the repairs done by an Alfa specialist, these most likely will not be on the list of approved repairers.

The other warranty statement of interest is the company "will only pay to repair the Vehicle to a condition consistent with its age, condition and kilometres travelled." Wow, that sounds like a get out of jail free card if ever I've heard one!

[116Greg]

I am currently working for a reputable dealer as a salesperson and it is enforced that you try to get a premium warranty from the customer which works out about $ 3000 over sale price. If you look carefully  " 3 years or 175 km unlimited claims but to a limit $ 2000 and it must be serviced at the dealership "        SO   if you blow a motor we will only pay $ 2000 you pay the rest.

[Mark Baigent]

Simple answer really - no !
They've never been worth the paper they are written on and are a dealer junket to build margins into profit.
So here's a real gap in the insurance industry for anyone who wants to do it properly .....