Waranty

[pompei]

I'm looking for another car at the moment, the current fave being an Alfa 156. (I know, I know)

There are plenty for sale from dealers who offer warranties and the opportunity of buying extended warranties. Being a cynic, I imagine that these are probably the sort of thing that crop up on tedious consumer TV programmes. Anyone come across these?

[Mr Lobster]

Extended warranties, especially on older stuff are generally not worth the paper they are written on.

 

They are however, a good way for a dealer to make quite a lot of profit from selling you the warranty.

 

When I bought my 145 it had 12 months RAC warranty. Fat lot of good that was as the RAC managed to wriggle out of paying for absolutely fucking everything. Cheers tosspots.

[Tonka]

We get quite a few people coming in to get work done under whatever warranty a dealer has sold them, we contact the warranty companies and invariably they will not pay for any diagnostics, try and pay you half the going rate for the work and then take months to pay you, the best one seems to be the AA, though even they can go into wriggle out mode.

 

Read the small print and see what if any of the known faults with your chosen purchase are covered and be warned they will expect to see a complete service history (within the manufacturer's mileage limits) if it went 2000 miles over a service two years ago they might still say no.

 

It's a gamble either way, you could stump up for a warranty you never need, find your's is worthless when it all goes pear shaped or decide against having one and then have to dig deep when something bad happens.

[Justin Case]

I've just bought a three-year-old Mazda 6 Estate (which unfortunately rules out adding any shite to the fleet for a while )and as well as the 12 month Mazda warranty thrown in I was offered an extra 12 months for 400 quids, which seemed a bit steep, especially as I'd have to have it serviced at a Mazda dealer As I've just been through the bills for my 156, which it is replacing, and in 7 years and 56k miles I only actually spent £350 on repairs (drivers door lock, rear suspension and new filler cap) on top of routine servicing and belts, etc. it's probably best to just pick one that seems a good'un and has got a decent history from a specialist rather than paying for a waaranty which as Mr L says may be worthless

[pompei]

Thanks fellas, you've confirmed what I thought would be the case.

[meggersdog]

As long as the garage warranty covers the cam variator otherwise get your spanners out and have a read of this http://home.hccnet.nl/jaap.bouma/PhaseVariator.htm .

Mind you his variator tool does look a bit "scrapheap challenge".I used some angle iron,an 8mm drill and a 30mm holesaw when I did mine a couple of weeks ago.