Warrantywise

Scuzi

Scuzi

Scuzi

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Due to the potential for eye watering bills, I'm looking at a warranty for my car. It's a 2010 Mercedes R350L CDI. There's nothing I hate more than arguing nuances with someone following a script over the phone, therefore I value a no-hassle service and would be willing to pay more if I could reasonably guarantee this.

I've had a quote from Warranty Direct, Click4Warranty, and Warrantywise. Warrantywise were significantly more expensive but they claim to offer the best cover. Having read the small print it seems this is the case.

Whilst they all promise the world over the phone, having searched here it appears there are a few issues in practice with Warranty Direct. Searching further afield the general consensus seems to be that they will dispute all claims as a matter of routine. This has put me off and has led me to consider Warrantywise despite the increased premium.

I'm having trouble finding credible reviews and reports of real-life experiences from independent sources (e.g. this forum). Does anyone here have a warranty with Warrantywise and if so, what is your experience?

Or are there any other recommendations? Essentially if the engine or gearbox lunches itself, I want to be able to drop it off and have it fixed quickly with the least amount of hassle possible.
 
Worth as much as the paper it's written on.

Have any mods? They won't help even if it's a completely different section of the car.
 
I have had a warranty with warrantywise, was useless.

Engine blew, they said it was caused by old owner not following the service schedule.
 
How did they establish that? Was there a gap in the service history?

I'm worried that should there ever be a problem that I would have to micromanage any communications between the garage and the warranty provider to ensure they don't latch onto red herring to justify an exclusion.
 
[TW]Fox said:
You can still buy the proper Mercedes insured for warranty, it's run by the same people who do the excellent BMW one.
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With an annual premium of £2657 for Tier 1 and £2294 for Tier 2, I'd rather bank the money and take this risk.
 
Scuzi said:
How did they establish that? Was there a gap in the service history?

I'm worried that should there ever be a problem that I would have to micromanage any communications between the garage and the warranty provider to ensure they don't latch onto red herring to justify an exclusion.
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Was missing a service stamp. That's all it took. Car was a dud from the start.
 
[TW]Fox said:
Ah, im guessing the car has over 60k on it. The price gets silly after that.
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Yeah, just under 75k.

Warranty Direct have called me twice since doing the online quote. Their carrot dangling has brought the premium down to just under £550 p.a. for their SecureCare product and an extra £50 on top to remove the betterment clause. Online reviews are not favourable however it's about half the price of the Warrantywise quote.

I can't figure out if the majority of the online reviews are by people who have not read the fine print, or if the cover really does have enough weasel words in it to make the warranty practically worthless.
 
WarrantyDirect paid for:

Wheel Bearing
PCV stuff
Throttle Body
AC compressor

All at the Lexus dealer, no arguments or anything. They paid the bill directly to the garage apart from the wheel bearing where I was given a cheque. Couldn't really see any issue, when researching issues appeared when people were not following the WD steps like contacting them first etc.
 
They might be different now, but years back I had an issue with WarrantyDirect after the DMF failed on my Audi A6. It was totally covered under my policy, but the way they acted almost let them get out of paying.

Firstly, even the higher labour rate didn't come close to covering main dealer prices, so I took the car in to a good VAG Indy. The policy states that you have to get authorisation before approving any work to be done, but at the same time WD insist on having pictures of the failed parts before considering the claim, which obviously meant the car had to be in bits before they'd look at the claim.

Once the car was apart and they'd got the pictures, they proceeded to avoid giving an answer for around 10 days, all the time my car occupying one of the two ramps the garage had, both me and the garage contacting them multiple times per day, there was always a reason that the right person couldn't take the call, or they were waiting for someone else before being able to proceed. Eventually, the garage gave me a choice of authorising the work or paying to have the car put back together as it was, so I decided to go ahead and let them fix the car.

After completing the work, the garage then sent WD a copy of the invoice, which got an immediate response saying that they would have paid the claim, but seeing their terms hadn't been followed, they had to reject it. I ended up paying the garage myself, and then having to go up through a couple of levels in the company to eventually find someone who could see that they'd have a hard time justifying the delays if we ended up in court. So they eventually paid for the new DMF and labour, but not the new clutch which went in as part of the job, and they also refused to pay more than a token gesture towards my hire car costs for 11-12 days. I've read other stories of people having a great experience of them on small repairs, but when you get a claim which would actually justify the warranty cost, they suddenly don't want to know.
 
Have a chat with whoever will be looking after the car for you and get their opinion.

One of the garages I use won't do work under warranty from certain providers because it's just too much hassle dealing with them and the subsequent ill feeling from customers when they don't pay out.
 
Nasher said:
That is the problem with these companies. You pay them and they do everything they can to avoid paying out for anything.
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If they agreed to every claim imagine how much the premiums would be though. They will have limitations.

You only really buy insurance if you think you will get more out of it than you put in, and you know your own car better than them. So the only way they can make any money is if people overestimate what they think they will get out in return.

It is why I am always happy to self insure unless it is too expensive to self insure (in which case you'd hope everyone is buying insurance to make it fair). So people buying home insurance probably arent a self selecting bunch, people buying mobile phone insurance probably are.
 
muon said:
You only really buy insurance if you think you will get more out of it than you put in
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No, you buy insurance if you can't or don't want to pay the potential costs which could arise. With something like a car warranty, you hope that you don't need it, but it gives you the reassurance of fairly fixed costs incase something does go wrong, it's much easier to budget for. It becomes much more appealing on bigger and more expensive cars too, I've seen stories of people with £40k+ bills for a new F10 M5 engine, I'll happily pay the £1k/year it's going to cost to extend mine when it's time.
 
Mickey said:
No, I read the whole thing, it starts off with an incorrect statement and then tries to explain it...
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90% of people buying car warranty insurance aren't driving M5s or similar. So the general statement was correct. I even went on to cover the less significant motivation.

My statement is far more correct than your general statement that people only buy insurance if they can't or don't want to pay repair costs.

Insurance is a bet you are making with a provider, except they have to cover their costs and the people making those bets may be biased.
 
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