bscar; you made a good point. The things covered rarely break, except through negligence or abuse. If you subtract all normal wear and tear and maintenance expense from the lifetime cost, you would not have much left.
On my 1988 Caprice there were:
Water pump failures (2) $470
Heather core failure $225
Alternator $390
Intake manifold gasket failure $255
replace starter $334
Heater fan motor failure $55
Rear differential bearings $450
So a total of $2179 over a 19 year period and nearly 200,000 miles.
Of the above the warranty company would no doubt call the starter and alternator replacement as normal wear and tear.
The $2171 quoted to OP is for only 36,000 miles or 3 years. In my case that would be 36/19x12 times the $2179 or $344 of claims for the 3 year period. At the cost quoted, the payback would be only 344/2171 x100=15.85% of the money spent.
Consumer Reports lists the Infiniti as having a much better repair record than the Caprice, so the claims rate would be even less although the cost per claim might be higher.
Over on the Cx-7 board, they seem to favor Mazda’s extended warranty for the vehicle as some of the first years are prone to AC and turbo seal problems, and the cost of replacing either one is more than the warranty. I still say, save your money for IF you need it
It’s a gamble for every extended warranty program, and you’re playing house odds with loaded dice.
Save your money. The chances of your Infinity needing $2000 worth of repairs between now and 88,000 miles is about the same as my chance of winning the lottery. And if you keep the money and yours is the 1 in 6million that does have a major failure, you’ll have the money yourself and won’t need the warranty!
The profit to the salesman and company is usually over 50%. So for every $1,000 you spend the insurance company has less than $500 to pay for repairs or they will loose money, something insurance companies do not do. Some people will get nothing back and some will get a lot more than they pay. Most will get far less. In addition you need to keep in mind that the insurer has worded it to eliminate as many expensive things as they can.
Remember that the seller is out to make money and they get to write the rules and set the price. They are not going to sell them at a loss so one way or another they are going to have you pay more than they will pay out.
Would you gamble with a car dealer who gets to set all the rules and knows all the odds?
Your decision has to do with the value of the piece of mind it gives you. If that is worth the cost then buy it. Don't expect it to cover everything however, most are written to keep cost down and exempt what they know will cost them money.
Yes, oldtimer, I bought it as Insurance against breakage, not mechanical failure. If I did not travel, I would not have bought this insurance. The probability of damaging a laptop on a business trip is very high. Especially in Africa, the Midle East, Latin America and Asia.
I know I said I never would answer another one of these but here goes. Much but certainly not nearly all depends on the mechanic and the Service Manager (and of course the quality of the policy). Since with extended warranty the mechanic is allowed to upsell work, if your car comes in with problem x a hungry mechanic will look it over and we came to know which companies would cover what and how to word the report. We had contests on how much we could upsell on cars with extended warranty, management loved it, to a point.
The slightest seepage got called a "leak’ and the smallest noise was a “vibration” due to part failure and some policies even covered items like door rubbers, so if they were discolored or “seemed to be leaking causing wind noise” all that stuff got wrote up.
So I come at it from a different aspect,extended warranty made me money and allowed me to mark even the smallest defect as something that needed fixed.
Our little "game’ came to an abrupt halt when an inspector was sent out to look at a car one mechanic wrote up over 2000.00 worth of “needed repairs”, you can game the system only so far ,then they notice.
Something got the extended warranty companies attention. That same mechanic that was getting “Top Producer” plaques and money to spend in the parts department got fired for the same thing that got him the praise of the management just a few days before.
How did it go in the Service Managers office, “I am shocked that my mechanics would try to sell something not needed”? Yeah sure
Mind you there was some (but real slim) justification in replacing these parts. GM would not like it one bit if the mechanic walked the customer around the car pointing out, this discolored rubber here could be replace under your extended warranty or, I hear a noise in your drivers window, this is a sign they will fail soon. Now the customer just loved getting all these potential problems pointed out, and all fixed with one Repair Order, hence one deductible, I was doing my customer a favor, all at the cost of the warranty company.
I guess it could appear that I was “taking advantage” of the company but like I said, there was a hint of justification in all work performed. It’s just that they would not like me giving the customer a “tour” and telling them “look at that I can fix that at no extra cost to you”, but the customer liked it, some did not really know what they bought.
It was the girls in the office that taught us mechanics what we could replace and how to word the report (it varied with each different extended warranty company).
A note on “wording the report” When we complained about a poor paying job (from GM) we were always told we did not write it up good enough, well sometimes I would write pages trying to get more time and it did not work, perhaps it was a “quality not quanity” thing.
