I bought a certified 2007 MB R500 that has 29k miles on it. The orig warranty has 2.5 year left. The dealer offered a 2-year extended warranty from Mercedes for $2,500. Is it worth it?
Define what you mean by “worth it”. If you mean that you expect to collect more on average than you pay, then that means the warranty company would be out of business shortly. It doesn’t work that way.
Repairs can be very expensive on your vehicle. So $2500 will likely be easier to hit simply due to repairs costs of your vehicle vs the average.
Basically you are paying $100/month to not pay repairs that likely won’t happen. But if you rest easier you can only tell.
If the car was that bad that it needs $2500 worth of repairs in a 2 year period then I consider it a piece of junk. No car should ever need that much repairs in 2 years that only just out of warranty.
Is it a Mercedes Benz warranty or an aftermarket warranty? What is covered? Note that the basic warranty is 50,000 miles as well as 4 years. You are over half way on mileage.
I just purchased the car yesterday and the orig warranty is good until Oct. 2011. Mercedes offers to extend the warranty for $2,600 to back its “Dealer certified” cars until Oct. 2013. Because it is offered by MB and not any 3rd party, I can have the car serviced in any MB dealership. I also have the option to cancel the extended warranty before it took effect with 100% refund (before Oct, 2011, that is) and prorated refund after it that.
Now, I am not at all a fan of extended warranties. I have a MB C230 that still runs like a horse after 9 years. When I bought it new 9 years ago, I did not take the ext. warranty. But this R500 is loaded with 2007’s ‘new tech’ that it might warrant the extension… but I am still not 100% convinced.
The problem is you don’t know which are cars are “junk” vs winners. The nameplate helps but even the golden makes still have a subset with problems. Thankfully even the worse reliability cars only have up to 30% with issues the balance (70%) live relatively trouble free lives.
That’s right it’s a gamble…But the ODDS are very much in your favor of NOT buying the extended warranty. I’ve never seen the situation where the extended warranties are worth it…NEVER. And this is a VERY VERY expensive warranty. $2500 can pay for a LOT of car repairs.
The event I see this instantly becoming a good thing is an automatic transmission failure. I don’t think the failure rates across all makes exceeds 10% on that with some certain make/year exceptions(Honda for example).
Even the 3 years (1999 - 2001) Honda was having a problem with their tranny’s it NEVER exceeded 5% failure rate.
http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/#/servPrtsWarranty/
It appears that it is a full extension of the factory warranty. But there may be a surcharge if you don’t buy it within 30 days of your purchase.
THANKS to all responses. This site is awesome! I received 10 postings in response to my question in two days when I could not even Adobe tech guy to answer an installation question.
So, I bought the Warranty hoping never have to use it.
Consumer Reports sample they actually hit 17% with the Acura CL with tranny issues. The worst for major transmission. This was the worse Major transmission problem car.
The interesting thing is the worst area on a specific car was only 15%-33% over 10 years. The way I read their data is you are more likely than not to get a reliable car no matter what make given the remainder don’t have the problems.
The typical payout ratio for these warranty plans is about 10-15%. In other words, for every dollar collected, they pay ut 10-15 cents on repairs. The odds are indeed in favor of the seller of the progams. Even Toyota tried to selll me an extended warranty on my new car. I drive so little (7000 miles per year) that I would never collect on it during the time limit.
Consumer Reports sample they actually hit 17% with the Acura CL with tranny issues.
A consumer reports sample rate is not even CLOSE to being accurate.