Just looking for some insight because I’ve never had this issue and am seeing conflicting information online. Basically, we have a 2015 Nissan Sentra that we bought from Nissan used with a lifetime drivetrain warranty. It started stalling out so we brought it to the dealership and they said it is the torque converter (or something similar) which is covered under my warranty. When they sent it along with all of our maintenance recordstp the warranty company, the warranty company denied it saying we were missing a couple of (very minor) routine maintenance receipts. The service manager told us that this small lack of receipts (an air filter, and a coolant flush) wouldn’t effect the part of the vehicle that needs to be replaced anyway. Do we have a leg to stand on to try to fight and appeal this warranty denial? I know we have to have regular maintenance kept up which is why we were able to turn in a pile of maintenance receipts, but can they really deny something that is covered that has nothing to do with the missing maintenance receipts??
This is a problem with extended warranties ( most of them are not worth having ) . No one on a forum can really give you any help .
Whoever performed the services that you’re missing the receipts for, should have a record of those services, and the receipts.
Tester
… and therein lies the major problem with aftermarket warranties. They tend to have so many weasel clauses and exceptions buried in the fine print that it is close to impossible to get many of those scamming companies to actually cover repairs that should be covered.
As was already stated, whoever performed those maintenance procedures should have a record of what was done, so contacting those garages is very vital. However, even if you can recover proof of maintenance, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the warranty company comes up with a different reason to deny coverage.
I wish you sincere good luck with the resolution of this issue.
Is this a Nissan company warranty, or an outside warranty sold by the Nissan dealer? If the former, I’d complain both to the dealership and to Nissan. If the latter, to the dealership and the warranty company. I’d also get a lawyer involved if the money at stake is enough to justify it. They can send ‘demand letters’ to the appropriate parties, demanding resolution and threatening further legal action. May or may not work, of course.
I’m an arbitrator for new car warranty disputes. When I get an instance like this, where warranty coverage is denied, I remind the warrantor that in order for skipped maintenance to be deemed as cause for denial, they also need to prove that the specific skipped maintenance can be shown to contribute to the part failure.
Basically, if they are saying that you didn’t change your cabin filter and the engine goes bad, they need to demonstrate to me how not changing the cabin filter caused the failure.
But in your case you may need to get legal help involved.
What, exactly, does the warranty paperwork state regarding maintenance requirements? “Any missed maintenance is grounds for excluding any and all coverage”? They need to be able to point to specific terms of the warranty that you failed to meet.
Yes, but the weasel clauses that are often buried in the fine print just might justify the denials.
I wonder if the OP’s aftermarket warranty is from a company based in Missouri. A couple of years ago, someone in this forum pointed-out that almost all of the scam-type extended warranties are from companies based in that state.
Just like the credit card companies are based in South Dakota.
It’s called the show me state, so show me all of your receipts. I guess I’d cut my loss and pay a newly minted lawyer $50 to send the dealer a letter demanding reimbursement of the original payment, for fraud, non disclosure, non performance, and the 20 other standard terms to scare people. You won’t get any money out of the warranty folks so might as well have some fun.
Good advice from Bing!
You are required to maintain the cooling system so the CVT doesn’t overheat? Those weasels! There was probably more than just a coolant replacement that was missed.
Do the CVTs and the newer 6+ speed transmissions even have a transmission cooler in the engine cooling radiator?
This car has a water-cooled transmission oil cooler mounted on the transmission. I have seen these types of oil coolers get plugged up from inferior coolant.
Yes, if that requirement is stated in the warranty’s wording. Your best recourse imo is to try to get an ally on your side. An employee of a company the warranty company wishes to continue to do business with. The possibility of losing future business because of this sort of nit-picking will give the warranty company staff a reason to show some flexibility. This method won’t work of course if the missing paperwork is for something that really should have been done, and if not done could contribute to the failure. In that case you’d have to obtain a copy of the paperwork, or statement it had in fact been done from the vendor who performed the service.
Just add it to the long list of why I’ve never bought an extended warranty and never will.
I fell prey to that in ‘84, new car warranty plus extra extended warranty, seems the bumper to bumper only covered the bumpers.
It’s too bad that they hadn’t offered that type of coverage when my sister-in-law bought a Datsun SPL-310 in 1967. The bumpers on that ridiculously bad car were completely rusted w/in ~1 year.