Thread: non factory warranty on 2nd hand vehicle

Whatever warranty you purchase, pay some extra cash and get a solicitor to read the fine print on "Conditions" imposed Before you sign on the dotted line. A lot of aftermarket warranties have conditions that you must adhere to, to the letter and if you don't, then you can kiss your warranty bye, remember "if it looks to good to be true", Regards Frank

A lot of those after market jobs only offer repairs to a set maximum value for any one claim. Some go as far as to only pay up to a certain value and you have to cover the rest for certain items and there are a LOT of exclusions and fine print as in "their repairers" I had on years ago and the bloke who did the warranty repairs for this crowd was as slow as a dead dole bludger on Valium. I saw him a year or so later and he apologised to me and told me he was told to go slow so I would get the s%$ts with them and not bring it back again for repairs.

I'm not aware of any companies offering warranty on privately owned used cars - way too many loopholes in that one, you could buy a $300 bomb and have a warranty! Like an insurance company offering car insurance during a hail storm.

Many of these aftermarket dealer warranties only cover "mechanical failure" of certain components, so if, for example, your fuel pump stops working, technically it has failed, however they spin it as "it has worn out" so it isn't covered. Same with a gearbox or engine "failure" - anything that can be attributed to wear in a certain component, or that you would expect to break down is usually very carefully excluded. They cover their proverbial arses very well. Once a car has 50 or 60k on the clock everything is "worn" rather than "failed" and the number of parts that are excluded is amazing.

We have had these QVWN and other aftermarket warranties before and honestly they are just not worth the money. Same as the $200 window tint and $150 spray on rust protection or $100 fabric protection that the dealer does as a "$1000 bargain package" when you buy a used car. We made this mistake once, only to find out that the tint was done at Tint A Car up the road and would have only cost us half the money to take it directly there and the fabric protection was just a dealer applied spray on one like scotch guard. Never fall for that one again (the dealer copped some very negative publicity from us over that one I can assure you).

My advice is they are better left alone. Although buying a used land rover, the joke could very well end up being on the warranty place...

A lot of car dealers in the more reputable category tend to have their own in house 2 year 20000km warranties now, and include these with the cars. Usually have to get them serviced back at the dealer though. These are normally pretty good, we bought a car once where we noticed about 6 months after we purchased it that the rear seatbelts (which were never used by us) had frays about 3/4 of the way down so you couldn't easilly see them without reeling the belt right out. We went back to the dealer and cited our safety concerns and they ordered in and fitted a full set of new genuine rear belts, all covered by warranty. so I guess you can be lucky.

appreciate the real world feedback, does live up to the stories you hear. so in a nutshell, if a warranty is what you are after for peace of mind then sounds best to stick to a land rover dealer who may offer an inhouse type warranty.

spending $40k on a new car with factory warranty is one thing. spending $40k on a disco3 tdv6 with no warranty is another entirely. they're not quite like a d1 or d2 where it's straightforward to work on yourself.

buying from a dealer in general leaves you with a minimum 3 month statutory warranty (???). maybe that on its own is a long enough period to ensure the major items eg drivetrain/motor are in good condition and weren't dodgied for a sale.

brett.

In my experience I would have been better off putting the money I wasted on an after-market warranty, into a bank account to help pay for any repairs that might crop up.

It took them 6 weeks to repair a big-end bearing and then the argument started about paying for it

Aftermarket warranties are hiclones, they take your money, promise everything, but really deliver nothing.
As said before they are limited on the amount they pay per engine part
Conditions of regular service schedules by a licenced mechanic, you cant do your own servicing
Say you cook and engine they will excuse them selves that another part caused the failure.
A mate cracked a head on his newly purchaced secondhand Patrol, the dealer sold him the platimum care whatever warranty. He was happy thinking was now bullet proof WRONG!
When his head gasket went it cracked the head also.
No probs getting it repaired under warranty, he thought, as he regulary had it serviced as per warranty intervals.WRONG!
Insurance at claim, yes we will replace the head gasket, but the cracked block not, as it was caused by damage of another component. and the engine component was only about
$1200 per claim . They ended up welding the head and refitted it

Originally Posted by pfillery

My advice is they are better left alone. Although buying a used land rover, the joke could very well end up being on the warranty place...

Indeed. The mob I had a warranty through complained that my vehicle was costing them too much money ....my reply was suck it up you are in the insurance game sometimes you have to pay out.

I effectively paid $1800 for 3 years and they ended up paying about $5500 in repairs so it was worth it. The fine print is a killer though. When my head cracked they would only pay $500 of the $3.5k bill as the head, according to them, is an ancillary and not part of the engine.

They also insisted I take it to their repairer for the gearbox to get fixed rather than someone I knew would do a good job. 6 months later, after the warranty had expired, the gearbox self destructed but there was no way I could prove it was the fault of the repairer.