Extended Warranties

***************** Thank You snipped-for-privacy@msbx.net

To reply to this email please remove the AT after the kgs in the reply to address as shown above.

"Can't we all just get along" Quote from Brett G

Have you tried your local Lexus Dealer?

Local Lexus Dealer has 8 yr 125,000miles bumper to bumper for $4,525 with zero deductible. AAA has 9 yr 150,000 mile bumper to bumper for $4,099 for 50 deductible or $3,414 for 120,000 miles for 9 years. So it looks like Lexus is $1,100 more than AAA for same milage and one year less coverage! WOW !!!!! Wonder why they are called stealerships?

Has anyone had experience with the AAA (Am Auto Assoc) warranties? Some companies in this business do go out of business every year or two and are frauds to start with. Others refuse to pay for Lexus service &/or parts. I assume AAA contract which I have a sample contract of will do what it says and pay anyone the standard book amounts. Probably Lexus will have fewer coverage discussions of course. But $1100 less????

Any comments? (Yes, I might keep the bag of rocks that long and cuss all the while. And yes, the extended warranty is worth the cost with the Ultra package on it - 7,000 radar unit, 1500 sensors on the bumpers, etc, etc. When a brake job costs 1200 you know the car is too expensive for anyone to drive without a warranty.)

Translation = You shouldn't have bought the car to begin with because you can't afford it.

I've never bought an extended warrantee on anything and have never regretted it. Extended warrantees are for suckers like you who haven't a clue what to do with their money. They (Lexus, AAA or whoever) will gladly relieve you of your cash burden, sucker.

Ah yes ... the old "you are so poor" argument that has nothing to do with the question I asked. Perhaps I view the cost as sort of an averaged out repair bill, or sort of like trading options vs stocks. Who knows what us poor folks are thinking, or trying to think.

Note that my experience over the last couple of decades has been that the extended warranties do pay off big time. Of course I am too poor to trade very often, so I drive a car for as long as I can get the extended warranty. And over the last olds, nissan, two mercedes and three lexi, I have saved quite a bit of money on each one. Now of course I did not go back and factor in the cost of the money - that is the lost interest, but that is not much on these amounts of money. On this current LS430 Ultra, I have had over $12,000 worth of warranty work done on it in the first 4 years. So odds are that the extended warranty will pay off the way that I look at it.

Which gets us back to the original questions - which out of the many companies offer a reputable product that does what it claims to?

David Z obviously does not know any poor folks like me, so he is excused from the requirements of making any useful comments. His comic skills are certainly evident in the above, so if he wishes to offer more low comedy, he may.

You are such a moron, I don't know why I waste my time on you.

It has nothing to do with being poor. Except in your case, where stupidity and stubborn ignorance are a form of poverty.

Extended warrantees are simply a bad deal. Here's a Consumer Reports article that cites an in-depth study. Note that CR says in this article "We have long advised that extended warranties are a poor deal for almost every product."

Extended warranties: A high-priced gamble Our survey of 8,000 new-car buyers shows they are usually a poor deal

Most people don't buy a new car without hearing the dealership finance manager warn about "how foolish it would be" not to protect your investment from unexpected repairs as you put on the miles. What comes next is a persistent sales pitch for a solution to your new fears: an extended warranty. "You could save the amount of the plan cost with just one covered repair!" says a brochure for Ford's Extended Service Plan.

But extended warranties sell costly "peace of mind" for repair nightmares that probably won't occur, according to a survey of more than 8,000 readers in December 2007 by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. We have long advised that extended warranties are a poor deal for almost every product. Now we have the first data showing that this advice applies to most new cars as well.

The survey included buyers of extended warranties for cars in the 2001 and

2002 model years. That allowed sufficient time for the factory warranties to expire, as well as several years of extended coverage. The chart on Costly contracts lists results for makes for which we have sufficient data; note that models within a make may vary. Some owners in the survey might have had coverage remaining, but our analysis shows that the need for serious repairs is uncommon.

The main reason is that automobiles today are more reliable than ever. "The odds are that what's covered won't fail," says Terry Wynter, who owns Terry Wynter Auto Service Center in Fort Myers, Fla., and is helping to write an extended-warranty guide for the Automotive Service Association (ASA). The sellers of extended warranties know what parts tend to break within the coverage time and mileage, so buyers are betting against the house.

In fact, that's a lesson many people already know. About 75 percent of all respondents in our initial screening did not buy extended warranties, with more than two-thirds saying they didn't think it was a good value for their money.

The best course of action for most consumers is to buy a car that gets top reliability scores in our Vehicle Ratings (accessed by pulldown menus on major pages within the Cars area or through our interactive New Car Selector, available to subscribers), and you probably won't need an extended warranty. But if your heart is set on a car with a below-average reliability record, it's more of a toss-up. You can decide for yourself how much "peace of mind" is worth. For example, the highest usage claims were for Mercedes-Benz, for which we have no recommended models due to below-average reliability. But only 38 percent of those owners said they saved money with the extended warranty; the average loss was $100.

The experience of our readers who bought extended warranties and a closer examination of how they work (available to subscribers) show why the odds are stacked against you.

Thank you very much for the information. However, my Lexus car has allready had well over $10,000 US in repairs covered by the basic bumper to bumper new car warranty on the car. In my estimation, I will easily exceed that repair amount in the next 3 or 4 years due to the ultra package on it. And yes, I do take the car into the stealership for service. There are only one or two other mechanics here in Greenville, SC who deal with Lexus cars, and they have to buy parts from Lexus directly to get original parts. I did have a brake job done by one of the private guys, and did request brake shoe upgrades, and they work fine. They evaluated the rotors and did not replace them. But for other repairs, I have stuck with the dealer due to the warranty. This dealer has been dissapointing in my experience, but the first two cars we bought from him were better experiences, so I figure it is just the maturing of the company. Of course when compared to the Cherman Kar Stealership ... This way I will have dealer service on it for its life with me, and that will appeal to the lovely young genius who buys this as a used car from me at, of course, an elevated price for the premium condition and service it has had.

On my cars prior to this one, I have had the extended warranties pay off. That included two mercedes, one olds, one Nissan, and one Chevy. The other two Lexi were the baby 300 series, and they did not have much electronic gear on board.