Mechanical insurance and help!

[Avenged.SSE 0]

Hiya,

This has been a few months in ze making so here goes, I had an E39 2002 525i, wanted to upgrade to something with a bit more push and many, many more toys (me big fan of toys), so I sold it. The upgrade I was looking for was a 7 series (E65/66), mainly a 2002/2003 735i or 735ial, although would consider a 730i as I understand most toys are standard on the E65.

Now... I do understand something like a 7 series is expensive to maintain (or so I've heard) so I figured I'd get something like mechanical insurance to sleep easy at night, and even thought maintenance would cost something like $2000 a year, that's ok as I would only keep it for around 12 months, so that's no biggie. I've been hearing more and more things about mechanical insurance being useless, not letting you claim for essentials and what not, which has caused me serious doubts, can anyone clarify how useful it is, and possibly what the best insurer would be?

Second problem... Went to check out a 2003 735ial on friday, selling for upper 20k range. Soon as I got into car, I realised there was a problem with the gearbox, at which point I had serious doubts about the 7 series. It turned out the owner had sent it in for repairs and now it has come back, still with the problem. Is this problem likely to happen just out of the blue, and if I had mechanical insurance would it cover something like that?

Basically I'm happy with maintenance of $2000ish per year, provided that's it, I would not want to pay something like $6000. Keeping in mind that I'm only planning on keeping the car for 8-12months, is it a really stupid idea to invest in the 7 series?

Thanks a lot for all help and taking the time out to read my post! (which is starting to look more like an essay)

[isis 16]

i've had autosure and they've been great.

keeping that car for tha period of time, you'll just lose more money, esp the 7!

just because it cost 20k to buy now, doesn't mean it will have a cheap maintenance bill, esp when it comes to parts.. remember these things were over 100gs!

[JaseNZ 53]

I took out 2 years with lumley when i purchased my e36, I had one claim not so long ago and they were fantastic. Pretty much just said call a tow truck and ring the dealer and tell them its on its way in.

They took care of everything, My excess was $200 which to me is bloody cheap compared to the $2k it cost for the repairs.

[sp8s 1]

If its got a bad gearbox now I wouldn't touch it.

I have a mech insurance on my 318 and have claimed a couple of times. I rang the company they gave me a list of people I could take my car to and just said tell them to call for order number. Real simple.

[rxsumo 33]

I have a mixed bag of experiences with Mechanical insurance.

With my Mazda 626 GT, (which I think was with Lumley) the car developed a noise in the gearbox/diff. Once the diff was pulled down it was discovered that the spider gears were stuffed, and these were all sorted at the local Mazda dealer - it didn't sort the noise - and the car was still in the workshop when we traded it back.

However, dealing with the Insurance company was great - no problems getting the car sorted, and no baulking on parts cost.

With my E34 535i (was with Autosure - basically the other company), the car developed a problem occassionally dropping out of first gear - typically doing a hill start. The car was driven by the Insurance assessor, and he couldnt fault it, so it was put back on me to have the box repaired - under the " Insurance will pay ONLY if a fault is found" rule, not having a couple of grand lying around at that time, I opted to repair when I could cover the cost of ripping the box out and stripping it down.

About nine months later, I had the box stripped down and the only main problem found was a small amount of movement in the bearings, and the syncro ring were badly worn.

The insurance company decided that the bearing wear was the problem, and the syncro rings were due to the fact that the box was driven on since the fault was reported - WTF, so I ended up paying an additional $500 on top of the excess for the syncro rings. On reflection it was probably the syncro rings were probably the actual problem - preventing first gear fully engaging.

On reading the policy fineprint when working out the coverage on the 535, I would read the policy very carefully, as the coverage can be virtually worthless.

• There are mileage, year and import status dollar limits - I paid $900 for my policy on the 10 year old, 135K NZ new 535i. With that combination I think the maximum coverage was only $2500 for some of the payouts - which wouldnt have paid for a ECU failure or an engine.
• I would recommend servicing the car every 5000km, that way you will never miss the 10000km service - you go 1km over the service point - no coverage.
• If you have a problem, and decide to claim on it - make sure you have the $$$ to go through with the repairs if they say that its on the owner to pay if there is no problem - otherwise they are likely to weasel out of paying for stuff

[briancol 3]

You must remember that a warranty is nothing more than an insurance policy, and as such, the warranty company will make sure that ALL of the terms of the contract have been carried out otherwise they will not pay out.

Generally they are very good, but you do need a good mechanic who will go into battle for you with the assessors.

[Wom 0]

I've had 2 repairs on my E36 done through the mechanical warranty with very little hassle.

The only real problem was that the insurance company (Autosure) like to source their own parts, so it took a lot longer to get fixed than if the mechanic was sorting out the parts himself.

The warranty has saved me around $1200 worth of repairs in the 11 months that I've owned the car.

No excess either

Edited March 14, 2009 by Wom

[caleb 0]

Had some experience with Autosure. The insurer will try every means not to payout unless they've fully exhausted all options.

e.g. if you have a faulty part (especially an expensive one), they will repair not once but a few times and only when its beyond repair that they'll replace it with a 2nd hand unit. Just imagine the amount of inconvenience you've to put up just to get it repaired with re-cond parts.

and as always, they'll use the "Insurance will pay ONLY if a fault is found" clause.. and "Insurance will pay ONLY if the part is proven to be faulty". You really need a good mechanic who will go into battle for you with the assessors

Edited March 15, 2009 by bimmer77

[Mike.Gayner 0]

Some people here have had good experiences, which is awesome. Every time I've had mechanical insurance, I've had faults which have turned out to be exclusions, so I get no peace of mind from using these companies. I will never use one again - you're better off putting that premium into the bank in my view.

[westy 614]

We get great service using BM Workshop and Autosure.

They talk to each other and all we do is pick the car up.

Its the difference professionals make.