Warranties / Mechanical Breakdown Insurance

[jjs 60]

For those of you that have these warranties on your vehicles, how have you found them? Are they worthwhile? Any companies you would recommend? Ta

[rxsumo 33]

On our 535 we got Protecta extended warranty, and they arent the nicest people to play with.

Within days of getting the 535 it developed a nasty habit of jumping outta 1st gear. It would only do it once in a while and it usually happened if you were busy with you hands and didnt have the gearstick in hand at the time.....hill starts and the like.

So we whip the car into Page European, and the Protecta man comes and takes the car for a drive, and they cant fault the gearbox. The Protecta line is, we are happy to pull the box out and down, but if nothing is found wrong, then the job is at the client's cost. So let the pissing contest begin....theres nothing wrong with the car (in our opinion), and to hedge our bets, if we are right then. we dont pay for anything! Not having a couple of grand lying around doing nothing (having just put a new set of TRX GTs on the car!), I opted to go with the flow and do nothing, as obviously there wasnt a problem.

Here's the rub!

I drove the car, for 12 months, and decided that I was really getting pissed off with the gearbox launching the gearstick out of first gear, so I booked it in with GearTech in Palmerston North (good gearbox people!), and the gearbox was stripped down.

The only thing found wrong with the box, was a slight amount of movement in a couple of the bearings, however the syncro rings were pretty much shot. Anton (the owner) gave me the good news about nothing much wrong with the box, except for the bearing movement, and the stuffed syncro rings, BUT the worst part was that I had to authorise the syncro ring work, because I had to pay for the parts. The reason was because Protecta had said, that in their opinion the syncro rings had worn only because of the movement within the bearings, as I had left it 12 months since originally having the car looked at it was my fault.

What a bunch of wa#kers...it could have been a stuffed syncro that was preventing first gear engaging properly that actually caused the problem.

I shouldnt complain too much the bill for the bearings was a bucketload more than the syncro rings (they had to use genuine BMW parts and they werent cheap according to Anton).

On one of our other cars, we had a Lumley Policy, and this company was great to deal with.

On our 626, which was only 5 or so years old, they ended up rebuilding the steering rack and the entire diff assy (which was probably due to an previous owner's accident by my guess), and the only drama was when I didnt send in one of my service slips.

They required 10K services, I do 5K services as a matter of course, the car appeared to be over the 10K service point, when by my regime it was late for a 5K service, but once they saw that the car had been serviced within the 10K window, everything was sweet.

Only real advice is to make such that the car's dont go over the service interval required by the policy....even by 1 km, as they will use the out clause not to pay out.

[isis 16]

Pretty good experience with Autosure..had a few issues, rung them told me where to send the car and picked it up.

No questions asked!

[Jedski 0]

Is this 535 for sale on trademe by any chance? a silver one?

[rxsumo 33]

Is this 535 for sale on trademe by any chance? a silver one?

Yep.

I like to sell it to get the fleet down a bit, but the best real offer has only been $5K, and I rather keep it as daily driver than to sell it for that sort of money.

Edited October 27, 2006 by rxsumo