Best (Any?) Extended Auto Warranty

Need an extended warranty on a six year old car (long out of factory warranty).

Years ago, I had a GEICO extended mechanical warranty. It was great – about $500 a year for bumper to bumper coverage. I rang them up for many thousands of dollars of repairs.

Not surprisingly . . . GEICO has more or less discontinued this program (it still exists in some super-truncated form where you have to buy it during the first 11 months of the car’s life).

There are dozens of companies out there offering extended warranties of various flavors (limited coverage, bumper to bumper, etc.). Most of them are a bit shady-seeming Internet outfits (extended warranties seem to pop up as the subject of spam from time to time).

Any suggestions on companies or policies that are reliable and fair for extended warranties on older cars?

AAA

www.aaa.com

Generally, “Triple A” is fair and honest. Theyn aren’t the ‘greenest’ company on earth, as they lobby for more roads and cars, but you won’t get jacked by going with them.

So many extended warranty companies got into the biz to jack people that I stay away from all extended warranties for that reason. Huge money maker for the warranty provider. Makes ya think.

Consumer Reports advice:

As a rule, you should not take out extended warranties on anything from TVs to appliances to autos. All the money saved on extended warranties would far outshine any repair costs you need to flip out of pocket. Possible exception: a laptop computer because they are expensive to fix, are damaged easily and unreliable.

I have worked at a car dealership… I don’t really know of any warranties around that you might be able to buy for a car that age. However, if you do find one, find out what their reimbursement policies are for claims. For example, at the place where I worked, we only did business with certain companies. So, if your warranty wasn’t from one of those companies, you had to pay the whole bill upfront and submit it to the warranty company yourself in order to be reimbursed. Also, I’m not sure how you would check this, unless you know the labor rate at the place where you take your car to be serviced. But, some extended warranty companies will only pay a certain rate. For instance, the rate at Joe’s Car Barn is $70 per hour, but your company will only pay $60 per hour. So, who pays the other $10? The answer is, it depends. But you might want to try to clarify this.