Need advice: New car, accident, extended warranty

In My Humble Opinion
1

i bought a brand new car six weeks ago. Monday last week, I was driving home from work on the interstate, traffic stopped, I stopped, and a distracted driver rear ended me pretty hard. I’m sore, but OK. We both have car insurance, and I filed a claim through mine.

The body shop I had it towed to called me and said the exhaust had been pushed up into the rear differential and ruined it, and the repair quote was $9000 so far, before they got my permission to tear the car apart and look for more damage. They expect the repair costs to go up after tear down.

I planned on keeping the car 8-10 years so I bought an extended warranty. My main concern is that somewhere down the road something will go wrong with my car, and I will be denied warranty coverage from the extended warranty company due to the severe damage caused by the accident.

This is the first time I’ve bought an extended warranty for a car, and I’m not sure what to do. Does anyone have any advice? I can cancel the extended warranty within 60 days of purchase and get all my money back.

I bought this new car because my last car had a catastrophic engine failure and the cost to replace the engine was more than the car was worth. An extended warranty would have saved me a lot of money (that’s why I bought one this time, I basically took a total loss on my last car).

2

You should have the right to insist on OEM parts and should pursue that with a car that new. That I think would also help for the E.W.

Also if the airbags went off, your car is worth less, and you may be able to get some cash from insurance for that.

3

How much does the insurance company think the car is worth? Depending on that answer $9000 and counting sounds like it could head into write off territory soon enough.

Also, was it a third party warranty or an actual manufacturer’s extended warranty? My personal experience with using my manufacturer’s extended warranty at the Acura dealership is that they’re pretty accommodating. Granted they were minor things but my impression was they valued having a happy customer over any short term additional profit trying to screw me would earn.

My impressions reading about third party warranties is that the fine print can make them virtuously worthless even in the best of circumstances, and they’d jump on any excuse to kill your claim.

4

Thank you for replying. I already cleared it withth claims adjuster and the body shop to use new OEM parts. My airbags did not go off (isn’t that normal in a rear- end collision? I was at a complete stop, too).

I don’t know what the insurance company thinks it is worth. I paid $23,500 for it six weeks ago, when it had 4 miles on the odometer. It’s at 2,630 now. The extended warranty is third party, through a company called Warrantech.

My main worry is down the line something happens with my drivetrain, and the extended warranty coverage will be denied because of the parts being replaced due to the accident. I’m paying an extra $41 a month for this extended warranty coverage and I would probably be better off saving that myself for any repair work I might need, instead of giving it to a company that may or may not pay out when I need them to.

The vehicle is AWD and I think that is why the damage cost is so high.

Thanks for your advice…

5

Insist on a new car. Your car’s value dropped under $20,000 as soon as you drove it off the lot. If they won’t do that insist that every single part that was as much as scratched be replaced with an OEM part. Beats me if that will work but you ought to give it a shot.

6

I wonder if they’d go for that. I have been so stressed about this all week that my anxiety is returning. Ugh. I wish drivers would pay attention!

7

If the other car rear ended you, why did you file a claim through your own insurance?

8

Because my claims adjuster takes care of dealing with the other insurance company. That’s how I’ve always done it.

9

If anything’s wrong with the drivetrain that would void the warranty, shouldn’t they total it out?

10

I don’t know how it works. It’s a good question to ask though. Thanks!

11

That it is a 3rd party extended warranty, I would tend to drop it, I would tend not to have gotten it, I’ve heard not much good out of those things, and a lot of work to recover money. The manufactures one I would consider keeping.

Your $41/month is about $500/year. Your repairs will be guaranteed by the repair shop and enforced my insurance for a bit plus you are under the manu’s warranty for most likely 36,000.

At your current rate of driving 2600/6 weeks you are talking about about 1.75 years of the manu’s warranty. Or about $850 given to the extended warranty before it can start being used. If it has a deductible you can add that on too - and it increases by $41 per year.

With that and uncertainty how much if any they will pay - I’d bank it, at least you have the cash.

IDK about if the airbag should deploy, frontal ones should not but there are all types of airbags, side, even seat based ones… But good for the value that they didn’t.

Subaru by any chance?

12

Mazda. That’s what I’m thinking too - drop it. But, my gap insurance was included (bundled) with that warranty. I’m glad I have that now, in case they do write it off.

13

Get a lawyer and sue the fuck out of the idiot that rear ended you. Buy a new Corvette, or whatever you want.

14

Do you have Gap Insurance? (Or its US equivalent.)

15

Yes, I do…glad I bought it now. I’ve usually put enough down or traded in a car of value on my new vehicles so I never felt a need to buy gap insurance before. My last car was such a disaster that I had to start over. Took a huge loss on that car and I’m so afraid of getting screwed agin with this one.

I know it is worth much less now (especially because of the accident) than what I owe, which is basically the whole purchase price plus the $1800 warranty/ gap insurance cost. I’ve only made one payment on this car!

16

Read your policy. Does it stipulate that they can deny a claim for such things?

Extended warranties are usually not worth it.

17

Hanna, i hope you can get a new car, that’s what you had, you should be made whole with a replacement. Repairs won’t make you whole, there’s going to be a record of the repairs decreasing the value of the car no matter how well they restore it’s condition.

Please let us know how this turns out.

18

A 23k car is really only worth half that (depreciation and all that BS) when it’s a month old and been in a bad wreck. Let them find all the damage and hope it is totaled.

If you financed the car, they may not let you cancel the extended warranty.

If you ever buy an extended warranty again, ONLY buy it through the manufacturer. NEVER buy a 3rd party ex warranty. See Consumer Reports on extended warranty. They say "don’t buy 3rd party. At least that’s the way I remember the article.

19

If the insurance company won’t total your car, you can file a claim for diminished value.

I did this in 2015. I’d had a new car (a Mazda, coincidentally) for six months when a woman rear-ended me on a major highway during rush-hour traffic. No question about fault, and her insurance company was very willing to pay for all repairs (around $9,000 worth, I think).

When I brought up the topic of diminished value, though, they got very squeamish. As noted earlier, your car will never be worth what it “should” be, due to the major repairs being done. I got an appraisal company to research what my repaired car would be worth as a trade-in vs. a similar car without that damage. Their estimate was the car had lost roughly 28% of its value (around $6,400, if memory serves).

I presented the findings to the insurance company, and they initially offered $1,000 for the diminished-value claim. I refused, and they immediately upped the offer to $3,000. I refused again, and had a polite phone conversation with the adjuster who’d been working my overall claim. She said the insurance company as a standard policy wouldn’t pay diminished-value claims, and that they were bending their rules by offering me anything.

I said, “You’ve been very helpful to me throughout this process, and I appreciate that. (She had been, too; she was very nice.) You know your insured driver admitted fault in the accident, and the police report backs this up. I’ve presented my rationale for the diminished value claim, and the extensive documentation from the appraisal company that came up with the $6,400 figure. You can either pay the $6,400, or I’ll take you to court, and the court will make you pay the $6,400, plus my legal fees. It’s your choice.”

Later that day, I got an email from the adjuster, saying the company had approved my claim for $6,400. I got a check in the mail in less than a week.

20

At the time of the crash, he had a six-week-old car with (guessing) 1700 miles on it. Would you pay the new-car price for such a car if you saw it on the dealer’s lot?