After sales warranties – are they worth the paper they’re written on?
We live in a world where car dealers still love to warrant what they sell but as many motorists travel the length and breadth of the country, a market has developed for companies providing national warranties.
As car technology develops, so does the costs involved in keeping these engineering masterpieces on the road and in good working order.
The usual scenario I am faced with is a customer booking in for diagnosis of a problem with their vehicle. On diagnosis I am usually presented with a bundle of paperwork suggesting to the customer that they are in safe hands and the warranty will cover just about any eventuality. It is normally just a list of components that don’t usually fail - and some small print that covers anything else should you think that you may have a part that is covered on the list!
Warranties usually have 2 or 3 categories, for example, bronze, silver and gold, and each come with an interesting conversation when something goes wrong.
“Sudden and catastrophic failure” is usually one of the criteria for the warranty to cover the vehicle. So, customers who look after their vehicles and notice early on when there is a potential problem starting would probably miss out on this one.
If the term “wear and tear” can be attributed to the situation, this is a definite no-go as it is not deemed a warrantable event if it is expected at some point in the vehicle’s life.
Another issue not covered would be gradual degradation of components. For example, if an air conditioning system fails overnight you might consider that to be a sudden failure, but it is quite likely that corrosion in the condenser has caused the leakage of refrigerant gasses and of course would not be covered.
Accident damage is of course taken into consideration with this aswell, so in the example above a stone chip in the condenser (one of the most common causes of failure of a/c systems) clearly would not be covered.
Usually after being presented with warranty paperwork by a particularly smug customer, I must report a diagnosis (which might take 1 hour to resolve) that the warranty will not pay for! And after that it is a lengthy phone call selecting different options and basically going around in a phone system.
Typically, the operator must check everything, registration, customer name, customer address , policy no, colour of car, type of policy, date policy started, garage name and contact no, what you had for breakfast etc etc .I think you get it!
I’m sure again that this is a ploy to keep you on the phone for longer as surely all this information is stored against the registration.
Once the very qualified mechanic on the other end of the phone has decided you are who you are, you must describe your fault very carefully, you mustn’t strip anything down until the claim is registered and you have authorisation to do so.
We have all made this mistake by trying to do the right thing for our customers but doing that is incorrect ☹
If your claim does get authorised and if you can jump through all of the hoops you will be bound to auto data times , and let’s face it on older vehicles it is very regularly the case that it is a practical impossibility to hit these times , don’t ever have a bolt that breaks or seizes as this is not covered, and must be paid for by the customer.
Fluids associated with the repair are usually not covered, for example I had to remove a radiator pack recently to access a gearbox with a failed clutch release bearing. Antifreeze and gear oil replacement not covered?? -Really?
There was a heated discussion to replace the clutch pressure and centre plate as this wasn’t the part that failed but would you not??
If anything, else breaks on removal it is down to you, I’ve tried to explain that if part A didn’t fail, I wouldn’t have to change part B because it fell apart on dismantling but this always falls on deaf ears “I’m sorry the customer will have to pay for that “ is usually the answer!
Are you getting a feel for this yet?
If you get this far the warranty company may, with your paperwork want to see a copy of the customers service history, probably irrelevant but it’s another chance to wriggle! And can be a trump card in the will we pay you game.
Incidentally you don’t get to pick your labour rate, they do! And sometimes the customer may have to pay an excess.
Always keep your spent parts, to fill out your time. they may well want to see the faulty parts for verification purposes and in occasional circumstances they may want to send an assessor to look at the issue. It’s not much fun digging in the scrap to find a broken clutch release bearing that was quite happy where it was left!
So, to answer my question, I’ll let you make your own mind up, but I will advise you to read your policy booklets prior to contacting your company – they will know them inside out and once you have been led into saying something on a recorded phone call there is no way back for your customer!