Warranty deadline: to extend or not to extend?

[HotrodMerc]

Please tell me what you think: original warr. period on the '04 is up 3-19-07. Car sits in garage most of time. Have driven it one time since it was at the Ford/Shelby meet in Tulsa in June (took Runner Up in Special Interest class of Sunday car show, don't know what took first, tires really needed some dressing on them), and that was about 5 mi. Has 3,058 on the clock. All I really want to do is S/C it, bigger brakes on front, and drive it, but we probably will not really drive it a lot for another couple of years at least, even then maybe just for fun, special trips etc. Reason being is that we bought it for wife's replacement car because she thought she needed a new car, had two idler pulleys crash on her B'ville. She drives 30 mi. roundtrip to work on a two-lane full of coal trucks, logging trucks and chicken trucks- lots of road rash, rock chips etc. So she agreed to keep driving the B'ville for "a year or so" (obviously almost 3 now), which is why the low miles on MM. We don't have much opportunity in this area to really drive it like one of us would want to, ie, open flat highways, wide interstates, we just have crowded two lanes for the most part:burnout: . I will do the S/C and brakes eventually, but am in midst of restoring a TR3 (English sports car), then need to do a new engine, brakes etc on my Mustang which is barely running now, before she would put up with me playing around with the MM.:nono: Would you spend $1K - $1,300 on a warranty for 60K - 75K miles, plus six MORE years from date of purchase of the warranty? I am leaning toward buying a warranty, but just a little hesitant about it. Thanks for your opinions.

[HwyCruiser]

I'd say buy one if your planning on keeping it for awhile and keep it stock or only mildly modify it. You'll most likely be on your own with the powertrain if you supercharge it though.

[rvaldez1]

I'd say buy one if your planning on keeping it for awhile and keep it stock or only mildly modify it. You'll most likely be on your own with the powertrain if you supercharge it though.

+1, but I say mod the hell out of it. Drive like a maniac to see what needs fixing before next month, then the fun begins.

[RoyLPita]

I would get it for the other little things that could go wrong.

[JonW]

Supercharging the car will most likely void the powertrain part of the warranty. I imagine they would find a way to not pay for stuff like wheel bearings and suspension components, too, because of the extra stress imposed on them by the SC. So that leaves you with peripheral stuff like window motors, cruise control, etc. At that point, I'd probably not spend the $1000 for the warranty and take my chances. If you were not going to SC the car, I'd say go for it.

[SHERIFF]

Please tell me what you think: original warr. period on the '04 is up 3-19-07.... Would you spend $1K - $1,300 on a warranty for 60K - 75K miles, plus six MORE years from date of purchase of the warranty? I am leaning toward buying a warranty, but just a little hesitant about it. Thanks for your opinions.

I would say.... be very careful. And read the fine print closely. I suspect you will find the extended warranty extends the coverage to 75,000 miles or 6 years of age, whichever comes first. I doubt they will write a warranty extending it 6 more years over and beyond the original warranty period of 3 years.

[wchain]

I would say.... be very careful. And read the fine print closely. I suspect you will find the extended warranty extends the coverage to 75,000 miles or 6 years of age, whichever comes first. I doubt they will write a warranty extending it 6 more years over and beyond the original warranty period of 3 years.

+1 :banned:

[ShelbyMotorspts]

As others have mentioned a 6 year warranty does not add 6 more years it add's 3 years.

And if the warranty isn't a Ford backed warranty don't waste your money. Third party extended warranties hardly ever pay for repairs.

[sspmustang]

As others have mentioned a 6 year warranty does not add 6 more years it add's 3 years.

And if the warranty isn't a Ford backed warranty don't waste your money. Third party extended warranties hardly ever pay for repairs.
Excellent point-stick to a Ford warranty. They simply extend onto your original purchase date, so you get a total period of 6, not 9, years if that's the option you choose.
One other thing, prices vary between states-you can buy one anywhere, so make some phone calls, you will be pleasantly surprised!

[HotrodMerc]

Thanks for all of the good comments guys. I have read through the contract book the warranty salesman gave me, and it says "The contract will expire according to the time or mileage of the plan YOU selected, whichever occurs first, as shown on the Vehicle Service Contract Application".
So i would have to have the salesman write up a contract and make sure it is specified as 6 yrs. from the date of the contract. Also, this plan has a waiting period if the contract is more than 10 days after the vehicle purchase date. The plan is supposedly owned by Allsnake, so at least it would probably be financially sound, although the brochure doesn't say who the plan is owned by.

I have thought about the drive-train thing, and that the most likely things i would need it for, in my experience, are the smaller things that $200-$400 you to death. Like in my '98 5.4 Lariat, which Ford gave me an ext. warranty on because of a problem that took a year to diagnose and "fix", and really never was fixed for good, the right rear coil went out on it 3 times, the OD switch twice, then the turn signal mechanism in the wheel, etc.

This dealership is not where i bought the MM, but where i have all of my service done. I have a pretty good relationship with the service manager, and most of the techs there. I will talk with the service mgr. about "what if" i put a S/C on the car to up the hp and torque to say 425 rwhp/435 trqe, and maybe larger front brakes, and no more? From what i read on here that is a reasonable range for longevity, and if popular opinion is that even that much is not good for longevity of the bottom end and tranny, i would aim even lower, until this ext. warr. is over or almost over. I think they would go along with fixing items where the extra hp and trqe. are not direct factors.
But it might also depend on the warranty plan/company. I thought that might be one reason to buy the plan the dealership itself is selling. This is not a company store, and the guy says he gets little information and no support from the Ford warranty division, and that's why he sells this plan called "Millennium". Lastly, this non-factory plan is a better price. And if i buy it there where i go for service, i may get a better shake than buying some other aftermarket plan, though i am going to get a couple other prices and see what variations in plans are available. If anyone has a specific recommendation or experience, pos. or neg, with a warranty co. I would be interested in your comments. Thanks for the input and happy motoring.:beer:

[GreekGod]

...do a search and read the horror stories with non-Ford warranties. Ford only, the others are all scams. You have been warned.

[MENINBLK]

If you only drive it 1,000 miles a year, why bother ?

Warranties are for cars that get USED...

[HwyCruiser]

I made the mistake of buying a third-party warranty on a Dodge pickup back in the mid-90s. I found out it didn't even come close to reimbursing the bill minus their "deductible". They would only pay what a re-manufactured part was worth and discounted book labor, so I found out the hard way it was only worth about 40 cents on the dollar - and I had to beat it out of them on my own.

The salesman is going for the biggest profit, not your best interests. If the warranty offered isn't backed by Ford I personally wouldn't even consider it. Third-party warranties are great money makers for dealers.

[Bradley G]

I agree with "Ford warranty" only.
Ford has an interest in your continued business.
Aftermarket warranty co.'s are there, for one reason only.$
Guess what theses companies make/keep, when they can weasel out of paying a claim?
as far as "salespeople" trying to make profit on ESP's,most dealerships offer extended warranty from the business office/ finance manager.
Pay$ to approach your dealer "armed" with information.
I purchased 6/60K premium care, I have 15K miles to purchase more.
If you have one month or 10000 miles remaining on Ford's ESP or orig. 36mo./36K
you can extend the warranty.
PM me with any specific questions.

[ShelbyMotorspts]

You have been warned.

I second that. We've told you about third party warranites and if you decide to ignore this advice you'll be back saying I should have listened.

[HotrodMerc]

If you only drive it 1,000 miles a year, why bother ?

Warranties are for cars that get USED...

Good point and question. Why bother is that the car will not always be a garage decoration or trailer queen. As i have said, i do plan to and want to drive the car on a more usual basis. The car is certainly nice to drive, and almost but not quite exciting enough, to me, at stock power levels to bother getting it out of the garage and subjecting it to the considerable road damage to finish and glass that happens in the area i live in, and probably in most any area. I do have Expel protective 3M plastic on the front, including A-pillars, but my wife's B'vill has rock chips on the hood, roof and even the deck lid from all of the trucks on our highways, pulling directly onto the highway from coal mines, construction and logging. Since we don't need to drive it for daily transport, i just don't bother. If it was s/c'd, etc. with the trque/hp level of some of the turnpike cruisers on this nice site, i would have a much harder time not driving it. There definitely are times when i would like to drive it to "the city" on the rare occasions i go there, though lately i have been hauling car parts and take my truck. Of course, when i do have an ext. warranty and supercharge the car that might interfer with drivetrain coverage, but as said before my main purpose in the warranty would be for items that would not reasonably be related to effects of the s/c or increase in power.:) In other words, maybe i'm not driving it much for the same reason that Zack wants to sell his __xxx__ s/c'd car because he has more oomph in another car. I miss getting a little sideways in my Mustang, not that it had really big power when it was running, but definitely more fun than the stock MM. The MM is WAY nicer, smoother and not a rattle trap as is the Mustang, and i do look forward to driving it a lot more.:burnout:

[HotrodMerc]

...do a search and read the horror stories with non-Ford warranties. Ford only, the others are all scams. You have been warned.

Did a search for "aftermarket warranties" and read a few, including Sheriff's 4-07-04 comments on his experience with Allsnake, though not a warranty.

I just called the Oklahoma Ins. Dept. plus looked in the back of this "Millenium
Automotive Protection Plan" book at Special State Requirements section.
Under Oklahoma it says "This servie waranty is not issued by the manufacturer or wholesale company marketing the product. This warranty will not be honored by such manufacturer or wholesale company."
Which means to me that is a contract used by this dealer, that according to the sales guy, is not a "company store", and is an agreement between customer and company issuing the agreement. To my knowledge MOST dealerships are not company owned, so i don't know the intent behind his statement other than what the said that he doesn't get warranty info. from Lincon-Merc., so he sells the aftermarket. It also means to me that other dealers may not want to, or have to, honor this contract, especially any dealership that happened to be factory owned. Which would mean in that case that I may have to pay for the repair if in a different dealer than where i buy the warranty, then turn in a claim to get reimbursed, :mad: hopefully.
The OK Ins. Dept. did not show the contract co. or "marketing agent" in their registry, but said if it was in black and white that Allstate was in fact a re-insurer for the contract, that they would have jurisdiction on the matter through Allstate. I wouldn't want to have to go to that trouble to collect on a claim though. On the other hand, even with a Ford warranty the decision is sometimes up to a factory engineer, etc., not the service mgr., someone who may not be as likely to give you the benefit of the doubt. I have had definite bad experience with a Ford engineer, who was about the most rude person i have ever encountered, business or otherwise. He was the reason Ford gave me an EXP on my '98 Lariat.
Read on below.

[sfsv]

I strongly recommend that you get the Ford Extended Service Plan Premium for 7yrs/60,000 miles. The aftermarket warranties vary a great deal, depending on the primary company and the company that company uses to administers the claims. The claims adminitration company takes direction from the warranty company on how strict/rough to be toward the repair facility, when it comes to repairing a client's vehicle. Don't get me wrong, their are great aftermarket warranty companies out there, but there are also warranty companies that are not the greatest, buy beware. To be safe, stick with the Ford ESP.

[HotrodMerc]

I second that. We've told you about third party warranites and if you decide to ignore this advice you'll be back saying I should have listened.

Since i wasn't hatched just last month i think you guys to be more right than not, and just have a better gut feel about going with the factory. Bradley's suggetsion about the 60K EXP is a very good one, and as soon as i get through with this post I am going to call the LM dealer where i bought the car and talk to them about that. And that is what i probably will do. Let you know in a few days. Thanks guys.

[ckadiddle]

How's this for a reason? MM was running hot for a minute or two occaisionally, then would cool back down suddenly. I was thinking sticky thermostat, but it turned out to be the radiator cooling fan.
Tatal for replacing the fan was 345.69, I paid 53.25 of it. It's easy for me to decide.... I can almost always scare up fifty bucks, but pulling three or four hundred out of thin air is an unplanned expense I don't want. Fifty bucks unplanned makes a much smaller ripple in my monthly income. It's easier for me to pay for the Ford ESP plan up front. My local dealer that I use for service got me in and out same day - dropped off at ten thirty, it was finished by four pm.

I had some third party warranties over the years and had pretty good luck with them paying for repairs overall. The issue was that sometimes there was a delay ranging from a few hours to a couple days with my mechanic waiting for them to respond. I NEVER have this time lag with Ford ESP getting work done at a Ford dealer. The Marauder is our "everything car". I cannot stand to have it out of service for long.

[HotrodMerc]

I strongly recommend that you get the Ford Extended Service Plan Premium for 7yrs/60,000 miles. The aftermarket warranties vary a great deal, depending on the primary company and the company that company uses to administers the claims. The claims adminitration company takes direction from the warranty company on how strict/rough to be toward the repair facility, when it comes to repairing a client's vehicle. Don't get me wrong, their are great aftermarket warranty companies out there, but there are also warranty companies that are not the greatest, buy beware. To be safe, stick with the Ford ESP.

Just want to give a final update on this warranty question. In late February, at the suggestion of the Service Mgr. at the nearest FLM dealer where i have had service on all my vehicles done, not where i bought the MM, I bought an ESP for an additional 3 yrs. and additional 36K mi. What the service mgr. had suggested was that i could open a Ford Credit credit card account and get 12 months no interest on one purchase. So i put the warranty on the card along with a "BG" co. service on the trans which provides a $2,500.00 warranty on the trans.
All of that was fine but here is the catch: about a week after the purchase, though I had thought that i had read the contract very carefully, i noticed that the sales mgr., who wrote the contract, put the ending date of the warranty, in 2010, where the beginning date should have been. The correct date was written in further down on the contract however. I took the contract to the sales mgr. and asked him to correct it. He said that it was no big deal, that it would not cause a problem with the warranty, but that he would get it corrected. I went out to the service writer and asked him to print out a report on the car. He did, and it stated "no warranty info. available". I took the report to the assistant mgr., the mgr. being out of sight by then, and he assured me they would get the situation corrected within a couple of days. About a week later I took the MM to the selling dealer for them to check out a couple of rattles, especially one aroung the ignition switch area, on the cars' last day on the original warranty. When I left the car I asked them to see if an ESP was listed for the car. It still was not. I told the service mgr. at the selling dealership about the ESP i bought, and he encouraged me to "stay on them" about it, and looked as though he knew something I didn't and that he really didn't want to say what it was. :confused: He said the same thing a week later when i picked up the MM. Meanwhile i had called the dealer where i bought the ESP, two or three times, and each time was told by either the service mgr. or sales staff that they had to send in corrective paper work to Ford and that it would take about a month for it to get corrected. The head cashier told me though that all of those transactions were done on-line and that it should not have taken more than a day. Finally i talked again with the sales mgr., a month after my purchase and still no warranty showing, and he told me he had done every thing he could, and gave me the line which seems to be the old stand-by of those who don't want to do what they should do in a business situation, that i was the only person he had ever had such a problem and complaint from. :argue: I then told him that was fine, but i was about to contact the state dept. of motor vehicles, of which the website says they do have jurisdiction over sales of such things as extended warranties. Interestingly enough, before noon the next business day i received a fax from the dealer of an OASIS showing an ESP on my MM. :eek: Hopefully the warranty is better than the service i have received from this dealership. ;)

[GreekGod]

...you handled it well.

[larryo340]

I have worked in FORD LINCOLN MERCURY for total of 19 years, the F&I guys that sell the ESP are nine times out of ten CROOKS (notice they always have expensive cars and houses) Too often I have had customers come into service for warranty repairs and low and behold nothing showing thru FORD (OASIS system).
I agree with some above that the aftermarket warranties are CRAP. They very rarely are quick on repairs and payment to the dealers. The only one I have worked with that was reseaonable from the dealer standpoint, and customer standpoint was G.E. CAPITOL. They paid no problem, did not try to shortchange repairs, or bargin with us like other companies. They also had better coverage for the customer, by that I mean they even paid for items that other aftermarket warranties would not.
This warranty would be good for a car that is not eligable for FORD warranty.
If I'm not mistaken the consumer can purchase FORD ESP directly from a link on the FORD website. Plug in VIN and check out contract prices.
Personally cars are the only item I would recommend to buy a service contract on. Sorry I lied, I did buy one for my 50" LCD TV. Direct from SONY (cheaper than any store)On everything else if you add up all the money saved by not buying warranty it should be nice little pile of cash.
To get off cars for a second. It seems to me from my experiences that on most consumer goods if the item lasts without problem for the manufacturers' warranty period it will usually stay trouble free.

[GreekGod]

"the F&I guys that sell the ESP"

Please translate "F&I"?

[larryo340]

Sorry, F&I is what dealers call the finance guy. You know the one that is only interested in financing his way. ie: "what can you afford a month" without any mention on interest rates and breakdown of payments. Just one number ($) every month which alot of times is more than they told you.
I do not have alot of love for these guys. I have seen too many people get the shaft.
When my parents bought a 6 month old Crown Victoria from the FORD dealer I worked in all was great until we told sales manager that we were paying cash for car. Then they said price would be $1,000 more without finacing, due to the kickback they receive from the bank. So we ended up taking the financing for 4 months, and then paying if off without penalty. In the end after six months with car my mom decided she missed the GM (liked it better), so they traded it in for a brand new GM.