The previous owner purchased a 5yr warranty on my MY2000. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to extend this again. Has anybody had any experience with this and if so with what company. It seems there are a few that offer different levels of protection. The big one "Warranty Direct" won't sell to me because of the age of the car, even though it has onely 25,000 miles. I don't race the car and have no intention of racing. My wife is a peace of mind type and usually feels better with a warranty....Any suggestions?

 

I'd appreciate any information as well. Mine will be three this July and has 16k miles now. It seems that the Hondacare warranty gets mostly negative reviews from what I've read here.
Thanks

 

I bought a 60 month/100k warranty when my 3 yr warranty expired (2004) from my dealer. It cost $1599 and has a disappearing $100 deductible (ie, if I take the car back to the dealer there is no deductible). I feel it was money well spent despite the fact that to date I've not had to use it. It gives me a feeling of security since several members had to have motor work done around the 60k mile mark (which I'm not going to reach for quite some time). However, I enjoy driving the car the way it is meant to be driven even though I do not race/track/abuse my car in any way. Since I have a car with a unique high revving engine, I wanted the security of knowing my out/pocket expense should the motor blow would be minimal. I was concerned about some of the warranty companies being of ill repute so to speak, so I went to the dealer and felt that I'd have some leverage buying locally. My Honda dealer did not highly recommend the Hondacare warranty (maybe he didn't get as much commission from them), but indicated that Honda can be a little difficult to deal with on the extended warranties.

edit: on another note, my +1 bought an extended warranty from Jeep/Chrysler on his 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. He paid about $900 for it. Only 2 months into the extended warranty he had problems with the electronic memory seats/mirrors and the climate control. The cost would have been in the $1500 range, but he only had to pay $100. We've recovered the $$ on that warranty already and he has several years to go yet.

 

I'm firmly in the "nay" (or, probably, "hell, nay") camp, after experience with a couple. Now, this mostly has to do with the fact that I bought the extended warranties with new cars and then didn't keep the cars as long as I first intended to. And, on the second one, I did get a refund, pro-rated. So I didn't have, overall, a horrible experience.

Both of my warranties were on Audis, which aren't known for Honda-like reliability; and I didn't use them at all. I think they're basically money-makers for the warranty companies.

Some things to watch out for:

--Reimbursement rates. These policies often quote an hourly shop rate that they'll pay. Make sure this is consistent with rates in your area (or where you want to take the car), or else you'll have to make up the difference.

--Approved shops. My second policy required that I take the car to the dealership unless I was more that 50 miles away when it needed fixing. At the time, I lived 70 miles away, so that wasn't an issue. But it would have been if I'd been closer, as the dealership wasn't my first choice (to put it politely).

--Parts. Make sure it provides for the use of really truly Honda parts and will pay for 'em. Some warranties only pay for third-party cheap parts.

--Functionality. Don't ever get an "inclusive" warranty (wherein it says "this stuff is covered (list)). Get an exclusive one, that says "this stuff is not covered" (and then make sure that whatever you're most concerned about is not on that list.

Good luck. HPH

 

It's a gamble. You are basically buying an insurance plan. They are gambling that you won't need it, and the odds are in their favor. I like to play the odds, so I won't ever purchase an extended warranty. I've purchased 5 new vehicles, kept 4 for more than 100k miles. I've never had a single repair of more than $800, and that was for a wear item that wouldn't have been covered anyway. If I had bought warranties on the 5 vehicles, I would be out $5-$8k. The way I look at it, I have $5k in the bank earning interest that will cover just about any repair that might come up.

 

I got one for the reason that parts are very expensive for this car. If you have a major component fail it will pay for its self.

 

I was strongly encouraged to buy an extended warranty by many members of the s2ki community. Apparently several of them discovered how grossly expensive repairs under the hood can be. My biggest concern was engine failure.

 

^ Yep, I never purchased extended warranties on anything prior to buying the S. I generally don't believe in them. But for this high-performance vehicle it seemed to make sense. I got one for 7yrs, 70K miles. The engine replacement was covered under the original warranty, but the u-joint/differential work I had done recently was covered under the extended one. I'm glad I have it.

 

When I first bought the car, I knew I was planning to "abuse it" by taking it to the track. The salesman talked me into the extended warranty (it is their job, and they are good at things like that). Within three days I cancelled it and cashed it back out.

Why? Because I read exactly what it covered and what it didn't. I decided it was very likely that for anything it supposedly covered, they would claim it was "abuse" and not cover any damage.

It does not cover "normal wear and tear" nor does it cover driver error or accident damage, so what does it cover? I suppose it covers things like alternators going bad, or some part failing due to metal fatigue.

You might have something covered by it, but I would suggest that experience of people on the board who track the heck out of their cars is that if you leave it stock and don't screw up (run it out of oil, overrev the engine with a bad downshift, etc.) then it is quite unlikely you will need any repairs that are covered by the warranty and that are bigger than the deductable of the warranty.

If you do mod the car, the warranty generally no longer will apply anyway.

But YMMV.

IMHO, these made more sense for early models of the car, where there was no history. Now there are some pretty high mileage S2000s out there. The only thing there is no history on is stuff new to the new model years, such as this year's drive by wire and stability control system.

 

We didn't buy one on the '01 or the '05. Our reasoning was that they are Honda's and these being our 5th and 6th Hondas, our experience has been the extended warranty would not be used. We have over 62,000 and 21,000 miles now on our S2000s and haven't needed an extended warranty yet. (Now, as far as a FORD goes, definitely YES, get one as Andy's used his many times for his trucks.)