Off topic. Mercedes new car extended warranty, Worth it??? Options

[daytona]

Hi,
As the tittle implies, does anyone have any information/experience with the Mercedes Benz new car extended warranty?
We just took delivery of a new E 450 4matic. The dealership is offering what I consider is a good price for the extended warranty, ad since we tend to keep our cars a long time I think it may be worth buying.
I had a bad experience with extended warranty on a new Cayman S but it was a third party warranty. This is one is actually offered by MB. I just want to know if someone here ever had to make use of it and what that experience was like.
Thanks,
Bill.

[Superhawk996]

Hi,
As the tittle implies, does anyone have any information/experience with the Mercedes Benz new car extended warranty?
We just took delivery of a new E 450 4matic. The dealership is offering what I consider is a good price for the extended warranty, ad since we tend to keep our cars a long time I think it may be worth buying.
I had a bad experience with extended warranty on a new Cayman S but it was a third party warranty. This is one is actually offered by MB. I just want to know if someone here ever had to make use of it and what that experience was like.
Thanks,
Bill.

IMHO, as a generalization extended warranties are a losing proposition for you, the customer. You should self insure for out of warranty expenses.

Here's the way the extended warranty business works. An extended warranty is basically an insurance product.

On the AVERAGE, the company has to take in more money than it pays out in claims, otherwise they go bankrupt.

Believe me, the extended warranty company knows far more about the rate of payout on any given model than you do. In this case, Mercedes themselves. I assure you Mercedes knows what the mean time to failure is for every major component of it's vehicles. It is their business. They have to know the odds on AVERAGE of any given claim payout or they fail. They have to know that any given car model that they will incur LESS in warranty costs on AVERAGE than they made on the sales or they will LOSE MONEY. Major OEM's like Mercedes don't lose money willy nilly to warranty. When warranty work becomes too costly, they redesign the part to cut their losses. An extended warrantly just moves that tipping point a little further out, but I assure you, Mercedes knows what they anticipate the costs to be on the AVERAGE.

The extended warranty buyer on the other hand is speculating based on their gut. They have a FEAR that something will go wrong with their SPECIFIC car that they can't afford to pay for out of pocket. If you KNEW,for sure, that something is going to go wrong, and that you will be in need of an extended warranty, then you should be asking why you're buying that product in the first place. I.e. German cars have a proven history of being expensive to mainain after they are long out of warranty (by this I mean 5-10 years out). This is why you can buy a 2007 BMW 750Li for only $10K. It's because your next repair may be $1.5-$3K and everyone knows and understands that risk and adjusts the purchase price accordingly for that risk. There is no extended warraty that will cover this far out for a resonable price, because the actual repair prices are so high, and because the actual rate of failure is relatively high at that point in time.

So for about every $100 dollars they take in from the AVERAGE customer on the warranty cost, they will pay out about $12 of claims. The other $88 goes to overhead like office space, office supplies (furniture, printers, paper, etc.) paying commissions to the warranty salesman, marketing materials to get you in the door, administration costs, and most importantly, thier PROFIT Margin. It is a business plain and simple. Nothing evil about it, but, the odds are tipped in their favor. They exist to make money, if they don't make a profit, they don't exist.

How do I know this?

First, when I used to work retail electronics the commissions I got paid for selling extended warranties by far surpassed the comission I'd earn off just selling the product.

Second, how the insurance industry (and extended warranties are only insurance) business model works isn't a secret. All insurance bascially works this way be it car insurance, health insurance (excepting non-profits - few & far between), electronics extended warnties, or even things like propane or fuel oil "insurance" for home heating where they lock in pricing early in the season. In the case of health insurance, it is a relatively good buy. I cannot afford to self insure my way though a $250k heart surgery. The annual premium I pay for health insurance IS a reasonably good buy to insure myself against a risk I CANNOT afford to cover myself that would bankrupt me if it were to occur. So I'm not anti-insurance, I'm just not in favor or paying someone to insure what I CAN insure against for myself. If I had a net worth of $10M, in theory I wouldn't need to be bothered with health insurance. At that point I could self insure. See where this is headed?

Third, I work in automotive. I know and understand the rate of failure on the components that I work on. It's my job. That information gets shared with the internal and external extended warranty companies.

I will challenge you to do your research, verify what I've laid out, and, then decide for yourself based on the knowlege and the statistics of what IS likely to happen (based on reliability of the car under consideration) and not just a FEAR of what might happen.

[DickSteinkamp]

Superhawk is correct, OTOH...

We all buy insurance. Life insurance, health insurance, mortgage insurance, car insurance (usually over and above the state required minimum), liability insurance, home owner's insurance, long term care insurance, etc. etc. All the insurers make money from us (the "general" us). All the insurers know the odds. It is a simple bet for them (and a money making bet for them).

If you KNOW you will not experience a loss...don't buy the insurance. If you don't know, then only you can decide if you are willing to take the risk. You pay a known number...a portion of the potential loss...to avoid paying the total potential loss.

Insurance is not a scam. It's risk management. No one can tell you wether YOU should insure or not.

[gandalf_025]

A major consideration is how many miles
you are going to put on the vehicle yearly.
High miles kill the factory warranty fast.
Also, negotiate the price of the Warranty.
Last 4 cars I bought new,
3 I bought warranties on and it paid off well.
Last new car was a 2015 Honda that I didn’t
buy the warranty on. Needed a starter at 95,000
miles... with that car I would have broken even
for just the starter..
YMMV....

[Coondog]

Wait until right before your warranty expires, they will be knocking down your door offering even better deals. I finally had to tell Mercedes to leave me alone. Hope you like $250.00 dollar oil changes.

Congrats, I loved my Mercedes only car I ever owned that didn’t have one squeak.
I just traded mine in for a Ford Edge St.

[Tdskip]

I know some big Mercedes coupe owners that have had huge claims, your car may not be so far on the edge of their engineer are you to make that in consideration for you however.

[maf914]

Superhawk, thank you for a well written explanation and a good reminder of the principles involved. I debated these issues on a recent vehicle purchase.

DickSteinkamp, also well put. I agree.

[Krieger]

Generally I am not one for extended warranties, but new cars are expensive as hell to fix. I would say depending on how much. At 2-3 k yes. 5k maybe not. They are also factoring in how often/when the average Mercedes owner replaces their vehicle. Accidents/car totalled, which seems to be at a surprisingly low threshold due to component and repair costs.

[burton73]

Wait until right before your warranty expires, they will be knocking down your door offering even better deals. I finally had to tell Mercedes to leave me alone. Hope you like $250.00 dollar oil changes.

Congrats, I loved my Mercedes only car I ever owned that didn’t have one squeak.
I just traded mine in for a Ford Edge St.

Coondog is right. You can get a factory MB extended warranty from another dealer say out of state for a much better price. I got extended one for my Lexus 400H that I bought for my wife.
I am in CA and got one from a Lexus dealer in Kentucky. Better price and was the factory Lexus warranty. Look up extended MB on a MB chat group. You should get an idea from them.

I get nothing but the car from the dealer when I buy. No wax or dent removal or tire warranty as they make a lot of money on that. The finance guys do not like me. Remember that a car salesman is only your friend during the sale. Sales men of new cars are not your friend. Get you car on the internet and get your best price and then go pick it up.

In this world everything is changing.


Bob B

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

[914forme]

Change your oil yourself, and it will be less than the dealer, I do all my service work, on all my cars.

My 2008 ML320 CDI held 10 quarts of oil, I spent close to $200 in oil and filters alone. Part of the reason I traded it in. Besides that it would leak oil out of every seal it had. Messy vehicle. The new Replacement 2013 BMW X5M it is a lot less to do the service work on it.

I did a spreadsheet on the replacement parts costs, and then factored in the mileage I like to travel and the purchase price of the vehicles.

In the end the X5M was less cost to operate than the ML. If you don't work on your cars, then get the warranty.

I like tools and if I figured the cost of special tools, I might be better off going to a good indy shop.

[daytona]

Hi guys,
Thanks for all the responses. I feel bad that I didn't include the price of the warrantee in my original post. The price is $3,200 for an additional 3 years 25,000 miles.
It does not go into effect until the factory warrantee is expired, and if I sell or in any way get rid of the car before the extended warrantee is in effect, the warrantee is cancelled and the money refunded minus a small fee.
As probably most 914 owners here, I do most of my maintenance and some of the repairs. But this car??? Other than changing the oil and maybe brake pads, a person would have to be an electronics engineer with a minor in computer networking and a knowledge of plumbing.
The dashboard gauges including the GPS screen is all one big computer display that gives me the shakes just to think of having to pay to repace it.
I am not happy with the 3rd party warrantee I had on my cayman. They didn't pay for what I expected them to pay, but they did pay for something I didn't expect. In any case, both times I had to file a claim they seemed fly by night and evasive.
Mercedes covers everything except for ware items that are spelled out on the contract.
Thank you for reminding me that the warrantees are negotiable. I'm going to give it a shot.
I know that statistically we should't buy any insurance other than health insurance. Will let you guys know how it turns out, and thank you for all the excellent comments.

[Mikey914]

The wife bought an extended warranty on a CLA250. She decided to downgrade to a Subaru Crosstrek as the payment pushed her budget. She traded i5 in at the dealer buying a “used” loaded car with 600 miles on it for significantly less than a new one. The dealer informed us we were entitled to a refund from Mercedes as we had not driven it into the warranty period. She got all $2800 back. In general I don’t like warranties was it’s usually a loosing proposition. This time it worked out great.

[draganc]

I bought 5 CPO cars from MB and the first 2 with their extended warranty plan.
On the first car, the AC compressor crapped out on me 2 months after the warranty
has expired. Hence wasted $2500 for the coverage.

2nd and 3rd car, got a better deal but didn’t have any issues on the 2nd and a leaking
radiator on the 3rd car, of course 4-5 years after the warranty.

Didn’t buy any warranty on the other cars.

IMHO, it all depends on how many miles and how many years you will drive the car.
Most of my MB repairs have been none “essential” parts like fuel pump, electric trunk
activator, radiator, a/c ect. Each of the repairs were around a grand.

Have been driving MB cars now for ~12 years, I feel that most of the repairs happen
about 5-7 years.

To conclude: I wouldn’t buy the extended warranty if you plan to drive the car for 10 years or more and you can handle a random $1000-1500 repair.

Good advice:

“...Wait until right before your warranty expires, they will be knocking down your door offering even better deals. I finally had to tell Mercedes to leave me alone. Hope you like $250.00 dollar oil changes...”

[infraredcalvin]

Wifey has had an R, 2 MLs, 1 GLE (current) over the last 20 years, we keep our cars till about 80-100k miles,. Big costs have always been wear items, in particular the brakes. We typically go to the dealer, but they’ve gone from +/- $300 oil changes to my last at well over $600. Obviously we’ll be looking for an alternative next time. Only car that had issues was one of the MLs at 80k miles, had the self adjust leveling suspension, front shocks started leaking and dealer quoted $4800 to replace. We traded in for a new one...

Had the GLE for 3 years now, at 60k miles we’ve done rear brakes 2x and fronts 1x. Weird cause my Audi is the same way, rears wear 2x as fast??? all times dealer only wanted to replace rotors and pads, even though rotors were still in spec. Dealer estimate, 1200 per axle, I did pads myself.

Bottom line, unless the extended warranty includes these wear items, based on my experience, they are pretty soundly built cars.

[Andyrew]

Had the GLE for 3 years now, at 60k miles we’ve done rear brakes 2x and fronts 1x. Weird cause my Audi is the same way, rears wear 2x as fast??? all times dealer only wanted to replace rotors and pads, even though rotors were still in spec. Dealer estimate, 1200 per axle, I did pads myself.

My Infiniti has tracking system that hits the inside rear brake to help bring the car around in corners and make freeway driving more stable... I had to change the rear pads out at 25k miles when the fronts were like new... Found out it was because of this and turned it off... Haven't noticed a difference with it off vs on and the pads are going strong...

[infraredcalvin]

I figured it was from something like that or the variable cruise control, I use it a lot on both cars.

[Superhawk996]

Had the GLE for 3 years now, at 60k miles we’ve done rear brakes 2x and fronts 1x. Weird cause my Audi is the same way, rears wear 2x as fast???

The reason this is occuring on your car as well as the other cars referenced is because modern ABS and ESC systems rely on a feature called Electronic Brake Distribution (EBD) to bias the rear brakes much more effectively than could be done on vintage cars using a basic proportioning valve to control rear brake pressure. The rear brakes are effectly biased in real time, using them more at low deceleration that don't transfer much weight and using them more in the initial few milliseconds of the stop.

By using the rear brakes more agressively earlier in the stop before weight transfer has fully occured, they can do a lot of work early in the stop to reduce the overall stopping distance. This can be increased even further if there is a heavy load and/or passengers in the rear seats that add additional weight and traction to the rear axle.

Now, factor in the a the rear brake pads are typically only a fraction of the size of the front pads, and you'll see why they wear faster than the front.

The old school world of the rears lasting much longer than the fronts was a testament as to how little work the rears used to do and why so many cars got away with simple drum brakes for so long.

In the case of the Infinity, the feature is called brake torque vectoring. As you've noticed, the benefit is not that great unless you're really pushing hard and your are very tuned in to the handling difference. However, the pad wear that is accelerated by dragging the inner brake to help crate the "vectoring" effect is obvious.

This brake based torque vectoring is in no way a comparison for to real driveline based torque vectoring systems that work via clutches and overspeed gearing in the differential like Audi Sport diff, Acura TL/RL/RLX Super Handling AWD, Lexus RC-F, BMW X6 and the X5M IRRC, Mitsubishi Evo, and a few others.

[barefoot]

You’all seem to be buying the wrong cars. My Altima came with free oil changes for 100K miles and a lifetime powertrain warranty from the dealer. Car now has > 130K miles with total of $350 in service costs.

[RickS]

Had the GLE for 3 years now, at 60k miles we’ve done rear brakes 2x and fronts 1x. Weird cause my Audi is the same way, rears wear 2x as fast???

The reason this is occuring on your car as well as the other cars referenced is because modern ABS and ESC systems rely on a feature called Electronic Brake Distribution (EBD) to bias the rear brakes much more effectively than could be done on vintage cars using a basic proportioning valve to control rear brake pressure. The rear brakes are effectly biased in real time, using them more at low deceleration that don't transfer much weight and using them more in the initial few milliseconds of the stop.

By using the rear brakes more agressively earlier in the stop before weight transfer has fully occured, they can do a lot of work early in the stop to reduce the overall stopping distance. This can be increased even further if there is a heavy load and/or passengers in the rear seats that add additional weight and traction to the rear axle.

Now, factor in the a the rear brake pads are typically only a fraction of the size of the front pads, and you'll see why they wear faster than the front.

The old school world of the rears lasting much longer than the fronts was a testament as to how little work the rears used to do and why so many cars got away with simple drum brakes for so long.

In the case of the Infinity, the feature is called brake based torque vectoring. As you've noticed, the benefit is not that great unless you're really pushing hard and your are very tuned in to the handling difference. However, the pad wear that is accelerated by dragging the inner brake to help crate the "vectoring" effect is obvious.

This brake based torque vectoring is in no way a comparison for to real driveline based torque vectoring systems that work via clutches and overspeed gearing in the differential like Audi Sport diff, Acura TL/RL/RLX Super Handling AWD, Lexus RC-F, BMW X6 and the X5M IRRC, Mitsubishi Evo, and a few others.

Thanks for the xplanation. Always wondered why the rears on my Jetta Sportwagen were going when the fronts still had 80%. Now we know. One guy guessed it worked that way to prevent nose dive during heavy braking. Since I almost always feathered the brakes I knew that was not right.

Mercedes build quality has been slipping over the last 15 years as evidenced by their mid-pack rating in Consumer Reports. They are right in there with Ford and Chebby. Toyota/Lexus, Audi and Porsche are in the top 5. So if you plan to keep beyond 100,000 miles I would definitely get the warranty since repair prices are obscene.

[Cairo94507]

Personally, I like extended warranties on new cars. Peace of mind for all of the expensive electronics. Great selling feature too, should the need arise. However, you mentioned the warranty they have offered you terminates if you sell the car prior to the warranty expiration, as well as a small fee they charge you. That breaks the whole deal for me. I want a fully transferable warranty, no deductible and no fees other than what I paid for the warranty to begin with. If they can't do that, I do not believe that is a factory MBZ extended warranty. I have had several new MBZ's and that was never the agreement I had re the extended warranties. Good luck - and congrats on the new MBZ - enjoy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)