Extended Warranty MB or not?

[Bossmls]

Hi

I have brought my car from a MB dealership owned by Inchcape. They are offering an extended warranty after the initial 12 Month period and although an MB dealership it appears this is one of their own. I have seen in the forum that people do take out an extended warranty and this is worthwhile.My question is can you take out a warranty direct with Mercedes UK or are the dealership warranties the same.......and if not which is more comprehensive? Also would the dealer warranty affect any MB manufacturer claim down the line.
My quote is £650/annum for the Inchcape one.

Thanks

Martyn.

 

[jberks]

Check the small print. The give away is whether they cover a list of items or list the items NOT covered. The former is the warranty direct type and pretty useless a lot of the time. They list what looks like hundreds of items. The problem si that a car contains thousands! Hence, whatever goes is normally not on the list. Sure, if the engine explodes, you;re covered, but you're more likely to need an obscure sensor for a few hundred that isn't listed.

I bought a non MB policy from my dealer that sounds similar to the one you're looking at. (I assume MB don't do them any more). A bit more expensive that Warranty Direct but having paid for a WD warranty and then having had to pay for all the the subsequent repairs, I realise that WD isn't as good as it looks. Whatever goes, aside from tyres, brakes etc, my dealer one will cover it.

Also take a look at the MB Service plus.

 

[Pipemaster]

Service Plus

I think Omnicognantneuronrangler is the one with experience of the Service Plus given all the problems he has experienced on his car which have been covered by it..... Omni??

 

[OmniCognateNeutronRangler]

well, let's put it this way; I haven't found a thing yet that hasn't been covered by ServicePlus. Basically if it breaks and you didn't brake it (either on purpose or by accident) then it's covered by ServicePlus. Additionally service plus covers all your servicing costs and MOT. Looking at the price you have quoted ServicePlus may be a little more but don't forget that if you do 20,000 p/a your service costs could easily run to £1500 per year (£250 for an A, £500 for a B plus additionals like pads, disks, plugs, filters).

I have had the following things replaced/done under ServicePlus in the last 9 months:

All pads
Front Disks
Cruise Control/Speed Limiter button/stork
Radio Amp
Plugs
Fuel/pollen Filters
Gearbox Oil/filters
Gearbox Control Unit
B Service
MOT

don't forget there is probably about £1k worth of labour in that lot too.

The warrantee will not cover any of the servicing costs so I actually think you are better off with Service Plus.

The only thing I have found is that oddly, after all that, they did quibble about replacing my wiper blades! They have perished and don't clear the screen properly but MB say they need to be split before they will replace them. I think they may just do that over the next couple of weeks

 

[Chris_J]

Can I ask, what is ServicePlus, and how much does it cost?

 

[OmniCognateNeutronRangler]

Can I ask, what is ServicePlus, and how much does it cost?

MB offer 2 service contracts One is service only and the other it service plus. The difference is that service plus covers all wear and tear items like pads, disks, filters, plugs etc. It also covers MOT's and optionally can cover tyres too. It is offered dorectly by Mercedes so just talk to your dealer.

They will put you in touch with the Mercedes contract department who will give you a quote for cover. It is only offered on cars up to 6 years old and you need to have the car inspected by an MB garage before they will give you a contracts. Any problems found with the car will need to be rectified before they will cover you. You can also not claim for the first 3 months. After that point pretty much everything is covered. Basically the wording says it covers everything that fails due to "normal wear and tear". My personal take on this is that most of teh things that have failed on my car should not fail due to normal wear and tear at such low milage but basically tthe wording from MB is pretty much "if you didn't break it by either accident or neglect" then it is covered.

Some garages charge for the inspection. Some don't. You need to shop around.

I am pretty sure you will never get this level of cover from any other source. Others will claim they offer this but really dont. Once you take out the contract they give you what looks like a credit card and whenever you get any work done on your car (or just need new bulbs or wipers) you just hand over the card and they charge everything to Mercedes directly. No fuss no muss.

As for cost, well that's based on the mileage you do, age and type of car etc. I pay a tad over £70 p/m based on 25,000 miles p/a. This may sound quite expensive but bear in mind that at 25k p/a I will get 1 A service, 1 B service and an MOT. That could easily be £1500 worth, and if anything goes wrong it's also covered.

As I said before I have had somewhere around £3000 worth of work done in teh last year (not including this blasted fuel contamination problem) so have easily made my money back.

btw, the fuel contamination is not covered by service plus because it isn;t normal wear and tear and isn't something on the car that has "just gone wrong". In this case though Tesco are paying for it.

The long and short of it all is that I know pretty much exactly what my Merc will cost me in service and repairs for the whole year. It's fantastic peace of mind

 

[Chris_J]

I'm guessing the price won't be quite so bad for me then. I only do about 12,000 per year and that's being slightly generous. I guess being a diesel may increase the price a little?

Only thing I'm worried about, is I had front discs and pads done by an indie so a little concerned they wouldn't be covered.

 

[jberks]

Only thing I'm worried about, is I had front discs and pads done by an indie so a little concerned they wouldn't be covered.

Assuming the pads and disks are proper MB parts the dealer wouldn't know or to be honest, care.
The chances of that being an issue is so minimal I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Rory]

As for cost, well that's based on the mileage you do, age and type of car etc. I pay a tad over £70 p/m based on 25,000 miles p/a. This may sound quite expensive but bear in mind that at 25k p/a I will get 1 A service, 1 B service and an MOT. That could easily be £1500 worth, and if anything goes wrong it's also covered.

You do seem to have got a good deal on the price - more recent quotes have looked higher, even at lower mileages
I got a maintenance quote for my car from MB when I bought my C270Cdi Estate in Mar 05 at 5mths old (so still had most of its warranty). I don't know if it was ServicePlus, or if it pre-dated that, but based on 30K/yr full maint (not inc tyres) the price was £115+VAT (£135). It made me think twice about buying the car.

 

[OmniCognateNeutronRangler]

You do seem to have got a good deal on the price - more recent quotes have looked higher, even at lower mileages
I got a maintenance quote for my car from MB when I bought my C270Cdi Estate in Mar 05 at 5mths old (so still had most of its warranty). I don't know if it was ServicePlus, or if it pre-dated that, but based on 30K/yr full maint (not inc tyres) the price was £115+VAT (£135). It made me think twice about buying the car.

I can understand you point. If a car needs £135 worth of maintenace per month it would put me off. In truth my car would have cost around £400 per month in repair costs if I hadn't taken out Service Plus (to be fair to MB that price also includes Tescos little cock-up with my petrol).

 

[Rory]

I can understand you point. If a car needs £135 worth of maintenace per month it would put me off. In truth my car would have cost around £400 per month in repair costs if I hadn't taken out Service Plus (to be fair to MB that price also includes Tescos little cock-up with my petrol).

The point in my case is that the car would have been under warranty for most of the time, so would have only needed routine servicing + brakes etc. Yet they still reckoned £135/mth for that. For £70 I'd have snatched their hands off, although as it happens I've done waaay less mileage than I expected.

In your case, you wouldn't go into the purchase of a car thinking it was going to cost £400 in service and repair bills (imagine the salesman telling you that as you are about to sign on the bottom line!). So although ServicePlus has been a very fortuitous purchase for you, you really ought not to have needed it.

 

[OmniCognateNeutronRangler]

The point in my case is that the car would have been under warranty for most of the time, so would have only needed routine servicing + brakes etc. Yet they still reckoned £135/mth for that. For £70 I'd have snatched their hands off, although as it happens I've done waaay less mileage than I expected.

In your case, you wouldn't go into the purchase of a car thinking it was going to cost £400 in service and repair bills (imagine the salesman telling you that as you are about to sign on the bottom line!). So although ServicePlus has been a very fortuitous purchase for you, you really ought not to have needed it.

very very true. I think even by Merc standards I have been unlucky. Having been to a different MB repair shop today it concerns me that a lot of my problems have been down to the dealer rather than the car. If they had fixed the problems the first time around it wouldn;t have been in the garage quite as much.

The petrol contamination thing was just damn right unlucky.

 

[jberks]

The point in my case is that the car would have been under warranty for most of the time, so would have only needed routine servicing + brakes etc. Yet they still reckoned £135/mth for that.

It's odd as they quoted me £95 per month for 25k pa on an E270.
It's the mileage lock-in that scared me off. Last year I was doing 90 miles a day. At the moment, it's 12, yet I'd still be paying the same.
Just not flexible enough.

 

[Rory]

The petrol contamination thing was just damn right unlucky.

Please keep posting those things, though - it makes me feel better about myself.

 

[OmniCognateNeutronRangler]

Please keep posting those things, though - it makes me feel better about myself.

gee thanks. Actually Eric has asked me to stop posting about the petrol contamination thing, and C220GJS has asked me to stop "keep moaning about mercs" and Hawk.....well....

so the next time something horribly expensive happens to my car I'll try to be upbeat about it

 

[Rory]

gee thanks. Actually Eric has asked me to stop posting about the petrol contamination thing, and C220GJS has asked me to stop "keep moaning about mercs" and Hawk.....well....

so the next time something horribly expensive happens to my car I'll try to be upbeat about it

There's a guy on HonestJohn (user name Avant - guess what he drove previously) who never misses any opportunity to get in a comment about how noisy and unrefined his B200CDi is. Some of his comments are so subtle that I'm sure many readers have no idea what he's talking about.

 

[Chris_J]

To be perfectly honest, I hate my Merc too at the moment