Why I bought the extended warranty
 

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65,000 miles. Stock NA drivetrain. Maintenance schedule followed to the letter, performed by dealerships to maintain the record trail. Used oil analysis done after every oil change, with no indicators of a problem at all.

Saturday afternoon, as I was pulling away from a light and shifting from first to second, I heard a startling pop/growl noise followed by a clattering sound. I was actually looking at the tach when it happened and saw the oil light come on right after the sound. I pulled into the nearest parking lot and called for a tow.

The local dealership opened it up this morning. Apparently the oil pump shattered, starving the bearings of oil and causing one or more of them to spin, all of which happened within the span of a few seconds. SOA has asked the dealership to inspect the bearings and heads to see the exact extent of the damage, but the dealership has already said I'm getting a new short block at a minimum and probably a long block. They're taking good care of me so far.

At the time I bought my car, I recall people on this board telling everyone who bought the extended warranty how stupid they were for wasting the money. I bought it anyway. I paid $1500. An engine swap would be what, about a $5K job? It looks like I'm getting it under warranty.

I'm glad I didn't listen to the people saying how stupid I was.

Well that's a new one!

You gambled against an insurance company and won, glad it worked out for you. And I appreciate the info as my car nears 60k.

:cheers:

Wow, is oil pump failure common on FAs? This is the first time I've heard of this.

i bought the extended warranty too brother.

The main issue with extended warranties is that you must have proof that you have done all scheduled maintenance or else it will be voided.

If you spend the money to take the car to the dealership for every oil change, services, etc then it will be fine.

Otherwise, you have to do all the maintenance yourself and keep receipts as proof.

The oil pumps on these cars are about as reliable as a 50 year old grenade. It may blow up if you sneeze at it, or you may be able to drop kick it into a wall with no problems. The others I've heard of breaking all broke randomly as well.

Yep, the mechanic said he hadn't seen it before, but he also said they didn't get many BRZs in. I put another post on the Issues board for the technical discussion.

Insurance is a hedge against future economic loss. You weigh the impact of the risk and the likelihood it will happen and make a decision. If I had been buying a vehicle with a long track record of going 300K miles without major issues, the lower risk might have led me to pass on the extended warranty. But when I bought my car in 2014, there were very few twins on the road with any significant mileage. It was a new motor, and it was unproven. Seemed like a no brainer to me to buy the extended warranty in that situation.

When people kept saying it was stupid, I remained fairly quiet and figured, "We'll see."

I have had very good luck wit extended warranties on products in the past. I would have got one for the car but although it seems counter intuitive with the number of miles I put on it so quickly the value just wasn't there.

I have 45,000 miles and the extended warranty.
I also pay the extra $$ to have the DEALER do my oil changes JUST so it is on record (in their system) as being done by a competent mechanic.
I am 100% competent (more-so than most of their techs) but I want ZERO questions if it ever comes up.

Depends on how you look at it. You're thinking cost over time. I'm thinking cost per mile. Remember, when I bought mine, I was driving almost as much as you were. I put 30K miles on it in the first 12 months before my job changed. Even racking up the miles that fast, the risk still seemed to justify it.

You could have used this as an opportunity to do a LS1 swap.


Now you are stuck with the stock engine for another 60k miles.

I was thinking more along the line of any warranty eligible issues showing up fast. Didn't help that the extended warranty was $3K here. If I could have got one for $1500 I may have went for it.

Extended warranties are basically an over/under bet, and the house almost always wins. @extrashaky, I'm glad the gamble worked "to your benefit" this time.

All I can add is my personal experience. I have never purchased an extended warranty, but have tracked it against issues. Maybe I'm the other side of the exception, but I have never had a repair that would have been covered under an extended warranty period on the 8 or so cars I've purchased where that would have been available. So, if we take the $1,500 cost that is $12,000 I would have "thrown away".

The one time I did have an engine completely disintegrate in a car it was under the standard warranty, and well within it. 1998 Chevy Astro threw a rod and made a hole in the crankcase the size of a baseball. New engine went almost 200,000 miles and was still running when I got rid of it.

OP is WINNER!

glad warranty covers it. i would've bought extended warranty if i take my car to dealership for services + staying STOCK.

Insurance is not gambling. It's risk mitigation. You exchange a risk of unknown impact and replace it with a known cost that you can account for.

Gambling is actually the opposite. Gambling involves taking on an unnecessary risk of loss in the hope of a larger return. I didn't take on any risk when I purchased the warranty. I paid Subaru to accept that risk on my behalf. I don't actually gain anything if it pays out. I didn't just "win" $5000. The warranty erased the negative effect of a $5000 loss.

Seems to me the real gamblers are those of you who are risking that the car won't break down and have no idea what this car is ultimately going to cost you to keep it on the road.

Full disclosure: I'm a CPA with a degree in finance and a background in risk mitigation, now working in the insurance industry. And because I have a pretty good idea how risk works, I don't gamble. I don't even buy lottery tickets.

for the subset of car owners that intend on owning instead of leasing, driving the car a 'standard' or higher mileage for the foreseeable future, keeping the car past the 60k standard powertrain, are able and patient enough with their local subie dealership to do the work there and don't plan on modifying the car in any appreciable way then there is definitely a value proposition to purchasing the insurance.

but if you are unsure or unable to keep those elements to your ownership profile then ymmv. im glad the op has that warranty work now paid for. i do know that there's lots of folks such as myself with ownership expectations and experiences where it would be less of a potential 'win'.

most extended warranties are through the dealer, and the dealer will just say, "Nah!"

hence why most are not worth it at all. If the warranty allows a person to go to any mechanic, that is more of a solid purchase.... which normally does not ever exist.

Wear and tear is not covered, abuses of driving it hard are not covered. So what on earth IS covered at say 80k miles? what breaks due to manufacturer's defect at 80k miles that could not be at all construed to be Wear and Tear? Very few things. It is a complete gamble to buy a warranty. I think you should consider buying a lotto ticket. At least youll have fun and decide if and when you want to get reamed up the sphincter.

http://autoexpert.com.au/buying-a-ca...ended-warranty

this guy knows a lot about car buying and all sorts of things and is quite humorous as well. I trust his advice and I do not trust a car salesman. Strange concept, I know.

If you plan to sell it before the base warranty is up, then of course it makes no sense. If you plan to mod the car, then of course it makes no sense.

But if you just aren't sure, it still makes sense, because you can sell the extended warranty back if you get rid of the car early. Even if you use part of it, you can sell the prorated portion back.



Interesting that you claim to trust his judgment while arguing against buying the Subaru factory extended warranty, because in that article he said this:

The only extended warranty to consider is the factory extended warranty – when Holden (or whomever) is offering five years instead of the standard three for a change. That’s usually a good deal.

So I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make, when the guy you're holding up as an expert says the warranty I bought is a good deal. Thanks for the support, I guess.

I think what he's saying is factory extended warranties are good since they are through the manufacturer and can be honored at any dealer. Dealer extended warranties are bad since they are typically through some sort of third party and are usually filled with lots of "gotchas" so as to deny a claim much more easily, on top of only being honored by one, or a few, dealers.

absolutely. A person could easily be lied to and sold a dealer warranty with all the claims of the subaru warranty. On long island, all places I went to refused to even talk about the website subaru warranty and wanted it sold from their finance department.

The price is completely variable however, it is whatever the dealer wants to make it.

If I bought one, I would triple check it to make sure it can be used at any dealer in the USA.

I dont know of anyone on this forum who has reported that. Doesnt meanit has happened but kind of a wierd conclusion to jump to.

I got my extended warranty through the dealer finance department but they offered me one directly through Toyota which was exactly the same as the standard warranty just longer. I only used it once to cover a $400 part but oh well I guess. I probably wont do it again but I bought the car at release and was driving 35k miles a year at the time and was in a position where the extra $10 a month or whatever was easier then being stuck replacing an engine so I wanted the 100k miles or worry free driving. Now that I could better afford the hit Id rather set that money aside myself and prepare to cover a cost of parts considering I could do most labor myself anyway

extrashaky: "Apparently the oil pump shattered"

Boy it would be fun to know what Subaru thinks about this one. Appears two dissimilar metals within that pump. Vibration may have caused the one to shatter. Possibly steel was not properly hardened to suit the task ? They'll know, but will we ever hear what they find and decide to do to prevent similar incidences.

Primarily what it boils down to here is semantics.

I have no argument with folks that want to mitigate risk by purchasing insurance, heck I have my fair share. But at the end of the day, insurance and gambling are similar products.

I know you know all this but....

In insurance the company sets rates based on actuarial tables (figures out the odds) and then charges for the product based on the likelihood of the event they are insuring against occurring within the policy. On top of that they then add the cost of administering the policy (administrative fees, commissions, profits, etc). The consumer purchases the product because they believe they will need the product within the timeframe the insurance company has determined that statistically they will not need it.

In simple terms, the insurance company is betting you won't have a claim, and you are betting your are.

So, as I illustrated in my case above, I choose to "self insure" by assuming the same risk as the insurance company (and I do set aside the money to cover the risk). Others aren't comfortable doing that, and that's OK.

This is another one of this "religious" arguments that most people have to agree to disagree on. The issue is that its a one-sided proof argument. It's easy to find folks that have had the warranty "pay off" but not so easy to find (the majority of) folks going around saying "yep, paid for the warranty, but never used it".

I'm over 100k miles and I drive her hard every day, so yeah it is a gamble on the extended warranty. Best option is to buy at a dealer that gives 100k warranty for free and buy extended on top of that. I've been out of my warranty since 36k miles

Well, you were out of your bumper-to-bumper to 36K. The drivetrain went to 60K (unless you ran out of time first which seems highly doubtful given you are over 100K).

You may have known this but there seems to be a lot of folks think the warranty ran out at 36K altogether.

Yep, I do that too. When you're both the house and the "customer", eventually you're going to lose but as you stated before, in the long run the odds are overwhelming in your favor that you're going to save money. Those insurance companies stay in business because of this very fact so why not take the profit out of their hands and keep it in yours? Obviously the OP was well served with a warranty but until such time as I can see the future to know exactly when I should or should not purchase a warranty, I will continue to save my money and pay up on the rare occasion that something bad happens. Even then, I may be too busy getting rich on sports bets with my Biff almanac to even be bothered with setting up an auto warranty.

Between my wife and I we have put a grand total of over a million miles on our last 7 cars (4 mine and 3 hers) and have spent the horribly excessive amount of $180 in repair work that would have been covered by an extended warranty. That was to repair a headlight mount that broke when 1000K out of the regular warranty. These were all Mitsubishis and one DSM! The only expensive repair was to my Talon when it threw the timing belt and that wouldn't have been covered anyway since it happened at 180K and should have been changed at 100K.


Now I did consider the extended for the FRS since it was a new and unknown car but I would have chewed up even the extended by now and have not had to have a single thing fixed.


Damnit you changed the future on us! We were supposed to have all sorts of cool shit by now.


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Yup, this thread doesn't change my opinion on the matter at all. I'd still tell the OP congrats, they got lucky. Now it's time to cancel that extended warranty before they piss away all the money they just saved paying for little to nothing for years to come.


That's pretty shitty they didn't cover the headlight mount though. I've heard of many problems just barely outside of warranty being covered anyway as a goodwill gesture.

The dealership had been sold and the new owners (owned about half the car lots in town) were real ****s. The old dealer would have fixed it in a heartbeat. It was just the start of a bad breakup between me and Mitsubishi that got far far worse as it went along.

To place a bet on a sporting game with a bookie is laying out $100 to risk $110. They call this the "Vig". it is the way bookies make money, they do not make it on your loss, they make it when they have 50% of people in the win, and 50% of people in the lose category by the end of the week. The Lose people pay out an extra $10 dollars on every $100 dollars, and this goes to the bookie.

Now look at auto financing department and extended warranties. It has to pay the finance department salesperson, the manager of the dealership, the owner of the dealership and the corporation of Subaru. All of them have to make a profit.

I would gather that it is MUCH more than 5% profit. Remember, the vig is 10% of losses, so only $10/200, 10% of the loss category not that full amount transacted during a given betting week.

It is clearly much better to make an informed bet on sports than it is to buy an extended warranty "insurance". Is it a stupid idea to buy the insurance with the manufacturer? No, not really. I think it is ok. I would hope that it is paid for without interest, removed from the loan, bought at a later date, and strongly shopped around and negotiated. You can negotiate and shop around for the same warranty if it is a true manufacturer's warranty. I do not know if they are locked into regions and distributor's groups however. Most warranties for products are sold in relation to stock purchased from a buying group. That is why they ask for serial numbers and not just model numbers when you do a warranty claim on any product. It has to link to a distributor list, some sort of buying group, as a product that had a specific warranty agreement prior to consumer purchase.

I also have learned that the prices for warranty work are crushed by the manufacturer. Their labor rates are denied and are forced to use Subaru's, or whatever company, rates not shop rates. They also make little on parts if at all, vs customers which have super high jacked up rates, and super high part prices on their bills. If a dealer can "prove" the work is out of warranty coverage agreements, the shop can charge you often double the amount or more.

The $5000 dollars saved that was quoted might be only $2000 saved as the original claim for this might have been denied by subaru, paying them only $3000 for the work. The bill shown and quoted to you was to make YOU happy and was a hopeful pitch to subaru that probably, probably was not fully the amount shown that was truly paid to the dealership's shop.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/m...game/index.htm

Consumer reports here. I do not want to make people feel stupid for buying one. I am considering it myself! I know that is odd for how much I shot it down. It is particular to one's plans and plots. If I bought a Mini Cooper all4 S like I planned on before getting this brz 2017 limited, I would have asked for and negotiated an extended warranty. I knew that the parts can wear out before 90k miles, some major ones.

I think I would buy an extended on a WRX. Definitely on an STI. A few years from now one could get pounded by a very expensive upmarked part and labor.

My suggestion is really just to negotiate and to figure how good you are at saving and paying for unexpected things. Also, if you know the dealer and their service for many years and have good relationship. I know my dealer 0 days. My mini dealer i know for 11 years and they really are fond of me.

On the flip side of that, I would never buy a car (or anything else for that matter) where I thought I needed to buy an extended warranty because it was going to have expensive (non-maintenance) repairs within the first half of it's useful life (in the case of a vehicle I consider half-life 100,000 miles).

the introduction of complicated drive trains and super hot turbos and direction injection makes these marketing beast cars worrisome to me for that key area of 80-100k miles in which things can blow.

The reason this FRS/BRZ is so awesome is it has 5 of 5 things that have a good chance of being reliable, in my limited scope of figuring things:
1. made and parts from Japan
2. no turbo or supercharger
3. manual gearbox taken from a great car line
4. non integrated "infotainment" system. You can rip out the stereo and have a hole there and the car wouldnt know the difference.
5. has fuel injection squirting out the black junk + direct injection

Because of this warranties are less of a concern I am guessing. You should see my forum on Mini Cooper's and BMW's.... jeez. Infinite expensive issues not repairable 100%.

My car is the first year, 2013, so I bought extended warranty just in case as well.
Mine was $2000 8 years/120000 0 deductible, whichever come first.

Glad you got it covered.

So the interesting thing is that for the 2016 year and upwards Subaru just changed their Warranty plan.
1
Year Unlimited Mileage
Replacement Parts and Accessories Limited Warranty

2
Year 24,000 Miles
Federal Specification Emissions Performance Warranty

3
Year 36,000 Miles
New Car Limited Warranty, Federal Specification Emissions Defect Warranty

5
Year 60,000 Miles
Powertrain Limited Warranty

5
Year Unlimited Mileage
Rust Perforation Limited Warranty

7
Year 70,000 Miles
California Specification Emissions Extended Defect Warranty

8
Year 80,000 Miles
Federal Specification Emissions Extended Defect Warranty

Lifetime Lifetime
Seat Belt Lifetime Limited Warranty

And the best thing they added was that i can take my car to ANY mechanic willing to work with Subaru to get the money for the warranty repair. I'm 100% sure of this because i repeated what they said back to me like 5 million times and they always confirmed. (and then i had them write it down on an official form)

If it wasnt for that last part i would not have bought the warranty.

wow!! that is a great warranty. 8 years and 120,000. Clearly something goes wrong at that point. I wonder what is covered under warranty at that point that is not "wear and tear".

Yeah I would have taken that up too - great value. Does it cover track use though?

The fuck I did. How is it lucky to have an oil pump come apart at 65,000 miles and take out an engine? Why do people keep saying I "won" or "got lucky" to lose an engine? You people have a seriously fucked up sense of what winning looks like.

Bang! Rat-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at.

"Yay! I hit the jackpot!"

Neither would I. And I didn't. I expected the car to well outlive its original warranty.

You keep saying you understand the purpose of insurance, but then you say something like this that demonstrates clearly that you don't. The purchaser does NOT generally think they'll need the insurance. A lot of people here have comprehensive coverage on their cars without being required to have it, but they don't think they're going to go out and wreck their cars. They buy it because they know there's a risk that something might happen, and they want to turn the uncertainty into a known cost that they can plan for and manage.

A better example is my field. I work in the title insurance business. When you buy a house, the settlement agent will search the courthouse records to make sure the seller has the right to sell it to you and there are no liens outstanding against the property. But what if they miss something? What if someone else pops up with a deed to your house? What if someone pops up and says they have a lien against your property from a prior owner's debt?

My company provides insurance against that. If it turns out the seller didn't have the right to sell the property, an owner's policy will pay your losses. If you take out a loan, the lender will require you to purchase a lender's policy to protect their collateral.

NOBODY buys a house thinking he's going to lose it. NOBODY. And no lender accepts a mortgage on a house thinking that the collateral will be lost. If someone told you he was buying his dream home, but he thought somebody would come take it from him next year, you'd think he was a fucking idiot for buying it in the first place. If a lender said, "Yeah, we'll give you this money, but we expect to lose it all next year," you'd wonder how that lender could possibly stay in business. The title insurance is there not because anybody expects it to happen or is betting it will, but because they would be in a seriously fucked up situation if it ever did.

So no, I didn't buy the warranty on my car because I expected to win big when my engine blew. I doubt anybody would. Someone who thinks he's lucky in my situation would be a fucking moron.

Basically almost everything in the car except, tires, light bulb, clutch, body and any tear and wear stuff.
But sadly, its already taken 3 years from me since my car is 2013,
i bought it 2015 DEC , so i have 5 years left.