Help w/ extended warranty

[CINCYFAN]

Hi all - I'm hoping someone may be able to help with my extended warranty question. My mother was in an accident in December and her 2017 Accord was totaled (she was not at fault). Well she actually missed her old Legacy (especially the AWD) and as soon as she found out she needed a new car, she decided she wanted another Legacy. Unfortunately, due to Covid (and the fact I live 500+ miles away) she ended up buying through my brother's car broker.

 

I had located a Subaru dealer online willing to sell the security plus warranty at a great price. Just as he submitted the paperwork, Subaru corporate told him he couldn't sell to someone "outside of their region." My question is has anyone had a good extended warranty purchasing experience with an "Ohio-area" dealer? My mom lives in the Cincinnati area and I'm afraid if she goes warranty shopping she'll end up paying MSRP+ for a sub-par warranty. This would be so much easier if I lived there....but I don't.

 

Any help or insights would be great appreciated!

 

Thanks!

[CINCYFAN]

Thanks, I appreciate your insights on Subaru reliability and mostly agree on extended warranties. That said, I had negotiated a price below $2000 for the 10/100k Subaru Security Plus w/ $0 deductible and, based on my own experience, thought that was an acceptable "gamble."

 

I probably should have been more clear that I'm not willing to pay retail for one of these contracts but getting one at 1/2 price is a different conversation. Admittedly, I have very limited experience w/ Subarus only having purchased my mother's first Legacy when my daughter turned 16. That said, I have bought a couple heavily discounted Honda/Acura-brand warranties and they've ALWAYS paid off. Again, you have to do your homework and get them at discount. I'd have lost money every time paying MSRP.

[Cobber15]

I just bought an extended warranty from Concord. It starts when the factory warranty expires. I bought a 4 year/120,000 mile $0 deductible warranty for $1400. The company was rated number 1 from what I found.

[Pilot1226]

I decided to purchase the extended warranty (SAS Gold Plan) when I bought my OBXT, but it's the same idea. Yes, there are geographic areas that you're supposed to buy from but it does NOT have to be through your selling dealer. Call around.

 

The SAS plan can be cancelled and you can be issued a refund so long as you do it before it's active. You pay a small administrative fee, I think around $50-75. If you're in the extended warranty portion, you'd get a pro-rated discount.

 

FWIW, I paid around $1600 after sales tax for my 10y/100k/$100 deductible plan. I just wanted something to help protect me from catastrophic failure (CVT, engine, etc.) since this is my first turbo model. And there's a lot of tech on the interior that I didn't want to deal with.

 

Basically, when the extended warranty expires, the car would be 10 years old. Either would have an Outback Hybrid by then, or drive it till it blows up since I don't think it would be worth that much at that point.

[Jp1975]

We’ve never purchased an extended warranty and in the case of each car we’ve owned, we tend to keep them for 10 years or more, it would have been money down the drain if we had purchased them. That being said we have GEICO auto insurance and they have a very reasonable Mechanical Breakdown Insurance that just gets added to our overall policy. For far less than the dealer/manufacturer warranties. We did add that to our new 2020s. If that wasn’t available we wouldn’t have bothered. After 50 years of buying our own cars I can’t imagine how much we would have thrown away buying such policies. But for the majority of that 50 years we’ve owned Japanese cars, if we had bought domestics my opinion might be very different. As far as the turbos, Subaru has that nailed down. Our previous cars were a 15 year old Outback and a 14 year old Legacy, both turbos with no engine issues.

 

We did have a couple out of warranty issues crop up in one our Hondas and one Subaru and both companies stepped up and covered the repairs with no cost to us. Those policies though do really make the dealers happy with a terrific profit.