Warranties are they all the same?

[Hornet3D]

There seems to be quite a discussion going on in various threads relating to manufacturers warranties and the introduction of the new Relax warranty so I thought my experience might be of use.  One word of warning my views are taken from my experience with a Honda but I don't see this detracts from the points made.  As some sort of proof that I have learnt from my experience and my regard for Toyota, I have recently taken out a service agreement with Toyota, I would have taken out a Toyota extended warranty as well but the service agreement and the relax warranty essentially gives me both

I purchased a Honda CRV from a Honda dealership some years ago and only after I had purchased the vehicle did I find out that the car had an extended warranty running on it.  Just as well because in the first service in my ownership they found the motorised drivers mirror was no longer motorised (which I knew already) and also the headlamp cleaning jets leaked.   Cost of repair then was £630 or would have been had it not been covered under the warranty.   I extended the warranty for a further two years but at the end of that I was not offered and extension and believed the CRV was now too old.  I looked for a third party warranty but to be able to get close to the Honda warranty price I had to agree to pay an excess.   Some months later I had to have some work done on the suspension both back and front but my warranty company saw this as two jobs and thus two excess payments and the warranty did not cover some of the work.  If that was not bad enough it took many phone calls to the warranty company to authorise the work.   End result a very stressful time and I was £230 out of pocket compared to the Honda warranty which I now discovered could be taken out on any vehicle up to eight years old.  I was so disgusted to the way I was treated by the third party warranty company I took out another Honda Warranty there and then even though I still had eight months to go on the third party warranty.  Happy to do it though as I never wanted to deal with third party ever again.

So one of the reason for the Honda warranty was the easy of having repairs done but there was a second reason.  I had paid a lot of money for a Honda due to their reputation and being reliable, just like Toyota.   The Honda warranty stated it would only use Honda parts for repairs and servicing but this is not necessarily true of the one man band doing the service and repair.  This could mean that some of the parts were actually not up to Honda standards so over the years my Honda CRV could slowly become less and less Honda and more a mongrel, which was not what I purchased at the outset.

The summary, for me at least, the third party warranty was a poor comparison with main dealers, plus the fact I had to spend the best part of two days on the phone to even get the company in question to step up to their part of the agreement.  It is an experience I never want to repeat so I will stick with the main dealers even if they are a tad more expensive.

[FROSTYBALLS]

I've had good experiences with a Honda extended warranty and a Mazda extended warranty - both manufacturer extensions.

The Honda extended warranty covered us for an MOT failure on suspension bushes for a minimal £10 excess.

The Mazda extended warranty covered us when the driver's airbag module developed a fault and needed replacing. The cost of the part alone without labour was twice the cost of the extended warranty. No excess. The replacement was done within a couple of days.

Both times, no hassle having to contact a warranty company - just dealt with the dealer.

[Hornet3D]

33 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

I've had good experiences with a Honda extended warranty and a Mazda extended warranty - both manufacturer extensions.

The Honda extended warranty covered us for an MOT failure on suspension bushes for a minimal £10 excess.

The Mazda extended warranty covered us when the driver's airbag module developed a fault and needed replacing. The cost of the part alone without labour was twice the cost of the extended warranty. No excess. The replacement was done within a couple of days.

Both times, no hassle having to contact a warranty company - just dealt with the dealer.

I think the big plus is there is no real middle man, yes they may need to get authority to do any work but that is done within the company and and you do nat need to get involved.

Many years ago I owned and Toyota MR2 and was a member of the owners club that was quite active and so met with a lot of owners, each with their own story to tell but there was often a common theme,  Toyota would always try an work within the spirt of the warranty rather than the letter and this was always to the customer's benefit.

[AJones]

Agree on the benefit of using original parts and having dealers with the training and documentation for major repairs.

The warranty is a bit trickier to assess though because the terms and conditions of Relax have a very long list of exclusions including some quite 'catch all' exclusions, very dependent on the warranty provider's judgement on how to apply them. It will be interesting to see how good the warranty is in practice. 

I saw a thread on here a few weeks back about an owner of a 6 year old vehicle where the multimedia unit failed, quite a major issue given the amount of features which go through it (reversing camera, car settings, etc) facing a bill of £900 for replacement because it was excluded by the warranty T&Cs, so looks like they are being applied and used to refuse work.

[Hornet3D]

1 hour ago, AJones said:

Agree on the benefit of using original parts and having dealers with the training and documentation for major repairs.

The warranty is a bit trickier to assess though because the terms and conditions of Relax have a very long list of exclusions including some quite 'catch all' exclusions, very dependent on the warranty provider's judgement on how to apply them. It will be interesting to see how good the warranty is in practice. 

I saw a thread on here a few weeks back about an owner of a 6 year old vehicle where the multimedia unit failed, quite a major issue given the amount of features which go through it (reversing camera, car settings, etc) facing a bill of £900 for replacement because it was excluded by the warranty T&Cs, so looks like they are being applied and used to refuse work.

That was one of the exclusions that jumped out at me as the terms and conditions reads under - 'Types of parts and components not covered by Toyota Relax includes, but are not limited to section'

e) Multimedia systems 

It is difficult though in that without extended warranty the multimedia would not be covered anyway as, at six years old, the five year warranty would have ended.  I am also not sure if the multimedia unit would be covered by a third party and if so at what cost.  There is then the grey area where some of the aftermarket policies do cover the audio systems but I am not sure that would cover multimedia system and some polices place a limit on claims.

Again, comparing with the Honda warranty, for the CRV it was over £900 for an extra three years, based upon that the cover given by Relax appears to be quite good when looking at what is covered considering the cost is effectively only the extra cost of paying dealership prices for services.

One last point, many years ago I toured the training facilities for Toyota in the UK and it was impressive, I assume that it still is today.  I also wonder with the average basic vehicle reported to have around 30 processing units and the more expensive in the range in excess of 100, just how qualified the technicians working for smaller companies can be.  That is not a criticism of the technicians just a recognition of just how vast the requirement is in order to be competent with modern vehicles particularly when the cars they work on could be far more varied that of the dealership technicians.

[AJones]

The bits which caught my attention were:

Quote

What does Toyota Relax cover? The owner of the vehicle is entitled to have mechanical, electrical and electronic defects attributable to manufacturing or assembly repaired free of charge wherever possible

So the defect has to be attributable to manufacturing or assembly, fine when the car is new and nothing should be failing, but when it gets to 5 years or more then how can any problem be due to manufacturing or assembly? It would have failed before then. And even if it was, how could the customer prove it was attributable to manufacturing or assembly? Realistically you ca't, and at that point it's likely wear and tear, so not covered.

Quote

Exclusions (not covered by Toyota Relax)

Types of damage or defects not covered by Toyota Relax includes, but are not limited to:

 b) Damage or defects as a result of any wear and tear, excessive free play, noise and/or vibration; 

And if there was any uncertainty, it's excluded again in another section. Then you think about common items which fail, moving parts like the water pump, wheel bearings, alternator all of which fail normally through wear and tear on the bearings, developing free play, noise and vibration. Presumably all excluded?

8 hours ago, Hornet3D said:

Again, comparing with the Honda warranty, for the CRV it was over £900 for an extra three years, based upon that the cover given by Relax appears to be quite good when looking at what is covered considering the cost is effectively only the extra cost of paying dealership prices for services.

For me, looking at the T&Cs, the question 'what is covered' is the bit which is unclear because put them all together and what cover it provides in practice is difficult to judge. To me it looks like the typical things which fail, bearings, pumps, suspension, bushes. pretty much anything moving is probably excluded under wear and tear/noise/vibration. It probably covers the rarer failures like ECU and control systems, major engine failure, transmission issues.

It all depends on how those T&Cs are applied, so we'll have to see how it works in practice.

[Hornet3D]

2 hours ago, AJones said:

The bits which caught my attention were:

So the defect has to be attributable to manufacturing or assembly, fine when the car is new and nothing should be failing, but when it gets to 5 years or more then how can any problem be due to manufacturing or assembly? It would have failed before then. And even if it was, how could the customer prove it was attributable to manufacturing or assembly? Realistically you ca't, and at that point it's likely wear and tear, so not covered.

And if there was any uncertainty, it's excluded again in another section. Then you think about common items which fail, moving parts like the water pump, wheel bearings, alternator all of which fail normally through wear and tear on the bearings, developing free play, noise and vibration. Presumably all excluded?

For me, looking at the T&Cs, the question 'what is covered' is the bit which is unclear because put them all together and what cover it provides in practice is difficult to judge. To me it looks like the typical things which fail, bearings, pumps, suspension, bushes. pretty much anything moving is probably excluded under wear and tear/noise/vibration. It probably covers the rarer failures like ECU and control systems, major engine failure, transmission issues.

It all depends on how those T&Cs are applied, so we'll have to see how it works in practice.

 

I agree with your views and in particular the last line.   Honda changed a number of bushes on the suspension of the CRV on the basis that, although they were an item that did wear,  in this case the fact they failed so early implied a manufacturing problem.  I would not expect any warranty to cover tyres, Battery and brake pads.