Should I buy an extended warranty?

[dennis thompson]

I just bought a new Subaru Ascent. it seems to be loaded with computer chips to do everything. I'm sure I'll never know how to, or will I use half of the icons that are shown on the display.
I have never bought an extended warranty in my life but given how complicated this car seems to be I am considering buying one. it comes with a 3-year bumper to bumper warranty. I can extend the bumper-to-bumper warranty to 8 years in total for $1,650.
What do you think?

Thanks

[James Cheever]

I don't for most things. However, for $330 a year for 5 extra years, I would. The chips and complete boards can be pretty costly.

[Dave Zellers]

I don't for most things. However, for $330 a year for 5 extra years, I would. The chips and complete boards can be pretty costly.

I agree. For something as expensive as today's cars, and considering the newness of so much of the technology, and what it would cost you out of pocket to repair, I think it's wise in this case.

A big downside that makes me cringe is that you are also financing that $1650. Ugh.

But we did it and I'm glad to have the extra protection. We are being as aggressive as we can to pay this loan off as quickly as possible.

[John Lanciani]

I'm a 2023 Ascent owner; touch screen display is $2k to replace, CVT is $6k+. I bought the extended warranty.

[ChrisA Edwards]

I've have good luck with extended warranties over the years. At $1650, to me that's a no-brainer.

In the past, I've had 6 transmissions, an engine block and other misc parts, so I've pretty much got my money's worth.

[Steve Jenkins]

We just bought a Subaru Outback and got the extended warranty due to all the electronics. We don’t drive it a lot so we got a 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Read the fine print - before you buy one.

Make sure you'll be getting all the coverage you think you're getting & what is required on your part to meet the requirements.

[George Bokros]

I don't usually buy them but I did for my 2021 Ranger. All the electronics are very costly to repair / replace.

[roger wiegand]

The general rule is "the house always wins", and modern cars on average are pretty trouble free over their first decade of life. So For most cars, most of the time, I'd decline. If I ever bought another BMW OTOH, I'd sign right up. Weird incentives pop up in automotive financing, and I don't pretend to understand it. This could be one of those rare deals that's worth it.

[Bill George]

I don't usually buy them but I did for my 2021 Ranger. All the electronics are very costly to repair / replace.

Ditto the cars themselves engines and the like pretty much trouble free, electronics not.

[Stan Calow]

My reasoning, admittedly old school, is that if it's something like electronics, its going to break in the first year or so (that is, from a defect, not wear and tear). So no extended warranty. With one exception - the tires. We've had so many tires damaged and replaced, that I'll ask for that. And I am leaning towards buying a new car every three years.

[George Yetka]

Thats a good price for 5 extra years. Whats the mileage limit? American Pickups used to come with 100k but they dropped to 60k in 2017 or so. I paid 3,000 to extend to 100k at the time. As my previous chevy lost the trans at 108k and exhaust valves started sticking 4k after that. I feel cars have become a thing with engineered failures. Buy it.

[Jack Frederick]

We bought the warranty on the 2020 RAV4 TRD. It was an effective sales presentation by the dealer. Simply put, “there are an about a million computers in this thing….” It is the first auto extended warranty I’ve purchased. Have you ever noticed that 90% of vehicles with a headlight out are Subbies.

[Bill George]

My reasoning, admittedly old school, is that if it's something like electronics, its going to break in the first year or so (that is, from a defect, not wear and tear). So no extended warranty. With one exception - the tires. We've had so many tires damaged and replaced, that I'll ask for that. And I am leaning towards buying a new car every three years.

The electronics in your TV or Microwave and so on, are not like automotive. Try taking your Honda to the dealer and have tell you well it could be this or that but its $800 to replace and we can not guarantee that will fix it! They stop putting parts on when you run out of money. This was a 6 year old Honda CRV and a true story. We ended up trading it in for a Toyota RAV4 and they seemed to not care about the check Engine Light. Yes we purchased the added warranty.

[Edward Weber]

Adding to everyone else,
Years ago when working on cars, Subaru's were among the most expensive for parts.
An alternator for that car is $350
I would recommend the warranty

[Bill Howatt]

You pays your money and you takes your chance. I was never a purchaser of extended warranties but cars are not the same as yesteryear and the problem is the electronic stuff, including connectors - being bounced around and undergoing temperature extremes, here would be an annual AMBIENT range of -40 to +105, is a lot different than the stereo amplifier in your living room. Don't know about now, but when I was doing electronics that temperature range would have warranted MIL-spec components. As was said, read the fine print and I would only do them through the manufacturer of the car if possible - there are too many horror stories about things not covered and warranty companies going out of business. Remember you are buying this for a term of years not weeks.

[Keegan Shields]

All of the extended warranty programs I’ve seen are extremely high margin. Meaning you are highly unlikely to need them. There’s likely a reason it’s extended to specifically 8 years.

[Mike Henderson]

I had a Mercedes and bought the extended warrantee. That car had problems. Every time I took it in, they did something under warrantee. Now, maybe the dealer was milking the warrantee, but it didn’t cost me anything.

Then I bought a Mazda and took the warrantee. Never had a problem, so I lost on that one.

I would purchase the extended warrantee.

Mike

[Jim Becker]

I just bought a new Subaru Ascent. it seems to be loaded with computer chips to do everything. I'm sure I'll never know how to, or will I use half of the icons that are shown on the display.
I have never bought an extended warranty in my life but given how complicated this car seems to be I am considering buying one. it comes with a 3-year bumper to bumper warranty. I can extend the bumper-to-bumper warranty to 8 years in total for $1,650.
What do you think?

Thanks
Congratulations! I've absoutely loved my MY19 Ascent Touring for four years now and am expecting my new MY23 Ascent Touring in July.

Relative to the extended service contract, the Subaru Added Care Gold extended service contract is worthy if you intend on keeping the vehicle long term for the reasons you mention...the high cost of replacing tech. This is unfortunately the nature of many current generation vehicles. A lot of folks do not like buying these contracts and that's just fine. I changed my tune on that about a decade ago because I'd rather have the insurance. My current Ascent has the 7/100/0 contract as I originally intended to drive it at least that long but our circumstances have changed because Professor Dr. SWMBO is no longer driving and we're moving to just one vehicle. Sale of her MY20 Forester Limited and trading my MY19 Ascent results in a zero cash upgrade to the latest goodies with a bunch of money in the bank beyond that. I'll get a pro-rate refund on the current contract that I'll apply to a new contract for the new vehicle. $1650 for the 8 year contract is a pretty good deal, but make sure it's the Subaru Gold plan and not a third party contract. Not sure who you're dealing with in NJ, but Liberty Subaru is an excellent resource as is Cioca.

If you have any questions about the vehicle, let me know. In addition to being an owner and a "fanboi", I help run one of the largest Ascent forums and also participate in the FB group. I'll also suggest you hook yourself up on YouTube with the videos produced by Subaru Ambassador Robert Mauro who is an amazing human being and has a wide variety of helpful information which he's been updating to reflect the changes that came with MY23.

[Jim Becker]

Read the fine print - before you buy one.

Make sure you'll be getting all the coverage you think you're getting & what is required on your part to meet the requirements.
The Subaru Added Care Gold extended service contract is "exclusionary", meaning it covers everything accepting a remarkably small number of specific items which are largely wear items or cosmetics. It's not based on parts lists, etc., like many third party offerings that many dealers try to push. The Mopar Maximum Care contract is similar for folks who buy Jeep/Chrysler/Dodge/RAM

[dennis thompson]

I agree. For something as expensive as today's cars, and considering the newness of so much of the technology, and what it would cost you out of pocket to repair, I think it's wise in this case.

A big downside that makes me cringe is that you are also financing that $1650. Ugh.

But we did it and I'm glad to have the extra protection. We are being as aggressive as we can to pay this loan off as quickly as possible.


The Subaru Added Care Gold extended service contract is "exclusionary", meaning it covers everything accepting a remarkably small number of specific items which are largely wear items or cosmetics. It's not based on parts lists, etc., like many third party offerings that many dealers try to push. The Mopar Maximum Care contract is similar for folks who buy Jeep/Chrysler/Dodge/RAM
Thanks everyone for your responses. I bought the extended warranty and as Jim said, it is exclusionary. I’ll let you know how I make out in eight years:):

[Jerome Stanek]

Read the fine print as the one that they were pushing had a deductable that amost covered the repairs.

[Jim Becker]

Read the fine print as the one that they were pushing had a deductable that amost covered the repairs.
Subaru's contract is available with either $100 or $0 deductable. I opted for the $0 deductible as the cost difference was actually minimal compared to that option with the Mopar contract I had back when I was driving the Grand Cherokee.

[roger wiegand]

As long as people are throwing anecdotes around, for at least the last 10 cars we've had and driven 100,000's of miles there have been no failures in any electronic part. This is consistent with my expectation that things with moving parts are much more likely to break than solid state devices. I don't know of anyone in my extended circle of acquaintances who's ever had to replace a computer in a car. Is this really a common thing? My BMW and Mini seemed to go through suspension parts and fuel injectors like crazy, but never the electronics. Our Toyotas have only ever needed brakes, tires, and batteries. We typically buy newer used cars and keep them for another 12 years or so on average.

[Bill Howatt]

I'd be interested in hearing comments made to your post, Roger.
My personal awareness are: 1 computer in a 2007 Toyota Matrix and a fancy radio in a Dodge RAM pickup. Toyota was still under warranty but the radio for the RAM installed was about $1200US. Owner was an electronics person and asked for the broken one but told it was on an exchange basis.
I have to say that when ABS brakes were introduced I wondered about the electronic reliability of such a system but given the many years they've been around I've never heard of electronic failures other than wheel sensors.

[Jim Becker]

One example: Head units cost $1500-2000...and in current generation vehicles, a whole bunch of the vehicle functionality is controlled from that interface. For that reason, you can't replace with third party in most cases, so you're stuck with OEM costs. Dashboards are nearly completely electronic and monolithic. Same with the rest of the center stack. There is no repair, only replace. Extensive safety systems can fail, and because they affect vehicle operation, they cannot be ignored...they have to be replaced. Many transmissions are no longer field serviceable, so if there is an issue, you need a new one. $6-11K. The trend is smaller displacement engines with turbocharging. Reliable for sure, but if they do break, the cost to repair is up there. Labor rates are through the roof no matter what. So for me, paying a small amount for insurance against post-warranty issues if I'm going to keep the vehicle long term is worth it. Extended Service Contracts (what people call "extended warranties") are insurance and even regulated that way in some states like Florida. But as I noted previously, some folks prefer to self-insure and that's ok, too.

[Bill George]

Some of the newer cars use on board micro computers for systems and they are all linked together via a cabling system. Joe down at the corner gas station does not have the know how or the equipment to fix.

[Bill Howatt]

I notice around here that posted labor rates are regular "$xx", electrical problems "xx + extra amount" per hour.
My father had a garage in the 50s and disliked electrical problems even then without chips and computers. He said, "it's hard to charge for the repair if the fix was wrapping some tape around a wire". Of course, the time taken was finding where to wrap the tape.

[Dave Zellers]

The ABS part of my brakes in my 2005 Chevy G20 van and my 2011 Kia Sorento both failed but not till 11 years in so out of warranty. Didn't bother to fix either and just drove with regular brakes like the old days.

It's a good point about car computers being so reliable. I wonder if they are built more robustly than retail computers because the last thing the auto makers need is them failing- even out of warranty. Today's cars can't run without them.

But to the point of an extended warranty, I wouldn't want to foot that bill if one did, plus all the other little things that do fail. Someone up thread mentioned dealers milking the warranty which we experienced at our KIA dealer. "It looks like your rear lift gate pneumatic arms are about to fail. We can replace those under your warranty"

Us: "Sure!" A small thing, and of course the House always wins, but that's overall. We feel that it is worth it on a new car because we know we will own it beyond the life of the warranty.

[dennis thompson]

As long as people are throwing anecdotes around, for at least the last 10 cars we've had and driven 100,000's of miles there have been no failures in any electronic part. This is consistent with my expectation that things with moving parts are much more likely to break than solid state devices. I don't know of anyone in my extended circle of acquaintances who's ever had to replace a computer in a car. Is this really a common thing? My BMW and Mini seemed to go through suspension parts and fuel injectors like crazy, but never the electronics. Our Toyotas have only ever needed brakes, tires, and batteries. We typically buy newer used cars and keep them for another 12 years or so on average.
Roger
I certainly hope that I never have a reason to use the warranty I bought. It covers more that just chips, while that was the reason I bought it, it does cover all bumper to bumper failures (obviously excluding brakes, tires, etc.). As I said, I’ll let you know how I make out in eight years (big assumption since at that time I’ll, hopefully, be 87)

[Jim Becker]

Some of the newer cars use on board micro computers for systems and they are all linked together via a cabling system. Joe down at the corner gas station does not have the know how or the equipment to fix.
Not "some" of the newer vehicles...virtually all of them.

[Mike Henderson]

I know that "military grade" semiconductors are specified to essentially never fail and to operate in wide extremes of temperature. And the semiconductors they use on those satellites they send to Pluto are obviously designed and specified to essentially never fail (they do have backups for most of the electronics).

I'm sure the auto manufacturers have a specification that is designed to very rarely fail. The parts that go into cars are not "state of the art" parts. They're generally older parts. I supose one reason for that is it takes several years to design a car so even if they used "state of the art" parts in the design they're be several years old by the time the car was released.

Mike

[Dick Strauss]

It's not really a time of design issue that impacts which chip technologies are used by auto manufacturers. Car manufacturers tend to use chips made with processes 3-4 generations of technology behind current state-of-the-art because they are cheaper. In addition, traditionally autos didn't need the circuit density (there are lots of nooks in cars to locate lots of chips) or power saving features of state-of-the-art technologies (cars have large electrical systems to power everything). So why buy expensive chips when you can get away with cheap ones. I assume this is/will be changing quickly as more autos incorporate more "self-driving" features.

Most large chip manufacturers don't dedicate a whole lot of capacity to older technologies because the margins are usually smaller. Some small boutique chip foundries specialize in older technologies.

The auto manufacturers got in trouble because they cancelled orders and didn't reserve future capacity during the huge sales slowdown related to COVID instead of taking delivery early and having stock ready to go once the market recovered. The bean counters and JIT manufacturing caused the current auto supply issues.

[Dick Strauss]

The chips used in autos used to be of very similar but slightly higher reliability versus run of the mill chips. This may have changed with the advent of semiautonomous cars.

Defense, intelligence and space applications had lots of techniques to ensure extremely high reliability in all kinds of environments. Often the final systems were designed with built-in redundancy just in case 99.999999...% wasn't good enough.

[Ronald Blue]

The only extended warranties worth having are from the manufacturer. The one's advertising on TV are no better than the scammers robocalls or the bogus emails hawking your antivirus is expiring. I have always been told the dealer loves selling the extended warranty because they get most of the cost as profit. Here is another thought to consider. I don't know if all brands or if it's still an option. In the past at least some brands allowed you to purchase the factory extended warranty if you were still covered by the original factory warranty. I've never purchased an extended auto warranty and only once did I wish I had. I'm not sure I would today either. I don't trade often. My pickup is 9 years old and 93XXX miles. Just put front brakes on for the first time a few weeks ago. Tires twice now. Vehicles are much better than they once were.

[Jim Becker]

Ron, most, if not all Manufacturer extended service contracts must be purchased while the vehicle is still under the typical 3/36 OEM warranty period. (there are some minor variations) In many cases, having the contract may add additional benefits that are not part of the OEM warranty, such as a rental/loaner benefit for covered work. (many dealer no longer offer loaners)

[Ronald Blue]

Ron, most, if not all Manufacturer extended service contracts must be purchased while the vehicle is still under the typical 3/36 OEM warranty period. (there are some minor variations) In many cases, having the contract may add additional benefits that are not part of the OEM warranty, such as a rental/loaner benefit for covered work. (many dealer no longer offer loaners)

This is copied directly from the Chevrolet Protection Plan details. A used vehicle can have it added to it after the purchase date. It's not even necessary it have the factory warranty still in effect.

IF THIS AGREEMENT WAS PURCHASED AFTER THE TIME-OF-SALE OF THE COVEREDVEHICLE AND THE COVERED VEHICLE WAS NO LONGER COVERED BY THE ORIGINAL MANUFACTURER’S WARRANTY WHEN YOU PURCHASED THIS AGREEMENT, THEN A MANDATORY WAITINGPERIOD OF THE LESSER OF 30 DAYS OR 1,000 MILES, WHICHEVER OCCURS FIRST, WILL APPLY BEFORE YOUR COVERAGE BEGINS. HOWEVER, AN ADDITIONAL 30 DAYS AND 1,000 MILES WILLBE ADDED TO THE AGREEMENT’S SCHEDULED EXPIRATION. THEREFORE THE WAITING PERIOD WILL NOT REDUCE THE ACTUAL TIME/MILEAGE DURING WHICH YOU HAVE COVERAGE.

Here is a dead link to the page.

chevrolet.com/content/dam/chevrolet/na/us/english/index/owners/warranty/02-pdfs/chevrolet-protection-plan-sample-contract-10-2022.pdf

[Jim Becker]

Yes, the manufacturers often have contracts available for vehicles out of warranty. I didn't say they don't. But there are sometimes caveats or differences in the contracts. The GM plan you mention states there is a waiting period. The MOPAR plan is a separate contract from what's sold for vehicles under 4 years/48 months from original in-service and is priced differently. Some plans for out-of-warranty require inspections, sometimes at the cost of the owner in addition to the cost of the contract. The cost for plans on older vehicles can bring pause compared to the plans for in-warranty vehicles.

My personal opinion is that the best extended service contracts from both a cost and coverage perspective are those offered during the in-warranty period and are "exclusionary", meaning they cover everything other than a few specific exclusions.