My car is coming up to the end of its factory warranty so I began shopping for an extended warranty. This was an unexpectedly difficult shopping experience, a real blast from the past, like buying a used car 30 years ago must have been, with no internet, no price transparency, and dealers who make it look like they are doing you a personal favor by quoting a price etc...
In the end I am happy with what I got, thanks in no small part to help from a couple of forum members here, so I thought I write this up so maybe some folks have it easier next time!
Do I need an extended warranty?
Often discussed, it's a personal decision. Warranties are priced to be more expensive than the expected repair costs, hence anyone buying them should expect to make a loss in that regard. What you are really buying is relative peace of mind, because someone else is assuming the risk. In my case I thought I might treat the car differently once it is off factory warranty, which is a bad idea, because once you start pussy-footing your M3 it makes not much sense as a car anymore. Also, selling a car with a warranty to a private party is a big plus, or you can get a pro-rated refund if you trade it in. So I knew I wanted a warranty.
Should I get the BMW warranty?
The most expensive option and probably the only one that reliably covers repairs at an actual BMW dealer. Did I mention it is expensive? The Gold level covers most of the relevant stuff (just not Navigation), but the dealer price for an extra 3 years (their maximum term) plus 70K miles in total (including your current mileage) is $5450; if you want 100k miles in total it is $6600. (This warranty is the only one I found that is marketed with total miles, all the other are additional miles). The deductible is low, just $50.
One advantage of this plan is that the prices are easily available from any dealer. A forum sponsor from Steve Thomas BMW advertises that they give a discount and I found that to be true, after getting through to their finance manager they offered 10% for forum members.
For me the price was too high, I was looking for something like $1K per year. I also did not like the restriction to a 3 year maximum. So I passed on this one.
OK, you are going 3rd party, which one is best?
If you look down at your feet and see combat boots then the answer is pretty clear: get an USAA warranty. For those like me who have no contact to the military you need keep on looking. My impression was that Fidelity and Easycare
have the best reputation. Whatever you get, try to buy `exclusionary' policies, which cover everything that they don't explicitly exclude. Fidelity platinum and Easycare totalcare do that. An indy shop in the neighborhood also recommended
Fidelity platinum, so I thought I would get quotes for both and buy the better option, piece of cake right?
Well, I phoned up easy care and online they don't cover the M3, bummer. However, the voice on the phone said I could still get Easycare coverage for my M3 at a dealer (she offered to find a non-BMW dealer in my area who could do this); this did not make sense to me, but I left it at that.
Fidelity has no online presence at all, just a simple web page with the helpful suggestion to phone them up to find a participating dealer. I did and they could not find anyone in New York City. Really?
In fact she asked me for the nearest larger city and I could not really think of an answer. She could not search by zip code vicinity or any other of that 21st century stuff.
At this point I looked at other options, and the only true online company I found was Assurant. They had a straightforward web page and competitive quotes for policies up to 3 years (something like $3500 all in for 3 years), but very steep price increases for 4 years or more. So no good.
Now I reached out to a few forum members who posted that they bought fidelity or easy care and contacted their vendors. Some had stopped selling Fidelity, so this was hit and miss. I finally managed to get a quote from an Audi dealer (!), where the Fidelity product is used for underwriting their Audi Pure Protection plan.
This is where I learnt two important lessons: the deductible plays a huge role in your price, and the mileage of your car matters as well. For example, my car had less than 35 K miles and for that a 6 year plan with 60K additional miles and $100 deductible was quoted at $4973 and with a $250 deductible it was $3809 (plus tax)! That's a huge difference and you have to have something like 7 repairs to recoup it, so I decided the higher deductible is worth it.
Also, prices apparently jump at round mileage numbers such as 35K, 40K etc. so if you are getting close to that you might want to buy now, even if your factory plan lasts a bit longer (mine runs out at the end of next month).
You got a quote for a decent plan, now you negotiate like Batman, right?
Well, yes and no. The total lack of transparency makes bargaining very hard, because you have no idea what the MSRP is. When I asked for 10% discount as a bargaining start the dealer did not budge and claimed that his quote was already $2500 less than the MSRP retail price; that is of course bogus but there you are.
Another dealer quoted more than $6K for the same plan, it's completely insane.
At this time I got one more lead to a finance manager at a BMW dealership in Virginia (it matters little, apparently, in which state you buy the plan). He gave me a whole list of very good prices for all the plans he was selling and simply said he would add $100 as profit to any plan I pick. I can't know how much profit is already built in, but I knew enough at this stage to recognize good prices. So I bought a 6 year 60K additional miles, 250 deductible Fidelity platinum policy from him with a total price (incl tax) of just under $3900. The whole transaction was by email and eventually a quick phone call plus fedex-ing the documents back and forth. All done in 24 h, but it took me several weeks to get to that point. Very happy with the outcome.
So, if you are interested to buy a Fidelity plan here is a definite suggestion for you: contact Joshua Alford at BMW Richmond, VA. I asked him whether I could post his details and he was fine with that, so go for it.
JAlford@crownauto.com
Happy motoring until 2021 and stay safe!
