Reputable warranty company?

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Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!

Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.

OP should extrapolate your C300's repair costs to E550's repair costs! Is factor of 2 reasonable?
 
Originally Posted By: Astro14
USAA (if he's a member) has an excellent warranty. Carried one for the first two years of S600 ownership. Great service.

Doubt they'll take him to 150,000 though...that's a long, long time...



True ... I looked it up and USAA only offers plans up to 48 months or 48,000 miles (from purchase date) and the comprehensive package is $5278 ... ouch.
 
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Ugh it was an auction car, I hope he does well with it.

Their is a massive difference in used Mercedes quality from dealers, to third party dealers, to auctions.
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!

Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.

OP should extrapolate your C300's repair costs to E550's repair costs! Is factor of 2 reasonable?


Not really. C class was known to have more problems. It all depends on the year. Early W211 models (2003-2009) had lots of problems, but by 2007 or so most of them had been fixed, probably 2009 was the best year. 2010 was a new model, you know what they say about new models. So far nothing really major stands out, mostly minor stuff.

I was at the dealership not too long ago and heard a service advisor tell someone that their brake job would be $900. That's dealership prices, you can get good brake pads like Akebono for around $100 for both front and rear using discount codes at Advance Auto. Brake rotors are more expensive at around $100 or so each instead of $25-$50 on some other brands, but you could actually just reuse the brake rotor and turn them if needed. I think even some regular dealership will quote $900 brake jobs.
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!

Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.

OP should extrapolate your C300's repair costs to E550's repair costs! Is factor of 2 reasonable?

Parts and labor are about the same between E and C class, may be 10-20% more. If you go up to AMG then parts are more expensive and labor may be up a little because of tight space under the hood.

I was lucky with my 2000 E430, some warranty repairs and not many failing parts after warranty. My cost of repairs was less than $5k the last 11 years, maintenance and wear and tear items are different story.

The E430 eats front rotors and tires like hot cake. Front rotors were replaced every 40-50k miles and front pads every 20-25k miles, tires didn't lasted more than 20-25k miles even with 5-6k rotation.
 
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Ugh it was an auction car, I hope he does well with it.

Their is a massive difference in used Mercedes quality from dealers, to third party dealers, to auctions.


Cant comment on the Mercedes part (only have experience with one, and it wasnt good) but I wouldnt let the stigma of an auction scare you off a car. I was in the wholesale/auction side of the business for about five years in the '90s and rolled over 8000 cars through auctions, most of them were perfectly fine cars. Yes, the turds almost always went just to get rid of them, but most of the cars were perfectly fine. We just used the auction as a quick way to churn the inventory when sales were slow. You have the same car sitting in the same spot for more than a few weeks and they get toxic. If you were to check the used inventory of a typical dealer, you'd find a good number of the cars have been through an auction as least once.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!

Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.



Will she buy another MB?
 
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!

Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.



Will she buy another MB?

Possibly. Other than the issues (which the ext warranty covered), she liked the car. She was looking at the new C-class that just came out within the last year, but in the end decided she wanted an SUV, and she happened to like the Audi one better. Am I expecting Audi to be more reliable than MB? No. Her purchasing decisions aren't really based on reliability.
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
$300 per month for repairs? That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!


While this is true, think of this:

1 - Let's say that something breaks 2 months in - In that time, putting away $300 a month will have left the savings at $600. This may, or may not, cover the repair. It would certainly cover lots of small ones, and could even be used to cover the cost of a blown tire, failed wiper blade, paint ding, etc..

2 - Let's say that something breaks a year in - In that time, putting away $300 a month will have accumulated to $3600. This would cover a more serious repair, like a tranny failure.

3 - 2 years in - $7200 in the account. Your engine just failed catastrophically and this covers it, and probably leaves you with something in the account.

4 - You're 3 years in, and you're tired of the car but you have $10,800 in your account now. You use $10000 of that as down payment on a newer car, and keep $800 in the account to start you on your new 'warranty'
 
Originally Posted By: SirTanon
4 - You're 3 years in, and you're tired of the car but you have $10,800 in your account now.

If nothing broke, which is somewhat of an unlikely scenario, but you can hope.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
That is over $10,000 in less than three year of owning the vehicle!

Wife's C300 would have racked up significantly more than $10K in repairs over the 4 years that she owned it, had it not been for an extended warranty.



Will she buy another MB?

Possibly. Other than the issues (which the ext warranty covered), she liked the car. She was looking at the new C-class that just came out within the last year, but in the end decided she wanted an SUV, and she happened to like the Audi one better. Am I expecting Audi to be more reliable than MB? No. Her purchasing decisions aren't really based on reliability.
smile.gif





The new C class for 2015 has a lot of options that previously were only available on the E class, I guess with the CLA, it went up market a little bit. They sorta look like an S class, similar taillights. I think Audi is probably worse than Mercedes or BMW, at least that's been their reputation, but everyone has been getting better lately.

I don't think it's possible to drive a car for 3 years without doing some maintenance to it. For instance standard stuff would be brake fluid flush every 2 years, transmission fluid change every 40k, then there's also the differential and transfer case. Eventually things like ball joints, tie rods, struts, brakes, will also go, but those are just normal maintenance items, but they won't be cheap if you do them at the dealer. Some things like struts might be covered under an extended warranty.

As for putting money away every month, I suppose that makes sense for the 2/3's of the people that live paycheck to paycheck, the other 1/3 just have the money if anything happens.
 
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
I don't think it's possible to drive a car for 3 years without doing some maintenance to it. For instance standard stuff would be brake fluid flush every 2 years, transmission fluid change every 40k, then there's also the differential and transfer case.

For the record, the figure I quoted was strictly for repairs and not maintenance. The car needed a new transmission, new nav/entertainment unit, new rear SAM (this was actually misdiagnosed but still replaced), oil level sensor, right rearview mirror, turn signal stalk, transfer case leak, and a few other smaller things that I'm now forgetting.

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I think Audi is probably worse than Mercedes or BMW, at least that's been their reputation, but everyone has been getting better lately.

If you trust JD Power, Audi is now ahead of BMW when it comes to new car reliability. MB is ahead of both of them. But the problem is not when they're new (and still under warranty). It's when they age.
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
For the record, the figure I quoted was strictly for repairs and not maintenance. The car needed a new transmission, new nav/entertainment unit, new rear SAM (this was actually misdiagnosed but still replaced), oil level sensor, right rearview mirror, turn signal stalk, transfer case leak, and a few other smaller things that I'm now forgetting.


Some of that also applied to the E class, but the C class had a lot of those problems. For the transmission, sometimes it was just the conductor plate or the connector or maybe a solenoid, but maybe it was more profitable for the dealer to replace the entire transmission. For the nav, you could send the gateway out and get it rebuilt, cheaper than a new one, also with their fiber optic loop, if something in the loop like the CD player, mobile phone interface or teleaid went bad, the whole system stopped working. There's a bypass loop you could use to get around it. On the earlier E class, the gasket for the mirror went bad and you had to buy a whole new mirror to replace it til someone just manufactured their own gasket and started selling them on ebay. A facelift refresh fixed that problem. But yeah, I could see how all those things could have added up to over 10k at the dealer, maybe 1/3 to 1/2 at an indy.

I also considered a BMW at one point, but their electrical problems were getting really bad reviews so I could see how Audi could leapfrog BMW.
 
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
For the transmission, sometimes it was just the conductor plate or the connector or maybe a solenoid, but maybe it was more profitable for the dealer to replace the entire transmission.

It was actually the transfer case, as her's was the 4matic. The transfer case on these is known to go bad. It starts making a whining noise when the bearings get shot. Because the transfer case is integrated with the transmission, you have to replace the entire transmission. This alone would have cost $8K at the dealer. Could you get a used one from indy for less? Sure. But what kind of warranty would they give you on it?
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
For the transmission, sometimes it was just the conductor plate or the connector or maybe a solenoid, but maybe it was more profitable for the dealer to replace the entire transmission.

It was actually the transfer case, as her's was the 4matic. The transfer case on these is known to go bad. It starts making a whining noise when the bearings get shot. Because the transfer case is integrated with the transmission, you have to replace the entire transmission. This alone would have cost $8K at the dealer. Could you get a used one from indy for less? Sure. But what kind of warranty would they give you on it?


On the E class there were also some bad transfer cases in the early years of the W211, but MB ended up replacing several of them under an extended warranty/recall. As the car ages, the parts get cheaper, used E350 engines are still around 4k but were a lot more than that new.
 
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Brake rotors are more expensive at around $100 or so each instead of $25-$50 on some other brands, but you could actually just reuse the brake rotor and turn them if needed. I think even some regular dealership will quote $900 brake jobs.

Even indy garages refuse to turn MB rotors. The brand new rotor is only 2mm thicker than minimum, at least for my E430 front rotor. After 20-25k miles it barely above minimum, if it is turned then it will be below minimum. That why I just slap on front pads and replace both pads and rotors the next time.
 
I was just speculating it was an auction car. I guess I'm assuming that's where it came from, since it didn't end up at a real dealership. I think it's a foolish purchase as I don't believe he looked at any of the cars history...... He doesn't do any of his own maintenance, and would have no clue if the repair shop was ripping him off or not.
 
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Originally Posted By: montero1
I was just speculating it was an auction car. I guess I'm assuming that's where it came from, since it didn't end up at a real dealership. I think it's a foolish purchase as I don't believe he looked at any of the cars history...... He doesn't do any of his own maintenance, and would have no clue if the repair shop was ripping him off or not.


Have him look at a Fidelity Platinum warranty, gets pretty good reviews and is somewhat popular. See what he says about the $300 oil changes at the dealer which is basically what Service A is.
 
Originally Posted By: montero1
Fidelity is the one that is 5k for 72,000 miles.


I think you can shop around for different prices from different dealers. Usually the guy you buy the car from has the highest price.
 
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