Warranty Direct
Discussion
Today I have taken out a Warranty Direct warranty on my 458 Spider to start in June. The car turns 4 in June and has covered 19,000 miles. I've had it from new.
Warranty Direct have recently changed their website and the way they quote. They told me that analysing their last few years of claims led them to conclude that higher mileage cars are a significantly higher risk than lower mileage yet before the recent change it made less of a difference to the cost of their policies.
I was expecting them to treat my car as high mileage but in their eyes it's low mileage.
I've taken the following:
Their core warranty
Safety System Protection
Emission System protection
Multimedia System Protection
250 xs
Unlimited labour rate
So, basically the best policy they offer. They've dropped all the old 'luxury' descriptions and now just have the core policy and the 5 options I list above.
How much has it cost me? £1004.
You can pay over 10 months too if you want, no additional charge. They even quoted me just under £2600 for a 3 year warranty, which I could also pay over 10 months if I wanted.
I've been through their policy and I've been through the policies for the Ferrari warranties (I have factory on my speciale and power plus on my F12) and it seems to cover more than anything but factory warranty.
They seem to have a good reputation and were recommended to me on here. Hopefully I'll have no need to test that but if I do, I'll report back.
Just thought y'all might be interested in the changes they've made. Oh, they don't bother with an inspection any more either, it's all on an insurance style declaration now.
Warranty Direct have recently changed their website and the way they quote. They told me that analysing their last few years of claims led them to conclude that higher mileage cars are a significantly higher risk than lower mileage yet before the recent change it made less of a difference to the cost of their policies.
I was expecting them to treat my car as high mileage but in their eyes it's low mileage.
I've taken the following:
Their core warranty
Safety System Protection
Emission System protection
Multimedia System Protection
250 xs
Unlimited labour rate
So, basically the best policy they offer. They've dropped all the old 'luxury' descriptions and now just have the core policy and the 5 options I list above.
How much has it cost me? £1004.
You can pay over 10 months too if you want, no additional charge. They even quoted me just under £2600 for a 3 year warranty, which I could also pay over 10 months if I wanted.
I've been through their policy and I've been through the policies for the Ferrari warranties (I have factory on my speciale and power plus on my F12) and it seems to cover more than anything but factory warranty.
They seem to have a good reputation and were recommended to me on here. Hopefully I'll have no need to test that but if I do, I'll report back.
Just thought y'all might be interested in the changes they've made. Oh, they don't bother with an inspection any more either, it's all on an insurance style declaration now.
Edited by _Leg_ on Tuesday 1st May 22:22
MitchT said:
_Leg_ said:
Oh, they don't bother with an inspection any more either, it's all on an insurance style declaration now.
The cynic in me says that this is so they can wriggle out on a technicality if you need to claim, not something they could have done when the onus was on them to inspect the car and record the relevant facts. Hopefully I'm wrong.It seems that they rarely found issues on low mileage, well maintained cars so inspections were deemed unnecessary.
Any insurance is a risk I guess. Any contract is really. Contracts aren't guarantees, simply something to argue over if there is a dispute.
Only one way to find out. Hope I don't have to! I'm comfortable that WD are a good, honest company though and their policies seem good to me too. I'm going to add my F12 when the time comes too. Given Ferrari's top warranty, that is closest to this cover, is a good £4k plus I'm also putting 3k a year into a repairs pot per car in essence so I think it's a good balance.
Sheepshanks said:
BobTurner said:
"wear and tear" is covered?!
(I was told leaking dampers is an MOT fail)
Depends how much they're leaking.(I was told leaking dampers is an MOT fail)
You might be OK if it's an MOT but the biggest issue with these kinds of insurance warranties is that something has to cease to function - so the damper has to stop working as a damper. The big difference with WD is they cover it if the failure is due to wear and tear. However things aren't covered simply because they don't work quite as well as you'd like them to.
The other thing I'd mention, and maybe this has changed since I took my policy some years ago, but the OP mentioned a lot of optional cover items. It used to be standard practice to get a quote off the WD website and then a day or two later they'd call and throw everything at you if you'd sign up. I got all the optional covers included, the waiting period waived (although the car was coming off manufacturer warranty), no excess and no betterment. They also increased my annual mileage from 12K to 24K.
Edited by Sheepshanks on Friday 4th May 14:55
BlueIn2Red said:
The one part of this that surprises me is them saying that low mileage cars experience fewer issues. The opposite (within reason) is actually the case, and it would worry me a bit that they think different!
They're not talking about garage queens. They provide warranties across more day to day cars too, supercars will be a small proportion of that. When comparing their entire client base, which will include plenty of 70, 80, 90 thousand mile Fords, Vauxhalls etc, I can imagine their stats do show high mileage cars are more of a risk. They consider my 19,000 mile, 4 year old 458 Spider very low miles. It should be on 60,000 miles I would imagine* compared to more every day cars. But anyone involved in supercars would consider it high miles because in isolation as a group, supercar users don't use their cars as much as Barry* uses his Focus.
*I didn't ask what they considered standard annual mileage but 12000 or 15000 has been used for years by all and sundry
**Focus drivers aren't all called Barry
BlueIn2Red said:
Cool, that makes a lot more sense then. My 458 is six years old and has done 18000 miles, which is often bizarrely considered high mileage in the Ferrari world. I'm considering this warranty as a result, but will probably on balance continue to "self insure", because I fear that small print would always be found in the event of a significant claim.
Well done on the mileage. Good man!I've got the policy now. I know my way round contracts (from a commercial perspective, I am no lawyer) and in my opinion it's sound. I see no small print that says anything they didn't make me aware of nor that would allow them to wriggle out of a warranty claim that is for an item or event that is warranted so long as I have done what I've agreed to do in the contract.
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