How to Decide Which Car Warranty is the Best for You?

By law, a statutory warranty of 12-month/20,000km is applicable to all new vehicles sold in Australia; however, no carmaker or importer would dare provide such insufficient consumer protection today. Today 3 years has become a typical warranty period for the conventional passenger cars, with a distance limit of 100,000km. Some companies have now chosen to provide optional extended warranties or just no limit on distance driven during the set warranty period. Check, for example, VW extended warranty is it worth it from Warranty and Insurance.

What does Your Car Warranty Cover?

Your manufacturer’s warranty is designed to protect you against loss occurring due to parts that fail within an unreasonable time period or faults in car assembly. The manufacturer agrees to repair or replace the defective parts free of charge to the car owner and also offers warranty on the replaced part, provided the car owner meets the conditions mentioned in the warranty contract.

Bulbs, batteries, tyres and accessories provided with the car are usually subject to warranty of shorter duration. They are often covered only against manufacturing faults.

What Should You Do?

• Fulfilling your warranty conditions should not be too difficult; but you should make sure that you carefully read and understand them. If there is anything you have not understood, you should speak to one of the advisors at the dealership service before finalising your decision on which car to buy and signing the contract.
• Get your new car serviced at regular intervals from someone qualified to perform the service and using replacement parts and lubricants that will meet the specifications of the automaker. Car owners are not compelled by this to get their vehicles serviced by a franchised dealer; however, the job should be done by a workshop qualified to do it.
• An independent workshop versus a franchised dealer is a bit difficult area. According to the law, you can take the service of any ‘qualified’ workshop and be covered still. However, in practice, if you fail to take the service of the franchise dealer, that can cause you problems if a breakdown occurs.
• If you choose to service your new vehicle outside the regular franchised dealer network and the carmaker attributes the breakdown to something done or not done by a private workshop, the automaker may not honour their warranty. You should also take this into consideration while finalising your decision particularly with new vehicles from prestigious brands.
• If a new noise, leakage or any problem is developed in your new car, you should at once contact the dealer to conduct an inspection. If you pay no heed to a small problem and if it becomes a major problem later, you may not get the benefit of the warranty, potentially exposing you to a bigger repair bill.

Extending the Manufacturer’s Warranty

It depends on many factors if you can be benefitted by a longer period of warranty. If you choose to keep the car for minimum five years and the manufacturer’s warranty doesn’t go that far, an extension of warranty may be worth.

An extended warranty is usually offered by an insurance institution, and not the automaker. Though it’s not typically an insurance product, an extended warranty is still conditional on a Product Disclosure Statement which you should read and understand carefully before accepting the offer. Your obligations may differ from those that apply to a manufacturer’s warranty and may not even be transferable in case you plan to sell the car.

Which New Car Warranty Should be Chosen?

Deciding which new car warranty to choose may be difficult and depend a lot on individual needs and usage patterns of the buyer. You can check the type of Nissan new car warranty in Australia, for example. But generally speaking, a warranty that provides cover for 5 years with a kilometre restriction may be the most appropriate for someone who won’t drive near 30,000km in a year. On the other hand, for those who drive larger distances or change cars every 2 or 3 years, a 3-year/unlimited kilometre warranty may be the best.