Extended Warranty
 

I own a 2018 Countryman JCW All 4. I have been researching extended warranties for the car and compared the warranty sold by Mini and the one sold by Hendrick Autoguard Inc. I know some of the dealers offer the Hendrick program because it is considerably less expensive than the Mini program and some say it offers more. Has anyone had any experience with either of these programs?

Does anyone have an opinion on purchasing any extended warranty for this car? What has the reliability of the vehicle been thus far?

I generally keep a vehicle for no more than 6 years and my vehicles have very low mileage because it is only driven for 7-8 months of the year.

If I was going to purchase a contract I would buy MINI and work them hard on the price. It is negotiable and you will find some dealers willing to sell it for less.

HOWEVER, I would never buy one. If I felt that the car truly needed such a warranty I'd buy a different car. They make lots of money selling these because for the most part they hardly have to pay out. Every so often someone saves some $$$ and they post about it and scare the rest of us into buying one.

If you are truly concerned about warranty, lease the car for the length of the factory warranty and then get a new car. Did this for my wifes last MINI and she is happy to be getting a new car this coming year.

In the state of Florida the cost of the extended warranty programs are regulated so the cost is the same at all dealers. There is no negotiating.

I bought the extended warranty from Mini when I purchased my 2018 ALL4 S. I will be putting a decent amount of miles on it and plan to keep it a while so I like having the coverage if something major does happen.

Man I hate extended warranties and the sales pitch that comes with them. I just went through the sales process about a month ago when I took possession of my 2019 JCW. My general principle on the matter is that I decline any extended warranty offering (no matter whether it's a car, a fridge, or a hard drive from BestBuy). The amount I've saved over the years in extended warranties will more than pay for anything that actually needs to be repaired.

But it drives me crazy how the sales pitches go. First off the normal sales guy talks about how reliable these cars are, how few problems they have, how they've fixed all these problems that previous generations have. Then you get to the finance guy and he's talking up the extended warranties like you would be crazy to not get one because the car is going to have problems down the road and you're going to wish you had the warranty when your center computer console unit needs to be replaced ($7,000!). This is literally what he told me. On top of that, the guy I dealt with either didn't know what he was talking about or was intentionally misleading me.

He told me there were 3 prices for extended warranties: the lowest price if you buy it when you finance your vehicle, a higher price if you buy it before your original warranty expires, and then a much higher price if you buy it after original warranty is expired. Well, I knew from reading around that if I decline the extended warranty that 6 months before my factory warranty expires I'm going to start getting flooded with offers to extend and the price was going to be the same as buying up front. So my question to him was why would I finance my extended warranty for 4 years (paying interest on it) when I can just renew right before if at that point I think the car is going to have problems? He tried to use the price difference as the reason but I forced him to show me the price for renewing a warranty on a car currently almost out of warranty and sure enough it was the exact same price as he was offering me. He was clearly baffled by this (or a good actor). Sure the price of extended warranty might go up a bit over the coming years (as does everything) but there is no way that paying interest on it for 4 years before you can even start using it makes sense. I also think that by year 4 I'll have a feel for whether the car is going to be having lots of problems (or has had lots during the factory warranty) and if so then I'm probably not going to be keeping it anyways. Extended warranties are in my opinion a cash grab and nothing else. Sure they do pay off in certain situations, but on average it is better to decline.