[MyMiniM3]

I just wanted some insight on what others have done leading up to there BMW's end of factory warranty...? I want to keep my 16 M235i but it FBO and worry that in the later miles things could go south and pricey to replace. I don't track the car at all and never used launch control once but do do the occasional idiot driving on the highway from time to time. All opinions welcome!

[XutvJet]

Waste of money, especially if you have mods. They'll likely deny any powertrain coverage due to those mods.

[Sportstick]

There is no one right answer for all. This depends, as with your various risk management products (homeowner, healthcare, etc.), on your personal level of comfort. All of these products are profitable to their sellers, but are also very helpful if/when you are among the minority who need coverage paid. In my case, I added 7/70, negotiated when new for a discounted price, knowing I'd have low mileage but plan to keep for many years. I don't plan on any engine tune mods, which would invalidate coverage on the highest potential price issues.

[Unicorn123]

Mini,

This subject is brought up on a regular basis in the forum; if you do a forum search on this subject, you will find a multitude of threads discussing this subject. As both Sportstick and XutvJet have illustrated, there are varying views on this matter and both comments are sound points of view.

As someone who finds working on my car "therapy", I tend towards not having the maintenance agreement in place and prefer to manage maintenance myself for the most part. Some items, like fluid flushes and changes, I rely on my local Indie shop, who treats me fairly and allows me to be part of the process; i.e. bringing parts / fluids if I can get a better deal and not sticking it to me on labor hours. They are also very good and I trust them. They treat my car as if it is their own; this means a lot to me. I am very very selective on who will work on my cars, so if you can find an honest and competent independent mechanic, you should save some significant money and likely develop a more personal relationship with your mechanic and car.

In part, I do this to save a few bucks, but more importantly, I also find the more I do on my cars, the better I know how they will perform and I have 30 years of stories on many (not all) mechanics who have done a half-ass job working on my cars, including dealers. As someone who grew up in a motorsports family, we put a premium on self sufficiency (we were the grass roots type) and creative engineering solutions to make our cars perform better.

If you choose to go the dealer route, you will get all OEM branded parts, BMW trained mechanics, a nice loaner car and a great waiting room with WIFI and a decent cup of coffee. All good stuff!

As Sportstick pointed out, there is no "right answer" here. The dealer, a good indie mechanic, or choosing to DIY are all good options. My suggestion is to determine which of these works best for you and your circumstances. If you need to find a good indie mechanic in your area, look up BMWCCA members in the region, they will be glad to assist. In SC, there is a strong BMW presence so I expect there are a lot of options depending on your location and proximity to Greenville.

Good luck with your decision and take care.

[Luftwaffe1O1]

As others have said its going to boil down to preference. I tossed this idea around in my head a bit, but in the end, i just decided to pay for the extended warranty as i got a pretty good deal from steve thomas bmw. Like to the point when i went to get my key read by a local dealer they tried to see if they can beat it, when i told them the price i got, their reaction was "that isnt the platinum warranty, they are selling you something else".

If nothing goes wrong in the next few years, then its essentially wasted hehe, but thats like any insurance. I paid for peace of mind. I have an older car already that i do maintain (2000 z3), so o figured you know what, i just dont want to deal with it. If it was my only car, or if i didnt have the nav etc, i might not have gotten it. Entirely up to you though.

But if you do decide to go for it, id say give steve thomas bmw a ring, they have hooked up a few people on the forum with really good pricing.

[wichitagreg]

Here is my take on extended service or warranty plans.

If I bought the vehicle new, I would not buy the extended plan then but would evaluate how much problems has cost me as I got closer to the end of the factory warranty. So far I have never purchased an extended plan on any vehicle I bought new. As an aside I have never owned a new bought vehicle more than 4 years.

On used vehicles that are quite expensive (two year old Harley for $35,000 or two year old BMW for $33,000) and are also very expensive to repair I buy the two year plan. I paid somewhere around $1200 for the Harley plan and never used it, and around $3100 for the BMW plan and have not used it yet, still have three months left on the factory plan.

so with me it is a lack of knowledge of the history of the vehicle and research on the Internet about other folks problems. My BMW is not and will not be modified, the Harley has no internal engine mods. So it is insurance to me, just like carrying five times the required liability insurance.

[EM240]

Originally Posted by Luftwaffe1O1

As others have said its going to boil down to preference. I tossed this idea around in my head a bit, but in the end, i just decided to pay for the extended warranty as i got a pretty good deal from steve thomas bmw. Like to the point when i went to get my key read by a local dealer they tried to see if they can beat it, when i told them the price i got, their reaction was "that isnt the platinum warranty, they are selling you something else".

If nothing goes wrong in the next few years, then its essentially wasted hehe, but thats like any insurance. I paid for peace of mind. I have an older car already that i do maintain (2000 z3), so o figured you know what, i just dont want to deal with it. If it was my only car, or if i didnt have the nav etc, i might not have gotten it. Entirely up to you though.

But if you do decide to go for it, id say give steve thomas bmw a ring, they have hooked up a few people on the forum with really good pricing.

Do you messaging me how much you paid or around how much? My factory runs out in February 2021 so I’m ahead of the game but would like to start weighing my options

[amw896]

You are modded already so you have no warranty to extend.

[MyMiniM3]

Originally Posted by amw896

You are modded already so you have no warranty to extend.

I mean I was planning to simply remove them if I chose to go that route...

[amw896]

Originally Posted by MyMiniM3

I mean I was planning to simply remove them if I chose to go that route...

You could try but I'm almost certain if they dig well enough, they will see it was modded in the past and void anything of substance.

I took this risk as well. Went FBO and haven't been to the dealer in 3 years. Knowing any repairs are my responsibility. You could definitely get lucky but I just wouldn't rely on it.

[MyMiniM3]

Originally Posted by amw896

You could try but I'm almost certain if they dig well enough, they will see it was modded in the past and void anything of substance.

I took this risk as well. Went FBO and haven't been to the dealer in 3 years. Knowing any repairs are my responsibility. You could definitely get lucky but I just wouldn't rely on it.

You're outside of your factory warranty? Or still within it and not taking advantage of the free BMW service?

[amw896]

Originally Posted by MyMiniM3

You're outside of your factory warranty? Or still within it and not taking advantage of the free BMW service?

I think mine expires in a month, no idea lol. Yea, once I modded I never went back for anything. Paid an Indy for all work. Just routine maintenance and all mod installs.

[MyMiniM3]

Originally Posted by amw896

I think mine expires in a month, no idea lol. Yea, once I modded I never went back for anything. Paid an Indy for all work. Just routine maintenance and all mod installs.

Damn....I'm 5k miles away from losing that luxury and I'm dreading every minute of the suspense. I've had FBO for two years now and still take mine to be serviced at BMW but I imagine I will need to find that reputable local mechanic that everyone's preaching about.

[Maynard]

I believe that they would be able to identify the mods from the detailed data dump they can do, even if you take the parts off. And since you are bringing it in to them for service with the mods in place, it is just slightly possible that they will have noticed the mods themselves. It would make me really wonder if I'd ever be able to collect on a big claim. And aside from that, once you mod up like that it is kind of unfair to expect the dealership to take the hit for accelerated wear.

[grocerylist]

I just got a 2016 cpo that has 2 years warranty left (1 full and 1 drivetrain).

The extended warranty was pushed extremely hard by the finance guy, so much that I was very close to walking out. He kept telling me BMWs aren't reliable and the first time something breaks that it's going to cost me $5000. Told me brake jobs would be several hundred. I said I'd do brake jobs myself, then he said they didn't even offer a warranty for maintenance like that (so why bring that up?). He asked how much I drove and I told him not much maybe 5000/year and then he told me I'd need the warranty even more because if I drive that few miles then the car will certainly break down often. I told him maybe I shouldn't be buying a BMW and if that's the case then this would be the last BMW I buy. He was trying to sell me one of their shorter term policies, I think it was 3 additional years and 36k additional miles for around $4500. It didn't make a lot of sense to me to spend 20% of a cars value on a warranty may never use. He also tried to sell me a maintenance warranty which included oil changes and after him I've done my own oil changes for 20+ years he still was giving me hell for not buying his warranties. He was very scammy, felt like a Nigerian prince was trying to "save" me money by ripping me off. I wanted to let the dealership manager know I didn't appreciate this high pressure sales tactic (I did tell the used car sales manager and he told the finance guy no more warranty talk) but I'm sure that's what they pay him for and he probably makes a good percentage of his money via commission. Regardless it gave me a terrible impression of BMW dealerships. Once my regular warranty and cpo warranty expire, I'll never be back.

In 20+ years I've never purchased an extended warranty for any car or anything and I've never been burned. The way I figure is that the $4500 I didn't waste, can be used for any possible future surprise issues. I've got plenty money for repairs beyond that but at some point I'd cut my losses.

[MyMiniM3]

Originally Posted by grocerylist

I just got a 2016 cpo that has 2 years warranty left (1 full and 1 drivetrain).

The extended warranty was pushed extremely hard by the finance guy, so much that I was very close to walking out. He kept telling me BMWs aren't reliable and the first time something breaks that it's going to cost me $5000. Told me brake jobs would be several hundred. I said I'd do brake jobs myself, then he said they didn't even offer a warranty for maintenance like that (so why bring that up?). He asked how much I drove and I told him not much maybe 5000/year and then he told me I'd need the warranty even more because if I drive that few miles then the car will certainly break down often. I told him maybe I shouldn't be buying a BMW and if that's the case then this would be the last BMW I buy. He was trying to sell me one of their shorter term policies, I think it was 3 additional years and 36k additional miles for around $4500. It didn't make a lot of sense to me to spend 20% of a cars value on a warranty may never use. He also tried to sell me a maintenance warranty which included oil changes and after him I've done my own oil changes for 20+ years he still was giving me hell for not buying his warranties. He was very scammy, felt like a Nigerian prince was trying to "save" me money by ripping me off. I wanted to let the dealership manager know I didn't appreciate this high pressure sales tactic (I did tell the used car sales manager and he told the finance guy no more warranty talk) but I'm sure that's what they pay him for and he probably makes a good percentage of his money via commission. Regardless it gave me a terrible impression of BMW dealerships. Once my regular warranty and cpo warranty expire, I'll never be back.

In 20+ years I've never purchased an extended warranty for any car or anything and I've never been burned. The way I figure is that the $4500 I didn't waste, can be used for any possible future surprise issues. I've got plenty money for repairs beyond that but at some point I'd cut my losses.

Kind of worry free mentality I'm lookin for

[Rolf14]

My 30K CPO 2014 228 came with the extended warranty. At 60K I have never had to use it, which could be viewed as the result of having a reliable car. But the peace of mid is there.

[MyMiniM3]

Should I be looking into preventative maintenance at this point (45k) miles? It is FBO but never tracked, just DD.

[rainfall]

I didn't. I'm basically saving the money I didn't use in case I do need it. In my opinion, warranty serves 2 people: the unlucky and careless drivers. Both cases are reasonably baked in the insurance price (plus insurance markup).

I'm as lucky as everyone else, but I think I'm more careful of a driver than the average - so I decided to just pocket the warranty money and bet against my odds of having trouble w/ my car.

[sethwas]

I did on my '16 since I bought it used from the dealer and it wasn't CPO. But the cost of the warranty/maintenance extension was less than a third of the CPO cost so it's cheap insurance. Figure I take the car in once or twice for service and it pays for itself.

Seth

[howzz1854]

my purchase happened to be a CPO, so it came with one additional year of warranty unlimited miles. But i wanted something that had at least some duration of factory warranty left at the first place. so either with or without additional CPO warranty, i was ok, as long as there's something.

i think it depends on if you're ok with this car breaking down on your or not. since this is my daily driver, i already have a high maintenance weekend car that keeps me busy. so i told myself that for my daily driver (228i), i want it to be as trouble free as possible.

[EstorilM240]

Originally Posted by grocerylist

I just got a 2016 cpo that has 2 years warranty left (1 full and 1 drivetrain).

The extended warranty was pushed extremely hard by the finance guy, so much that I was very close to walking out. He kept telling me BMWs aren't reliable and the first time something breaks that it's going to cost me $5000. Told me brake jobs would be several hundred. I said I'd do brake jobs myself, then he said they didn't even offer a warranty for maintenance like that (so why bring that up?). He asked how much I drove and I told him not much maybe 5000/year and then he told me I'd need the warranty even more because if I drive that few miles then the car will certainly break down often. I told him maybe I shouldn't be buying a BMW and if that's the case then this would be the last BMW I buy. He was trying to sell me one of their shorter term policies, I think it was 3 additional years and 36k additional miles for around $4500. It didn't make a lot of sense to me to spend 20% of a cars value on a warranty may never use. He also tried to sell me a maintenance warranty which included oil changes and after him I've done my own oil changes for 20+ years he still was giving me hell for not buying his warranties. He was very scammy, felt like a Nigerian prince was trying to "save" me money by ripping me off. I wanted to let the dealership manager know I didn't appreciate this high pressure sales tactic (I did tell the used car sales manager and he told the finance guy no more warranty talk) but I'm sure that's what they pay him for and he probably makes a good percentage of his money via commission. Regardless it gave me a terrible impression of BMW dealerships. Once my regular warranty and cpo warranty expire, I'll never be back.

In 20+ years I've never purchased an extended warranty for any car or anything and I've never been burned. The way I figure is that the $4500 I didn't waste, can be used for any possible future surprise issues. I've got plenty money for repairs beyond that but at some point I'd cut my losses.

+1. The insane up-sells puts me off so hard.

I've also lost a lot of faith in what BMW will cover under their products, after a particularly grueling maintenance plan upgrade failure.

The profit margins on these warranties are also super high, probably in the 30-50% range. That's a very poor bet. And the cost of a repair is hopefully something I can afford rather than a truly catastrophic item that it's worth buying insurance for. Profit margins remain high here due to lack of competition and the extreme ability of sales people to lie, mislead, and deceive.

Is it worth buying insurance that the insurance company makes 5-20% on, if your house burning down would devastate you? Yes. Is it worth buying insurance that the company makes 40% on, when the worst case is a $25K car (out of 4 year factory warranty) is gone? No.