Good evening eveyrone,
I’m owner of a FIAT Tipo SW 1.4 T-Jet 120 HP Lounge+Swiss package (List price 28000 CHF) bought in February 2018. Now the car is turning 3 years old and the official warranty will be soon finished. The local FIAT garage contacted me proposing a warranty extension with Quality One from UPSA/AGVS (Auto Swiss Professional Union). The offer is around 700 CHF for 1 year and 1800 for 3 years.
After discussion with the garage upon my direct request (they preferred to suggest the one above…no clue why), I got also offered the official warranty estension with FIAT (Mopar). The offer is around 620 CHF for 1 year and 1860 for 3 years.
In any case, if I go further I will go for a 3-year one, indipendently from the supplier.
My plan is in general (hoping Covid will not affect once more our travel capabilities in 2021) is to keep the car till 150K km or 6-7 years. Purchasing the 3-year one, I would basically cover myself till the point in time in which I will sell the car.
I have some questions for the folk:
1-is there anyone who extended his car warranty in CH (with FIAT or any brand)? If yes, how was the experience? Would you re-do again?
2-Average price for a small service (oil+filters+levels+general check+internal and external cleaning) is around 400 CHF and a big service (small service+spark plugs+updated of the sw and navi+other missing filters) is around 700 CHF. With FIAT I need to do every 15K km (or 1 year max) alternatively a small and a big one. Said so, what do you think about the price (1800-1860 CHF for 3 years)?
3-Would you go with the official FIAT or the Quality One? FIAT one is valid in all Europe without customer pre-payment; Quality One is also valid in all Europe, but outside CH the customer should anticipate the money and (eventually) get it back afterwards. Other things seem, to be basically the same (please correct me if I am wrong). The garage proposed insistently the Quality One saying that normally is better (Why?! How?!); which is your opinion?
4-Do you think that, when resold before the end of the additional 3 years, the car would be valued more because of this extension in the Swiss car market?
Are the service costs actually included in those warranty packages? If I were you I would re-read the fine print and see what’s included.
1: I was offered an extended warranty from Quality One for about 1000 CHF and I laughed it off. The Q1 warranty extension would have covered some failures (none of the electronics was included) but not the service.
2: The frugal alternative would be to check how much the oil service really costs (400 CHF is daylight robbery) and then have it done as needed at an independent garage.
3: Your motor vehicle insurance may already contain roadside assistance or you can get it. No need to couple it with the warranty.
4: Your car will not be worth more after 3 years regardless of which option you choose.
P.S. According to your estimates you will drive between 21’000-24’000 km per year. You can use that to estimate the total cost of ownership. You can also get an estimation for the current value of the car and consider how big a % the warranty extension would be of that.
Given the age of your car, they (FIAT) probably don’t expect much trouble. They would not offer such services if their chances of losing money were higher than average.
I guess that wearing parts (tires, brake pads and such) aren’t included, are they?
VW offers a similar package (or used to offer it to me, two/three years ago), 1’000 CHF If I recall correctly. Upon reading the conditions (“Kleingedrucktes”) carefully, I choose to not use the warranty extension. If I remember correctly, they waived almost all the damages you’d expect for a 3-5 year old car (like little things here and there, electrical things, noises, …). Mostly the warranty covered like relay bad (mechanical) failures on the engine, transmission etc. - things that (in my opinion) are rate (but expensive, yes) on a 3-5 year old car…
Fun note: A year or so after the regular warranty ran out, strange noises from the engine appeared (that I guess, would not be covered under the warranty extension). After a few attempts to fix them, they had to change the timing belt (1’700 CHF!) and offered a 50% goodwill - so I paid less what the warranty extension would have cost (that maybe would not have covered the damage!)
Nope. Used car market in Switzerland is a buyer’s market. You’ll be lucky if even manage to sell yourself at dealers’ asking prices for a very basic trim of your car no bells no whistles no warranties.
Truth is you already wasted a ton of money by buying new. This was an emotional purchase, not rational. Second hand market is amazing in Switzerland (for a buyer!), lots of choices, lots of well maintained low mileage high trim cars out there, relatively little fraud…
In general I’d say it’s worth mostly only insuring catastrophic losses, and self-insuring all minor things. Insuring (and that’s what extended warranty is, an insurance with its own restricted T&Cs that don’t even cover half the things that can go wrong) a frigging used car worth a few thousand at most is not one of these potentially catastrophic cases. It breaks down it’s not gonna bankrupt you.
No, they are not.
I count normally around 1000 CHF/year for the conventional services, assuming I’m doing around 25-30K km/year
The one I was quoted is covering all electronics
I know…in Italy is ranging between 150 and 200 EUR. I checked here in normal garage and they said to expect around 10-20% less. I got the feedback from a fired saying that here in CH is very key to have all services done in an offiial garage to be able to sell the car at decent price. Is that true?
Right. I cost me 45 CHF/year with my currect auto insurance
It makes sense. So according to you it will be not a good initiative, if I well understand. That’s correct?
I guess too. It is like an insurance for them, so i guess that to be profitable (and I’m pretty sure it is…) in the long tun cost should be less than income (for them). It is also true that if somethying happen, here in CH it is easy to get a bill of 2000 CHF. That’s what worries me the most.
About parts included, the extended warranty would be no more no less than the original one. So, all liquid, all consumable parts, all planned maintenance and so on arenot included.
It basically includes all mechanical and electronics parts that are not mentioned above (or at least this is what they told me)…
You are right. In small letter is always the tricky part. Normally they said (I will attach later in the forum) that all elelctronics and mechanical parts that are not consumable, liquid or normally planned pieces are not covered…
Here you got my point. A single event can kill all your business case here in CH. At least here in the berner region, mechanics are charging between 130 to 150 CHF/hour, so it is defintely very easy to get an “interesting” invoice after a day of work on your car
For istance, for what I know it is very common with turbo engines that the turbo get broken. And only that can easily make you a bill of 2-3K CHF… It happened to some friends on VW and FIAT and there were not very happy after the invoice
Definitely a good point. Do you have a reference on how much could cost a service in a non-official garage? I have heard that they might be 10% (20% at most) cheaper than the official one. Is the car value affected in this case in the medium-long term (5-6 years old car)?
I bought 1 year old for a bit less than 2/3 of the list price. I definitely agree with you that the second hand market is very good here. I do not have much experience to say that there are no fraud, but for my specific it seems to be the case as well.
According to your experience, then a 5-6 years old car has no market here? Is it just going to get exported somewhere in east europe?
I can’t remember how much my last oil change was but it certainly wasn’t 400 Fr. I use an indy garage and I’m pretty sure they charge less than 300 for an oil change (depends how many litres are needed). I would say that in general the one I use is more than 20% cheaper than the official one. They also only do what’s necessary and tell me if something is not worth the effort.
It’s one of the easy jobs that doesn’t take a lot of effort but the markup on the oil is huge. I know BMW charges about 30 Fr. per liter.
I can only speak for myself (I’m not Swiss tho) and my friends but it’s exaggerared. I only buy used cars and as long as there’s evidence of service it’s good. I’ve only used the brand’s own service until the warranty or service contract has run out. After that: an indy near my work.
Most of the routine services are not complicated at all. Think about it: oil, filters, spark plugs, brake fluid, brake pads. They are all very simple jobs. Besides the official garages can also do a bad job…
I had a Volvo car and the non-official garage was at least 50% cheaper. I didn’t plan to sell the car with max value as it was already old and had a lot of km. My next car was a Skoda (2nd hand, 40k km) and i had to go to AMAG for 2 services as the car had still warranty. I was so happy when this time was over and i could go again to my non-official garage. I sold this one privately and I didn’t experience any value drop according to non-official service. Now I have a new dacia and I must say that the official renault garage has reasonable prices. But again, as soon as the warranty is over, i will head with that car too to my non-official garage
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