tecktrek

Hello Fellow ES 300h owners,

We own a 2015 with 40K miles and are considering an extended warranty as we currently intend to keep the car for the next 4 years or more AND there is now so much technology on board. We've owned several hybrids (Prius) and are not overly concerned about the usual battery/drive issues, just the failure of other major components and Lexus's high repair costs. We've never bought vehicle warranties in the past but would consider a quality warranty at a value price that would cover us for 48/125K. Questions;
1. Have you bought a warranty for this car, why and would you do it again?
2. Was the warranty the Lexus factory offering or a 3rd party insurer?
3. Were you able to buy a warranty with a deductible to lower cost?
4. Did you shop around and did you find dealers discounting? (I've been told that Prius warranties could be had at deep discounts from volume dealers in other regions).
5. What did you pay for your warranty and what are the repair coverage, time and mileage details?

Thanks for any and all feedback.

Cheers,

Teck

lesz

Extended warranties are among the biggest profit generators that dealers or others who sell 3rd party extended warranties have. Typical markups on extended warranties run in the range of several hundred percent.

As someone who, at one time, was brokering car sales for a few years and who had the opportunity to sell extended warranties, I could not, in good conscience, advise my customers to buy them. If they insisted on buying them, I sold them an extended warranty at only a fraction of the advertised price, and I still made a healthy profit from the sale.

If you buy an extended warranty, there is a chance that you will, in covered repairs, get back more money than you spent to buy the extended warranty, but the chances of that happening are pretty slim, and that is especially true with very dependable cars like the ES.

My suggestion is that, instead of buying an extended warranty, you put the money that you would have spent on the extended warranty into a savings account designated for car repairs. If you do that for the next 5 cars that you buy, there may be one of those cars for which you would have been better off buying an extended warranty, but, in the long run over the period of ownership of the 5 cars, you will likely be thousands ahead by not buying the extended warranties for each.

Mike728

100% agree with lesz.

Even though I agree, I still purchase them, but not until I get their best price. That's usually half of what they initially say the cost is. It's just peace of mind for me. I would rather pay a set fee upfront than worry about what might happen down the road. In my 30+ years of purchasing extended warranties on new cars, I believe I only had to use them for two instances. Neither of which was major. Most issues I had came early on, while the factory warranty was still in effect.

If I put all the money I spent on warranties over the years, in the bank, I could probably buy a new car with it.

Maljunulo

I bit on an extended warranty once.

Once.

Maikerusan

Peace of mind to me is provided by more $$ in my bank account vs the dealer's bank account. I would never consider buying an extended warranty.

I don't get this worrying over future repair costs (that may never happen) and then paying someone up front a pile of cash and then saying that gives peace of mind.

TechNut

In my opinion, this really depends on what you are comfortable with. I know many of the repairs can be very expensive, but the odds favor the insurance companies or they wouldn't make a profit and they would quit selling the extended warranties. I don't think there is one right or wrong answer here, and unfortunately I can't answer your question as I don't have an extended warranty. I do recall seeing a thread about deals people got on their extended warranties so be sure to run a search.

jollick

+1 A Lexus extended warranty is fully refundable on a pro-rated basis. I had it on my 2010 HS250 since it was the 1st year of the model and I thought I was going to keep it for a long time. Three years later, when I traded it in on my 2013 ES300h, I got most of it refunded. Like any insurance, you hope you never need to use it and it can bring you peace of mind and we can all use a bit less stress in our lives. Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary.

Maikerusan

But what good is an extended warranty in the first 3 years of a Lexus? The standard warranty is 4 years. Only way it could have been used in 3 years is if you had exceeded the mileage conditions of the 4 year warranty.

jollick

You are correct! Most likely why I got most of it back.