This picture is real - not doctored in any way - and was taken by a Transportation Supervisor for a company that delivers building materials for a lumber company.  When he saw it in the parking lot of IHOP, he went to buy a camera to take pictures.

 

The car is still running, as can be witnessed by the exhaust.  The driver finally came back after the police were called, and was found crouched behind the rear of the car, attempting to cut the twine around the load!  Luckily, the police stopped him and had the load removed .

The materials were loaded at Home Depot.  Their store manager said they made the customer sign a waiver.  While the plywood and 2X4’s are fairly obvious, what you can’t see is the back seat, which contains - are you ready for this? - 10 bags of concrete @ 80 lbs. each.  They estimated the load weight at 3000 lbs.  Both back tires exploded, the wheels bent and the rear shocks were driven through the floorboard.

I will admit, every time that I am offered an extended warranty, I always wonder if I should buy it.

Well, it is only for a fleeting second that I wonder.

I do not ever recall having purchased an extended warranty for anything except for the one time that I returned my second water heater for my home within less than two years The warranty contract promised to pay for the labor to replace the water heater (should it go out again).

On the subject of extended warranties for your car, I have yet to find one that is as good as we hope for it to be.

Most warranty companies provide coverage for things that usually don’t break and provide no coverage for the things that do break. Or if they have coverage, there are exclusions and exceptions that allow the warranty company to deny coverage.

This past week we had a client’s vehicle in that had died while driving.

No big deal (so we thought), we sent a tow truck and got it in the shop. Our technician diagnosed the car and the client was called. Our client let us know that he had an extended warranty and asked if we would call them for him.

The warranty company asked us to get the repair and maintenance history.  They said that they should cover the repair as long as the timing belt did not break, causing the internal engine damage. They sent out an inspector who agreed that the timing belt was intact and wondered why he had been called out to look at the vehicle, especially since it was here at The Auto Shop. The warranty company knew us and our reputation. Usually inspectors don’t get sent here.

The warranty company stated the next day: that since there was no proof that the timing belt had been replaced at the manufacturers recommended interval of 80,000 miles and the vehicle now has 87,000 miles on the odometer, that the vehicle was not maintained according to the manufacturers recommendations. They had no responsibility for these repairs.

They denied the claim. And they denied it because of a lack of paperwork.

Please bring your car or truck in for an inspection along with your warranty contract so that we can make sure that this does not happen to you.

Thanks,

Jerry

Yes, that’s right and yes, you may have heard it before. I’m old enough to remember hearing it on a commercial for car maintenance many years ago. For some reason a lot of people are forgetting about it or maybe the younger kids have just never heard the saying or don’t really understand what it means.

Today’s average car payment is over $600.00 per month and the average length of payments is 78 months (that’s 6 ½ years!). At the same time, the warranty runs out at 3 years or 36,000 miles. This means that you run out of warranty before you run out of payments. However, I think that most people want their car to last longer than the payments, and you can as long as you maintain your vehicles properly.

That’s important because, sometimes if you take your car into several different shops for maintenance you might get the idea that they are all trying to sell you stuff that you don’t need or even worse, stuff that you have already bought. It may be that they are only looking at the mileage recommended services and not actually going over your car.

Again, one of the advantages of being a “Regular” is that the shop knows your car and everything that they have done to keep it running for you. Some of the best news is there is actually huge savings to be gained by simply doing what it is considered regular maintenance to your car.