My Warranty Direct experience after IMS failure
 

This will be a bit of a long thread, but I try to provide all my details here.

In the 2nd week of May I brought my car to the shop with a "funny noise" coming from the engine. I heard a rattling noise at around 3,000 RPM. A few days later I got the dreaded call from my mechanic, it's intermediate shaft failure. The noise was the timing chain which started to rattle as the intermediate shaft started to come off balance. My shop took off the oli filter and said it "looked like a gold mine in there". This was only 5,000 miles after the 45k mile service where the oil filter was still "clean".

I had bought the car in 2006 with 15k miles and 3 months left on the factory warranty. Before the factory warranty ran out I decided to purchase an extended warranty from Warrant Direct. I chose the "Major Breakdown (MBI)" option which cost me around $2,600 (no deductible, covers for either 7 years of when the car reaches 100k miles).

So far they had paid for: CV boot, signal stalk, and rear main seal.
The general tendency I witnessed: the more expensive it got, the more "difficult" WD would get, so I was wondering how difficult it would get this time.

To cut a long story short: I got my car back last week and WD paid :)

So here's the "lessons learned"

As soon as you file the claim, WD will try the following approaches:

a) they will try to find SOMETHING where they can claim you did negligence. In my case there was nothing to find. I did ALL Porsche major and minor services and even changed my oil every 7,500 miles, all well documented. If you buy an extended warranty you MUST do all these services; otherwise you wasted your money on the warranty.

b) they try to stall you: Everything takes forever. They have all the time in the world. And my guess is they either hope you give up calling or that you get angry and use the wrong language on the phone so that they have cause to terminate your insurance.

In my case I got lucky as the owner of the shop where my car was did all the negotiating with WD and so saved a lot of hassle for me. In his shop he has to deal with extended warranties all the time and I asked him if WD is any better or any worse than other extended warranty companies he has to deal with and he said that they're all about the same, WD seem to be a bit better than others.

So in summary:

Plus:
* They finally paid

Minus:
* They nicked and dimed the shop where I had my car and did not pay for all the labor it took to get the engine replaced, so I got stuck with the difference
* Even though the car was out of action for 6+ weeks, WD will only pay for 3 days of rental car
* Would I buy warranty from WD again - Yes
* Was it painful to finally get them to pay - Yes

Happy Sunday
Chris

Good summary. Thanks for documenting it for us.

:)

Chris, good job! How much out-of-pocket?

What shop did the engine replacement and the prior work?

Congrats. Glad they helped you. They didn't help me, but it's not over yet.

Mike

Hi Tool Pants, it's Don's Autowerks in Campbell, CA
http://www.babblers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10206

Cheers
Chris

less than $500, so no biggie

I have been to Don Wise's shop before. Thought the shop only worked on air cooled engines. But most of the local independent shops are catching up to the 986/996.

The new independent shop in town in RennShop in Santa Clara owned by Marvin Weitz. He worked for Stevens Creek Porsche and Carlsen before opening his own shop a few months ago.

http://www.renntech.org/reviewpost/showproduct.php?product=47&cat=21

Any suggestions when buying a WD policy?
 

Hi Chris,

Glad to hear that Warranty Direct came through for you. Any suggestions to others looking to possibly purchase a policy from them based on what you have learned in dealing with them? I still have a year or so on factory coverage on an 05 987S so I am shopping for extended warranty options. Thanks for the advice.

Mike

:cheers:

I have WD coverage on my '03. What I've learned from this discussion and others is that if you want to be in a good position to get WD to cover major issues like IMS failures, you need to have documented proof that you've done ALL Porsche-required maintenance at the designated intervals, plus you must keep on top of any and all oil leaks and keep the engine as clean as possible. Apparently, WD views unattended oil leaks as evidence of neglect.