Hi all,

standard warranty for Skoda Kodiaq is 3 years. We are going to buy it with 48-months PCP which means ... 4 years.

Is it worth to extend the standard, 3 years, warranty by 1 year ?

What is your opinion ?

I did, simply because if I recall, the standard warranty also has a low mileage restriction after the first year - 60k miles. And we’re more than halfway to hitting that after 12 months. The 5 year manufacturer’s warranty gets you to 100k miles. 

Hmm, we are going to have 48-months PCP with 15k mileage restriction each year. How does that count ?

It means the mileage limitation of the standard warranty doesn’t affect you, but the 3 year limit does. You need to weigh up the risk of something expensive going wrong in the final year versus the cost of either the extended warranty or switching to a 3 year PCP. The extended warranty isn’t cheap, so you can argue that either the warranty only makes sense if something really expensive is likely to fail, or that Skoda have little confidence in their own product, so priced the warranty to reflect the chance of things going wrong.

 

Personally I was disappointed that compared to other manufacturers, VAG don’t seem to have much confidence in their cars and charge big money for a decent warranty. Our car has a Diesel engine with a complicated emissions system and a complicated and expensive DSG gearbox, so the warranty gave me piece of mind. Your mileage may vary...

On 22/05/2019 at 23:41, New11 said:

Hmm, we are going to have 48-months PCP with 15k mileage restriction each year. How does that count ?

 

I think you should double check this, normally it is only a total mileage, which I suspect is 60k (divided by 4 years is 15k per year equivalent), doesn’t matter if you do say 18k one year, but total doesn’t reach 60k as do less another year.

 

Generally the higher the spec you pick, the more valuable the warranty becomes.  Quite simply there is a single warranty price regardless if you have a £20k car or a £30k car, but the more expensive one has more parts that can go wrong, so logically has a higher chance that something will fail.

 

Warranties are a bit like insurance, everyone pays for peace of mind, but only the minority that are unlucky and need to claim for repairs whose cost exceeds the premium end up in a financially better position than if they hadn’t done it.

 

Any manufacturing defects or faulty parts will probably show up in first year, so after that warranty claims likely to fall.  But it’s guesswork, think of it this way, if a part is going to fail between years 1 and 6 then what is probability of it happening in 4th year.  That’s all you are worried about, earlier you covered by factory warranty, later it’s not your car anymore so irrelevant.

 

 

I'm not sure how the finance-ey stuff works over there but here is my experience here in the colonies.

 

I had a My2007 VW Jetta for 6 years that I extended the 3 year factory warranty to 6 years total (the extra 3 years was a 3rd party, Swan, that the dealer packaged into the finance).

I had a MY2013 Skoda Superb 2 for 6 years (still got it) that I extended the 3 year factory warranty to 6 years (This was a warranty from the finance company  Alianz).

I now have a MY2019 Skoda Kodiaq that comes with 5 year factory warranty.

 

For both the Jetta and the Superb, I made the cost of the warranty back.

For the Jetta, a metal coolant pipe failed (pinhole leak) for some $500 of dealer repairs in year 5.  A rear-door module failed for $550 of repairs in year 4.  The labor on top  would have pushed it over the price I paid for the warranty (ignoring the finance cost of the warranty payment).

For the Superb, a total sunroof frame replacement cost more than the warranty.  This was in year 4 after Skoda fiddled with it but never fixed it over the term of the factory warranty.  In this case, the 3rd party wouldn't agree to pay the full cost but some stern words to Skoda Australia and the dealer had to wear the shortfall, along with a loan car for 2 weeks while the Superb was in pieces.

 

So in my opinion, the extended warranties, either manufacturer, dealer or 3rd part have been worth it but our conditions (such as consumer protection laws) here in 'Straya are probably different to yours.