This really Sucks the life out of you! My wife had paid almost $3500 that she had gotten back from her tax return to protect the car she loves. It was supposed to be a 3 year extended warranty on top of the current Jaguar warranty that was about to expire. The highest option offered by WarrantyDirect.com since as she put it she wanted , "Everything possible covered". It was a stick-shift/manual 2004 Jaguar X-Type 2.5 in White of course. Those were two main qualities in a car for my lady...it must be White and have a Manual transmission. I don't know about you all, but for me it is a turn-on to see a woman handle a manual transmission vehicle a whip it around like a pro. That takes skills and it's rare because from my experience the majority of women I've seen driving are more afraid of the machine and power vs understanding the machine and knowledgeably trying to manipulate it.
Well, back to the story at-hand. A couple of years in we're driving the Jaguar to San Francisco to work from Foster City. I'm driving and remember paying attention to the RPMs that morning. The vehicle did seem a bit "cold". Experienced drivers know more or less when you drive a vehicle enough that it needs a tune-up. I had been driving my Civic most of the time so it wasn't obvious to me right away. After driving about 12 miles north on 101 we hear some weird noises from the front passenger side of the car and the Oil light turns on as well. At this point we continued slowly keeping RPMs under 3000 for the rest of our 14 miles or so to work. The car was then taken to the Jaguar dealership that morning before work in San Francisco ultimately to find out later that there were, "metal particles in the oil that was drained". A cause of some over heating I suppose since it was never explained to either one of us. What they said was that there was no oil in the vehicle and practically went dry. The interesting part was that we parked the Jaguar in our same parking spot every day and there was no recent oil drips and the car was not yet due for it's oil change. We hardly put miles on the car. To this day it has about 56k miles and man she still loves her car and I do as well.
The Jaguar dealership sends its report to the insurance company, which turns around and sends us a letter saying the damage is a cause of neglect and the claim was being denied. Our complaint was that we never had any reason to think there was a problem. We had gotten the regular oil changes at their designated mileage and directly from the Jaguar dealership. We never noticed any issues and when we did notice something we immediately drove it to the dealership to get checked out. DENIED! Now we have a vehicle sitting at the Jaguar dealership with our name on it, they're asking us what we are going to do with it because they can not keep it there. A new engine was about a $10k job, we still owed $7500 worth of payments, my Wife is 7 months pregnant at this stage too. JAJA. What a time we have experienced and surpassed. Well, I felt like if they weren't going to help us then return the $3500 paid for the worthless insurance. After some pressure and writing several letters to WarrantyDirects parent insurance company, then one to the National Association of Insurance companies. We did find some very helpful folks whom helped us finally get an approval to our claim and they got a used engine from the same type of vehicle and everything almost the identical amount of mileage then. The Jaguar dealership finished the job of putting the new engine in. i don't want to get into the efforts put in from the folks at the Jaguar dealership. Maybe they're just really busy and that's another story. I'm so glad this whole thing worked out. We were in a a critical time in our lives with the babies coming and potentially losing out on the car and having to continue making payments...imagine that. It was quite the upgrade from the ZelRydr (White Acura Integra Manual Transmission). We had fun in that car! I'll post the pictures soon. ZelRydr from beginning to end. I think you can still find pieces by Oakland Coliseum out there.
Lesson of the story. Get your extended warranty directly through the dealership. It's worth it or you'll be fighting it out with those whom you've been paying to supposedly be on your side.
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