The story starts at my truck needed some work. Tires/brakes/tune-up, etc. So Jen had a thought of instead of dumping all the $ into that, lets just look at something different. She had found a used Mercedes Benz at a local dealers website. I thought nothing of it really. As we went to the town at which this dealer is at to do some shopping, sure enough, that dealer is having a *HUGE* tent sale at the local mall we were going to. Sure enough, we pull up at the mall, and BAM, that Mercedes is probably 75 yards from us in the parking lot. Jen eyes it, long story short, we now are +1 Mercedes, -1 Trailblazer. I had thoughts against it only because I know if this thing breaks, it’s gonna be crazy expensive to fix

So about a week or two ago, Jen comes home “there is a maintenance light on the dash LCD” A call to the dealer “yeah, bring it in” Appointment is made, car is checked out, 3 things wrong. Ok, no biggy, we were smart and bought the extended warranty (seriously, used expensive car… hell yeah I’m getting a warranty)

Anyway, service manager says, you need this part, covered, that part, covered, oh, and um… this SRS system part… weird, not covered by your warranty, but if you dont get it and get in an accident, no airbag deployment, so of course we have to get it. My fears of that expensive part came to reality. Oh yeah, and did I mention, the part w/ labor… oh, $1800!!! So yeah, I flipped, but safety first, its ok’d. So remembering that we bought this bumper to bumper basically everything is covered warranty, we get home and look at it. Sure enough, GOLD PLUS warranty covers ALL safety items, airbags (and all parts of that system) seatbelts, etc. I call the 800# on the warranty document, get a rep, he says “well nope, you have the GOLD warranty, doesnt cover safety equip” Of course I have the warranty in front of me… no, it says GOLD PLUS. this goes on and on till finally he says call your dealer and get this straightened out and then I can help. So come Monday, Jen calls the dealer, the guy that had done all this warranty write-up is mysteriously no longer w/ this dealer 6 months later. Hmmm. So, the new finance guy says he needs some time to go through the paperwork, we’ll call you back. Get this, the old finance guy realized he marked GOLD PLUS on the contract (which he said we were getting), checked GOLD, initialed it, but NEVER CALLED US TO TELL US OF THE CHANGE, so in our eyes, our stuff is covered.  Now the new finance guy asks “he never called you to tell  you that?” nope. I think you see where this is going. Imagine we dont get the SRS system fixed because its too expensive since the dealer said our warranty doesnt cover it. Now imagine one of us gets hurt because of that, and we bring said warranty to a lawyer saying it shows GOLD PLUS, they wouldnt pay to fix it, and that they made changes to a legal contract w/o notifying us. I’m thinking you’re seeing the legal issues that the dealer are facing at this point. SOOOOOO, the dealer is going to honor our GOLD PLUS contract, now containing support for the SRS system, and is going to get us refunded from the warranty company. We’ll see how that goes. Never hurts to make some phone calls, and DEFINITELY doesnt hurt to read your warranties. We just got $2500 worth of repairs made in a weekend, and the warranty has already paid for itself, thats if this goes through.

This being said, thats a reminder to remember to read all contracts/warranties, as well as keeping them in a safe place in case something like this comes up.