Maintenance+Plus Plans - When are they worth it?
 

Hi all,

I searched and couldn't find anything on this - sorry if I missed something.

(TL;DR for those wanting to skip to the punchline: what price would be a "good" price for a maintenance plus plan or is it not worth trying to barter down the price at all)

I just bought a brand new 2009 370Z Touring and am in love with it. I'm finalizing the paperwork with the dealer now but they are pushing extra services and items on the end in a dishonest way (telling me that I have only that day to decide etc.)

I said no to it all but I'm going back on Friday to finalize everything and I'm hoping someone can help answer my question about them...

Maintenance+Plus plans through Nissan, my finance guy tried to get me to buy a 72month (from memory) maintenance plan for $2500. At first it all seems like a good idea, he shows graphs with how much each service is going to cost etc. (seemingly very over exaggerated). So what it comes down to is I like the idea but still think (and I hope I'm right) that the cost is way too high. From what I've read these plans retail at about 50% of what they are offering them...

I'm planning on going back in on Friday and haggling with him to get the price down assuming I can figure out how much it's actually worth before then

Anyone have any idea what is the best plan and a good price for it? If you've bought this plan I'm interested to know how much you paid for it.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to hanging around here as I start looking into doing some mods etc.

[Edit]
Some links that talk about this and/or have WAY discounted plans:
http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.f1e317c/4
http://nissanwarrantystore.com/370-coverage

If you figure 12k miles for 6 years while changing the oil every 3500 miles, the cost (at my dealership) just for oil changes would be almost $1900. That's using the ester oil that they recommend for these cars. Regular oil would be about $720. I did one change at that price and went to the normal oil on the second go-around.
I thought that might give you some kind of gauge as to how much you could spend and that's strictly based on oil changes.

It depends on some other factors, too. If you can change your own oil, you're only going to want to hit up the dealer once or twice a year for required maintenance(so you don't void your warranty, and because you just bought a 35k car and you should invest in maintaining it). But if you are comfortable changing your own oil and checking the basics(you should be, some great guides on this forum!), I don't believe the plan will be cost efficient.

I purchased maintenace-plus program also for about $1300 up to 60k miles..wondering if I should cancel or keep...

maintenance
 

So if we don't go in for our required maintenance or inspection, our warranty it's automatically voided? What is the required maintenance? 15k? 30k?

The manual is very unclear about this, it simply says that failure to properly maintain your car will result in a voided warranty. I'm not even sure if you have to take it in for regular maintenance...if you can provide receipts for parts and logs that you checked certain parts on the car then that might be sufficient. As far as how often you should get normal maintenance on it to stay in the good graces as far as the warranty is concerned, I have no idea, maybe one of the dealers here could shed some light on what would void the warranty when it comes to maintenance, but I wouldn't imagine more than once every 15k miles(assuming you are changing the oil regularly on top of that).

I noted in a seperate post that the maintenance program now allows you to request Nissan Ester oil during the factory oil changes at no additional charge. (No need to flame if you are anti-Ester oil, happened earlier :wtf2:) I paid $1024 or so for 75k of scheduled maintenance on mine. With 25 oil changes, one every 3k miles which the dealer will do, that comes to $41.68 per oil change/tire rotation/fluid level check.

I say its a win, but thats just me. Not only are you letting them service the car which helps you keep your warranty looking sharp, but you are also using the Ester oil recommended (not required, just recommended) in the manual.

My $0.02.

Did you pay cash? If not, now add your interest rate to the additional principal for the duration of the loan.

Actually my trade-in covered the cost of the maintenance plan and about half of the car. I also did put down more than enough on top of that to cover the plan again. I'm a finance guy so thanks but I got that part, lol. :tiphat:

For kicks and giggles anyways, even if I had not paid it off already, my IR is 2.9% so it would not have been much more anyways, certainly nowhere near $2500 total which would be the price to pay for 25 regular cost Ester oil changes.