Route 66 Requested testing is irrelevent and unreasonable. Mountain Home Nationwide

To those who may be interested in getting an extended warranty for their cars, i'd like fo you to get a perspective from the shops point of view. 

1st of all Warranty companies whole business model is to find ways to take your money, then find ways to keep your money. 

That being said there are some warranty companies that are better than others.  I hate them all as they never pay what is needed to pay to cover the client 100%.  Some shops who are desperate for business will match the price of what the warranty company will pay, typically those shops don't last long and close their doors within a few years.  Shops need to charge what they need to charge based on their expenses.  A shop in rural Kentucky is going to have way lower costs than a shop in New York City. 

With all that being said, Route 66 is a special kind of company who will go out of their way to avoid paying claims.  We had a customer with an X3 in our shop recently, the customer came in for an oil and filter change.  Our shop performs digital inspections on every car that comes in our door, this means we take pictures and upload them to a portal.  We then email a link to the client so they can see everything we see, we do this for multiple reasons.  Transparency: the client is more inclined to purchase the work if they see the actual problem.  CYA, Cover our rear ends:  The client can't claim that we did something to their car or why didn't we notice this last time the car was in etc...

During our inspection we discovered a coolant leak from the upper radiator hose and an oil leak from the oil filter housing gasket.  We called the client to inform them of this and they told us they had an extended warranty.  We called them up (Route 66), spoke to a claims specialists, they asked us how much oil had been lost, how are we supposed to know how much oil had been lost.  The only way to do that would be to measure the oil that came out of the engine or read the dipstick before we drained the oil (this car has no dipstick).  He referred to a bulletin from BMW stating what normal oil consumption is.  He didn't know the bulletin number (But I did), he was referring to SIB 11 03 13 (all you need to do is google that and it will show up so you can read the bulletin yourselves)  This bulletin refers to oil consumption i.e. the car burning oil.  The bulletin also clearly states that before performing any consumption test that you need to fix all external leaks, i.e. oil filter housing gasket leaking. 

The issue here is the customer was not complaining about consumption problem, we wanted to address the oil leak because it was starting to leak on the drive belt.  On these cars if the belt fails, it can get wrapped around the crank pulley and push it's way into the crankcase through the crank seal.  Then you will get belt shrapnel in the crank case and get sucked into the oil pick up tube, clogging the oil passage and starving the engine of oil, destroying the engine.  You can google that too, this is no secret.

They said they would not pay for a claim unless an oil consumption test was performed.  We tried to explain in detail the bulletin he was referring to stated that external leaks had to be resolved and that the client was not complaining about consumption.  I see this as a ploy to get out of paying for a repair that should be covered.

We informed the customer of the warranty companies unwillingness to pay for the claim and he was rightfully upset. Customer told us that the warranty company told him to take it to another shop that was willing to do this test and that we were not professionals.  We advised the customer to take it to another shop to see what they would say.  The other shop went through the same process we did and basically mirrored our response.  Why do you want to do a consumption test when the customer isn't complaining about a consumption problem? the car has an oil leak that according to the contract is covered.

Bottom line is the customer will be bringing the car back to us to perform the repairs and pay for it out of his own pocket. 

My guess (this is just speculation) that they are going out of business and are finding ways to deny claims.

Either way stay away from Warranty companies in general, but especially stay away from Route 66.

Good luck!