We bought a bumper-to-bumper extended warranty with our 2017 Ram ProMaster 2500, and eight years later I can tell you exactly what it returned, because it got used.
Short answer: it came back about double what we paid. That is a real result, and I still would not tell you to buy one without reading the rest of this.
What We Bought#
We bought the van used at 30,000 miles from the Ram dealership in Boulder, Colorado, and took their bumper-to-bumper policy at the same time. It cost roughly $2,300 and ran to 100,000 miles. Estimate
Worth knowing what it was sitting on top of. The factory powertrain warranty on a gas ProMaster is 5 years or 60,000 miles, not the 5-year/100,000-mile figure people repeat, which belongs to the diesel. Mopar’s own 2017 booklet lists ours as 5/60 Gas. So by the time anything interesting happened, the factory coverage had been gone for a long while.
What It Paid#
At 98,000 miles the engine’s rollers failed and the engine was replaced. The whole job ran roughly $8,000 to $9,000, and the warranty covered about half of it. We paid around $4,000 out of pocket, and we chose to pay that rather than less because we wanted a remanufactured engine instead of a used one. Estimate
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Policy cost | ~$2,300 |
| Paid out on the engine | ~$4,000–4,500 |
| Net | roughly double what we paid |
The full account of that failure, the noise, the scope and what is documented about this engine, is in the engine post.
The Folder Is What Paid#
The policy did not pay because we owned it. It paid because we could prove how we had treated the van.
The warranty company asked for every oil change record. Not a summary, the actual history. We had it, because we have run full synthetic every 4,000 to 7,000 miles for eight years and kept the paperwork.
They also required the shop to video scope the engine to document the wear before approving anything. Hearing the noise was not enough for them. Reported
An extended warranty is not a product you buy once. It is a product you keep qualifying for, one receipt at a time.
If you take one thing from this page, take that. The folder is the difference between a policy that pays and a policy that finds a reason not to.
We Were 2,000 Miles From Nothing#
The policy ran to 100,000 miles. The engine went at 98,000.
That is the whole story of whether this was a good purchase. We were about 2,000 miles from a repair that would have been entirely ours. Not a strategy, not foresight. It was where the odometer happened to be sitting when the noise finally got loud enough that I stopped ignoring it.
I bring it up because the fair version of “our extended warranty returned double” is “our extended warranty returned double, by about two percent of its own length.”
Where It Stopped Helping#
About a year after the engine job, the cooling system needed replacing. Rock damage through the grille had bent the fins. That ran roughly $1,700 to $2,000 and we were past 100,000 miles by then, so all of it was ours. Estimate
This is the part the “extended warranties are a scam” and “extended warranties saved me” arguments both skip. The policy expired, and the van kept needing things. Living in a vehicle full-time burns a mileage ceiling much faster than commuting does. Ours ran out partway through our ownership rather than at the end of it, and the van has kept going for years since.
Whether To Buy One On Your Van#
Ask what the mileage ceiling means in your driving, not in average driving. A 100,000-mile policy is a decade for most people and a handful of years for someone living in the van. Do that arithmetic before you price anything.
Assume you will have to prove maintenance. If you are not going to keep every receipt, discount what the policy is worth to you, because that is the condition it pays under.
Price it against one repair, not against peace of mind. Ours was worth it because a single engine failure landed inside the window. On this engine, in these years, that was not a wild thing to plan around. Whether it is on your vehicle is a different question with a different answer.
Read what is covered. Ours was bumper-to-bumper, which is why an engine was in scope at all.
Why This Might Not Apply To You#
I cannot tell you extended warranties are worth it in general. I have one van, one policy and one claim, and the claim happened to land 2,000 miles inside the ceiling. Flip that one detail and this page is titled the opposite thing and every other number in it is identical.
I also cannot tell you what the underwriter was. It was sold to us at the dealership with the van, and the specific company behind it is not something I am going to state from memory.
What I can tell you is that the folder of oil change receipts did more work than the policy document did.