The latest extended-warranty sales pitch included a reassurance that this warranty coverage would be accepted at any factory-authorized Honda service department. In fact they named Mel Rapton Honda and Carmichael Honda by name.

So I called them.

Mark the service manager at Mel Rapton Honda let me know that they hear from 3-10 people a day who have gotten these robo-calls and "freak out" because they believe their warranty is expiring. He too hates these telemarketing calls and wishes they would stop. He told me about one particularly sad call from an old lady who was crying on the phone because she had foolishly let them charge her credit card. The only legitimate non-Honda auto warranty that he had heard of is from a company called "Zurich".

The guy I reached at Carmichael Honda was even more pissed off about these warranty salesmen.

A service rep at Mike Daugherty Chevrolet called them "bogus" with long lists of excluded repairs. He encourages anyone thinking of buying an extended warranty to buy it directly from a dealership, where they could read the contract before buying it. He also had the story of a co-worker's 9 year-old son getting calls to extend the warranty on his vehicle, even though he was too young to have a driver's license.

Melissa at the Florin Road Toyota service department had heard the story of a woman trying to use her 3rd party extended warranty. She was confounded by the paperwork requirements, including the need to fill out a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) form and a promise to continue paying for the warranty after the repair is complete. The woman ended up just paying for the repair herself, rather than jumping through all of the hoops to obtain the warranty coverage.

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