Beware of being shortchanged on your new car warranty, service & maintenance plan

There is a long list of things you should check when you buy a vehicle, new or used, as consumer ninja Wendy Knowler regularly reminds us.

But when you're buying a new car, one thing you're likely not to question as it just seems logical, is the start date of the warranty, along with service and maintenance plans.

It should be the day you drive off the showroom floor in those new wheels, but, sometimes it is not.

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Knowler says she's dealt with numerous cases where the car was actually registered on the NAAMSA system up to a year earlier.

This means you’re going to be shortchanged on the warranty cover, get one less free service and lose the benefit of a year’s maintenance cover.

The owner usually only finds out about this when they take the car in for its first service and the dealership remarks that they've missed one service.

There can be a variety of reasons for this early registration happening, Knowler says, with people in the business sometimes referring to it as a 'pre-sale'.

In a couple of cases she was told there was a sale that fell through at the last minute, so the vehicle was registered in the name of the would-be buyer, the warranty etcetera activated and then this was not disclosed.

"Or it could be the dealership registering a sale to meet the targets and then the car is actually only sold later, for instance."

So, to your list of questions, add a query about when the warranty, service and maintenance plans are going to be activated.

"Ask that question upfront so that you don't get a nasty shock at your first service. You have to say 'it must be today when I take delivery of the car'. "

To hear more detail from Knowler, listen to the interview audio at the top of the article