extended car warranty

Fotoman1965

I purchased a extended car warranty and recently my car had a leak from the radiator, I wasn't sure entirely that it was definately from the radiator, so I decided to contact a garage to have a dyignaostic check done,they said that would cost £40 ,so i went ahead and explained if anything needed doing let us know as we could get it done under warranty.
The garage checked it out asked if we had ever had the radiator replaced ,we said no and they said ok.Next thing we heard from the garage was that they had replaced the radiator without asking and then they told us the warranty company wouldn't cover it .
We called the warranty company ourselves and they confirmed this, when we said that it does not say it isn't covered on the warranty they said to us "we can't list everything not covered on our paperwork"
My question is how can they offer  a warranty without listing everything covered ,is that legal,secondly have they and the garage broken the rules by repairing our car without our permission.The garage by not asking us first or confirming the repair was covered before undertaking the repair.
Anyone know what rights we have and what we can do ,because the garage still has the car, which they won't release until we pay for the new radiator and what can we do about the warranty as it really isn't worth the paper it is written on.

WellKnownSid

Fotoman1965 said:

what can we do about the warranty as it really isn't worth the paper it is written on.

Yes, this is true with most third party warranties - they give you a list of the handful of parts they cover, not the thousands of parts they don't.

The radiator 'got replaced without asking' - what was your plan?

The warranty was never going to cover it as you've confirmed so your options were kind of limited.  Either pay to have the work done or not pay and drive the car away, hoping it doesn't overheat and thus require the engine to be stripped down / a new engine on top of the new radiator?