Kia 7 year warranty

LandyAndy wrote: »

Also remember that just because a car has a long warranty it doesn't mean it will be reliable.

Very true.

The 5 or 7 year warranty that Kia/Hyundai offer is a part of their "perceived quality" strategy. People automatically assume that a long warranty = good quality. And Hyundai/Kia know that extra cost of around £100 per each additional year of warranty = increased sales.

I've been working in the car industry for many years, and for a number of manufacturers - almost every major car manufacturer has at some stage considered 5 year (or longer) warranty. The incremental cost is very small, but research has show that the older the car is the harder it is to approve warranty claims - after around 3 years wear and tear is the major car breakdown cause, and not manufacturing defects. So in the end when you start rejecting warranty claims you end up with thousands of very !!!!ed off customers. Their trust quickly disappears.

Example:
A OAP bloke around the corner drives a 4 year old Kia 4WD - last month he took it to his local Kia garage for "warranty repairs": leaking sunroof, sticky handbrake and dashboard rattle. None of the faults were covered by their warranty and he ended up with a £400 bill. They blamed him for the sunroof leak - their excuse was that he doesn't take proper care of his car (ie. not garaged), and the drainage pipes blocked (obviously they wouldn't admit to crap design). Rusty rear brake calliper problem was due wear and tear, and due to wear and tear they don't fix dashboard rattles in 4 year old cars either.

So when buying a new car I would definitely pay more attention to long term quality reports (internet forums, car magazines) than a promise of long warranties covering "most things".

GB makes a good point ... after 3yrs almost anything will be deemed wear and tear. However for the warranty to be valid I would expect you'd have to use the Kia garage for servicing. So that means 7yrs of return custom for them - for you the small hope that something will be covered by the warranty.

grahamthompson wrote: »

They just said it would cover 'most' things but not things like tyres. They didn't have a list or detailed warranty info.

I'm also hoping to find out if anyone has actually had repairs done and how easily Kia accepted the work was under warranty.

I bought a Kia Venga new in 2010. Warranty is fairly comprehensive, you even get a tyre warranty (limited to defects of course and pro-rata to age of tyre), usual consumables not included.

As for claiming? Well I had a nice big screw in my tyre and like a true chancer tried to make a claim. quite rightly it was declined, but hey you have to try your luck sometimes eh!

Other than that I've had a new boot floor fitted, a new boot latch and a new door latch fitted under warranty, none of these were quibbled but after speaking to other Venga owners, these are common faults. What was a ball ache is that the local dealer keeps no spares, so it was 2 trips per fault, one to diagnose, another when the part was actually ordered in. All fine for me as a I work shifts so don't need a car M-F, ball ache if you do work M-F 9-5 though. You also won't get a wash and vac like you do with paid work.

You can maintain the warranty (to the best of my memory) as long as you use a garage that is VAT registered and uses Kia genuine parts or equiv quality.

Overall I really like the car, but it drinks more than a vampire on a hemophiliac ward! At this time I had had the car getting on for two years, doing a lot of miles for work so I contacted Kia direct to see what they had to say about the woeful MPG (I've always checked the tyres etc are good). They basically admitted MPG in adverts are a hock of ballsacks and said I could pay for main dealer to do a test with putting a bung in the fuel tank and running it to see how far it actually got on X litres. I didn't think there was any mileage in that, I didn't wanna take a massive hit on trading the car in, so I got an LPG conversion. So far very happy with the car on LPG. I had a coolant leak and badgered main dealer to look at it twice under warranty, which to be fair to them they did (in how much detail I don't know as it was on the back of 2 door latch visits) they couldn't find owt and it has voided the warranty on the engine they say (conflict as Kia themselves say its only voided if proved to be the mods). Anyway I got the coolant prob in hand with the LPG engineer, its going back in next week for replumbing. Only time will tell if I did the right thing.

That is my experience with Kia.

grahamthompson wrote: »

They just said it would cover 'most' things but not things like tyres. They didn't have a list or detailed warranty info.

I'm also hoping to find out if anyone has actually had repairs done and how easily Kia accepted the work was under warranty.

We've got a couple of Ceed estates on the fleet (crap for what we bought them for, but brilliant cars).

We've had a Turbo go; fixed within a week, and we've also had a boot floor on one of them, which was actually ripped in the course of duty.

The Kia warranty is definitely one of the best for pushing your luck!

CK