[Tintking]

Originally Posted by IK6SPEED

If a Dealer is trying to deny your claim just by seeing a metal charge pipe, then it's ridiculous to try and attemp any warranty work done by them in the first place.

A difference in the way it is written on the work order is often the difference between approval or rejection.

And that Dealer was never going to write it in such a way that would lead to your warranty covering it.

I had a BMW that had Beige interior. I swapped EVERYTHING out for an LCI Black interior and Individual Seats. The Dealership was well aware of this.

9 months later I developed a short on the KCAN. The tech was convinced that I must have not routed a wire in the seat or interior retrofit.

Quite an argument that I was sure that was not the cause, but as EW only pay for 30 -60 minutes of diagnostic time if at all, I had to sign an open ticket for up to 10 hours to track down the short.

We agreed when located, we would readdress what happened.

After 3.5 hours, the seat module was determined to be bad and shorted the KCAN to ground.

Again, Dealer knew the seats had been replaced. Service Manager and I agreed to not mention all that and just list as module had gone bad. They covered 1 hour of diagnostic, a new module, the install and coding which was about $1k.

If they had written up what they initially suspected with interior retrofit, it would have been rejected. As it was straight forward in a warranty friendly explanation, there was no issue.

I have had another instance as well, where I had installed a 6WB and LED Taillights. The turn signal later began malfunctioning and would only keep signaling if I held it in the up or down position. If the Dealership had noted these changes, the work most likely would be denied (needed an istep update). Though it would only run about $300, but leaving out non-relevant details on the work order, again, it was covered.

It's imperative when writing your Service Ticket/Work Order with SA, you know what warranty will and will not cover and you make sure it's written in the most warranty friendly way.

Sorry, I was probably unclear... it wasn’t the dealer who saw the charge pipe and created problems. They wrote it up listing the issues (significant vibration under acceleration) and their determination it needed driveshaft replacement. Warranty company was contacted and sent out a representative who inspected the car and determined it would be denied for non-stock items.

During a discussion with the representative, I tried to argue that a charge pipe would not be the cause of a bad driveshaft but of course that was wasting my breath. He actually told me they have denied other claims (for example a seat heater) based solely on non-stock sized wheels and tires!? I had been paying monthly for coverage and had paid around $1000 at that point. Surprisingly, based on the fact that the car would not have qualified for any coverage from the beginning, they actually refunded me about half the money I had paid. I’m sure there’s probably some government regulations requiring them to do that or they would keep every dollar.