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Old 03-08-2017, 08:05 PM   #45
crabman
 
Drives: Sniffin the tree.
Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Old age.
Posts: 225
I pursued an M&M action in the real world against Chrysler. Lets start with the dealership...

Your dealership is not in possession of your warranty, nor are you. The dealership acting as the manufacturers agent is authorized to act in some cases and in others they are not. In general if it's expensive your dealer cannot order parts or be paid for labor until the warranty work is approved by a manufacture representative. This rep is there to guard the gate, not to sell cars, and they aren't known for their mercy. If they decide the warranty will not be honored for whatever reason you're in a bad place. This because of something you all know and understand, possession is 9/10s of the law and neither you or your dealer are in possession of your warranty. It's the first important point to understand in a lot of ways. The OEM is not responsible for whatever claims the dealer made about what will or wont be covered. No amount of you saying the dealer told you it will be covered will change that fact. You can of course take that up with the dealer but you best have something in writing because "liar liar pants on fire" doesn't work in civil court or at arbitration. It also means that just as when your big brother took you favorite toy from you when you were kids you cant get it back until your parents come home. It doesn't matter that it was yours and he took it, possession is his until something changes that fact. So it is with your broke down car. Lets say you lunch a motor and you've got headers installed. That rep comes in and denies warranty coverage for the repair. You can jump up and down all you want, yell Moss/Mag at the top of your lungs, doesn't matter. You were never in possession of your warranty and wont be at that point until you follow a process that can be quite long and expensive. In the meantime you stay broke down or come out of pocket until such time as you complete whatever route you take toward getting the coverage.

Then you need to consider how it goes down in court. The M&M act does have language in it that states warranty cant be denied because of the installation of aftermarket parts unless those parts caused or contributed to the failure or is disallowed in the written warranty if legal in that locale. You might think this means they have to prove something but the reality is quite different. If you go to court they are going to show up with a whole bunch of charts, graphs, etc that they take from stock and adapt to your particular case. You must present evidence refuting them or that truth is taken as THE truth, you will in effect be in the position of proving you're innocent.

The M&M act does provide for the ability to ask for fees but in no way guarantees them even if you win. I won but did not get fees.

Other things I recall, your warranty can't be voided in total outside of a few specific circumstances that don't typically apply to mods. Odo tampering, salvage title, etc. What you face is a denial of coverage on a case by case basis or possibly the voiding of your drivetrain warranty in the case of power adders. Your warranty otherwise remains in effect.

I'm not telling you folks this to rain on anyones parade. I've probably done more mods than most anyone here but a person should be aware of what they're getting into if things go bad. Over on the corvetteforum they say that a person should make a gut call on being capable and willing to be their own warranty station before they go ahead with mods. I've both left things alone and modded after going through the crap I did with Chrysler. I have to admit it's changed my way of thinking, I no longer let fly without concern. With my E92 for example I decided I didn't want to write a check for a 25k motor. I could have done it but in truth there would have been tears staining that check. I almost certainly never would have had to write that check because the mods I was considering were quite mild and few had problems. Thats the thing, it's not like most will face a warranty denial on a major item due to minor performance mods, it's a question of whether you are willing to risk being the one poor soul that got unlucky. Maybe you are, maybe you aren't but you should ask the question before you proceed.
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