Volkswagen extended warranty: cost, coverage and plans

Volkswagen extended warranty coverage

Volkswagen calls its official extended warranties Drive Easy Vehicle Service Protection Plans, but that name is often shortened to just Drive Easy Protection Plans. These vehicle service contracts are designed to effectively extend some or all of the protection offered by your four-year/50,000-mile VW factory warranty. That means if your Volkswagen breaks down and the issue is caused by a covered component, a VW extended warranty will pay for the repairs.

VW, like many automakers, measures its extended warranty terms from when the covered vehicle was first sold, not when the warranty was purchased.

Just keep in mind that car warranties — factory or extended — almost never cover collision damage, cosmetics or items meant to wear out over time, like brake pads and batteries. They only cover factory defects or parts that fail on their own.

Also, while VW’s extended warranty brochure indicates that coverage for these plans can extend to 10 years or 120,000 miles (whichever comes first), the longest warranty we were able to get quotes for from our Volkswagen dealer was seven years or 100,000 miles, even for a brand-new VW. Your experience may vary.

Volkswagen extended warranty benefits

Every Volkswagen Drive Easy Protection Plan includes the following perks and benefits for covered breakdowns:

• 24/7 roadside assistance, including battery service, flat tire assistance, fuel or fluid deliveries (up to 3 gallons three times a year) and lock-out assistance of up to $100 per occurrence
• Towing reimbursements of up to $100 per occurrence to get you to your nearest VW dealer
• Rental car reimbursements of up to $35 per day for up to 10 days while your vehicle is in the shop
• Trip interruption coverage of up to $200 per day for a maximum of five days per occurrence to help with meals and lodging if your VW breaks down over 100 miles from home

Some plans also come with a $100 disappearing deductible, which means you don’t have to pay your $100 deductible for covered repairs if you take your Volkswagen back to the dealer who originally sold you the warranty. (The other two deductible options are $0 and $250, but these don’t have the disappearing deductible benefit.)

Overall, these are generous benefits as far as automakers’ extended warranties go. Trip interruption coverage of up to $1,000 is very generous (most manufacturers we’ve seen stop at $500), and the fact that it’s available per occurrence should be comforting to anyone who frequently road trips in their VW.

However, it may be wise to avoid depending entirely on these benefits. Pablo, a ConsumerAffairs reviewer from Illinois, reported that his benefits meant little when his VW broke down while he was on a trip to Michigan.

“My car was sent to a dealership two hours away from where I was staying,” Pablo said. “After spending seven hours on the phone, I decided to take a taxi to get a rental car (the closest rental was one hour and a half away). … Everybody I talked to over the phone told me to contact the ‘trip interruption department.’… Long story short, I made it back to Chicago, mailed all the receipts as they told me to do and today I got a call to let me know the case was declined.”

It’s possible that VW had a legitimate reason for denying trip interruption coverage, but you might want to familiarize yourself with the benefit details in your contract regardless.

If you have significant savings, getting stuck with a massive repair bill might not be a huge worry, but if you don’t, it could be a huge financial strain. A ConsumerAffairs investigation found that most drivers surveyed couldn’t afford to pay cash for a $1,000 repair bill, and 13% of respondents simply had no way to handle a bill that large — even with credit.

» LEARN MORE: What is a dealership warranty?

Volkswagen extended warranty plans

VW Drive Easy Protection Plans come in three coverage levels:

• Powertrain effectively extends your factory powertrain coverage.
• Gold builds on the powertrain plan’s coverage but not as much as Platinum.
• Platinum effectively extends your bumper-to-bumper factory warranty.

The following is a more detailed breakdown of what components each plan covers:

Volkswagen extended warranty coverage by plan level

Volkswagen extended warranty cost

You can’t purchase or even collect quotes for VW Drive Easy Vehicle Service Protection Plans online, so you’ll need to call or visit a Volkswagen dealer for the most accurate pricing. We reached out to multiple dealerships to find the lowest prices, and you might want to do the same. (Dealers often charge hidden commissions, so it pays to call around. Just prioritize dealers close to you if you want to take advantage of your disappearing deductible.)

We focused on Platinum coverage because several VW dealers told us they rarely sell the Gold or Powertrain plans. Those lower-tier plans cost only about 10% less but cover far fewer components — sometimes as little as 20% of what Platinum covers.

Several other dealers confirmed that Gold and Powertrain plans offer significantly less coverage and only slightly lower prices. In our view, they mostly exist to make Platinum plans look more appealing.

See extended warranty costs for specific Volkswagen models:

• Jetta
• Tiguan

VW Drive Easy Protection Plan costs

Here are the lowest quotes we collected for VW Drive Easy Vehicle Service Protection Platinum plans after calling different dealerships. For context, the average extended auto warranty costs around $1,000 per year of coverage.

Sample VW extended warranty quotes by vehicle

Quotes for our example Golf GTI and Jetta were slightly higher than expected for newer, fairly affordable vehicles but not drastically so. Extended warranties for the 2019 Tiguan were cheaper, but this may be because most 2018 and 2019 VWs actually came with longer six-year/72,000-mile factory warranties.

Given that VW counts extended warranty terms from each vehicle’s in-service date (when it was purchased by its first owner), a longer factory warranty means you get less out of your VW extended warranty. So, if we bought a VW Drive Easy Protection Plan for that 2019 Tiguan, we’d essentially be paying $2,800 for just one year or 28,000 miles of additional coverage.

That’s not a great value, but let’s look into VW’s terms and conditions to see if there’s any contractual fine print that might change our minds.

» READ: Where can you use an extended auto warranty?

Volkswagen extended warranty terms and conditions

We looked past VW’s brochure and into its 14-page sample contract to see what else you should know about Drive Easy Protection Plans. It’s important to read your own contract in its entirety, but here are some key details we think you should know before buying:

• Routine maintenance: As with virtually all extended warranties, Volkswagen requires you to keep up with your VW’s recommended maintenance schedule and keep your receipts. If you cannot provide proof that you changed the oil, for example, the warranty administrator may deny any claims for engine-related issues.
• Preexisting conditions: Practically no warranty covers preexisting conditions, and VW’s plans are no exception. Any issue that you can’t reasonably prove wasn’t a preexisting condition won’t be covered, either. That’s why we strongly recommend getting a dealer inspection report, which typically costs about $200, when you buy your warranty so both you and VW are clear on what counts as a new issue.
• Transferability: If you sell your VW, you can transfer the remaining warranty coverage to the new owner within 30 days by filing some paperwork and paying a $50 fee.
• Cancellations and refunds: You can cancel the warranty within 30 days for a full refund, provided you haven’t submitted a claim. If you’ve submitted a claim or if it’s been 30 days or more, you can still get a prorated refund.

All things considered, these are pretty standard terms for an extended warranty. The only gotcha to consider — which isn’t exclusive to VW — is that you must keep up with regular maintenance, even when it seems excessive.

What’s not covered by a Volkswagen extended warranty?

Typical exclusions apply with VW’s extended warranty. The following is not covered:

• Cosmetics
• Wear-and-tear items
• Maintenance
• Damage from collisions or vandalism
• Failures due to track use or towing beyond your vehicle’s rated capacity
• Issues resulting from aftermarket parts

Volkswagen extended warranty alternatives

To see if third-party warranty companies can offer a better deal, we also got quotes from two third-party warranty providers for the same vehicles. Note that all quotes are for Platinum-equivalent warranties with $100 deductibles. Coverage terms may be advertised differently, but all plans provide equal amounts of coverage after the factory warranty period. Prices don’t include tax.

Third-party warranty prices vs. Volkswagen

This limited dataset indicates that a third-party provider may offer you a better deal on an extended warranty for your VW — especially if your vehicle is a 2018 or 2019 with a little of the post-emissions bonus warranty period left. Endurance Auto Warranty quoted us less than Volkswagen for each of our sample vehicles, with coverage for the 2019 Tiguan coming in at under a third of what VW charged.

However, it’s still incredibly important to shop around for the best price. You can see how olive, which quoted us roughly $1,000 more than Volkswagen for the Golf GTI and Jetta, still quoted us a price less than half of what VW offered for our Tiguan. These kinds of inconsistencies are hard to predict, but if you shop around with different warranty providers, you may catch one in your favor.

» MORE: How to choose an extended car warranty

Volkswagen extended warranty pros and cons

Is a Volkswagen extended warranty worth it?

In general, an extended warranty is more likely to be worth the cost if:

• You drive a vehicle with below-average expected reliability.
• The cost of the extended warranty is less than the cost of anticipated repairs.
• An expensive, surprise repair bill ($3,000 or more) would be financially catastrophic.
• You don’t mind paying a few grand for some peace of mind.

We can’t predict where you stand on the last two points, so we’ll focus on the first two.

According to data from RepairPal, VWs still only cost their owners $676 per year in maintenance and repairs, compared with $652 across all vehicles. So, is a Volkswagen extended warranty worth it? 

A seven-year/100,000-mile Drive Easy Protection Plan typically extends the factory warranty by just three years or 50,000 miles. Since quotes for these plans are often around $3,000, you’re essentially paying about $1,000 per year for bumper-to-bumper coverage. If your VW was made in 2018 or 2019 and came with a longer factory warranty, the cost per year of additional coverage could be even higher.

Compared to the $676 average annual cost of upkeep, that warranty pricing doesn’t look like a great deal — unless you run into a major repair. And with Volkswagens, labor can drive up repair bills quickly. Even if a part is cheap, precision labor on a German-made car often isn’t.

In some cases, that labor cost alone can justify the coverage. “While VW has come a long way in terms of reliability, they are still German-engineered machines that require precision repairs. In some cases the part itself may be inexpensive, but the labor to replace it is not,” automotive expert Brian Medford told ConsumerAffairs. In these cases, Medford said, “an extended warranty can help insulate against repair sticker shock." 

If you can get a better deal or your VW is more prone to breaking down, the math may look different.

» MORE: Pros and cons of extended auto warranties