So heres the question, is 250 worth it? does it make you forget all the headaches and time spent addressing all the INCREDIBLY common issues with your $80k vehicle?
In my case, no.
We're a couple months shy of our 3 year anniversary (and scarily, the end of the mfr warranty period) with our '18 Limited. We've put just under 24k miles on it. We've had the car serviced multiple times for multiple issues, some minor, some major, some repeats of the same issue. We've gotten to the point where it's tough to justify the hassle & time involved in "taking the car in AGAIN" and have (disappointingly) relented to just "living with" some of these issues some of the time.
The amount of time we've been without the car while its in the shop and/or the inconvenience/uncertainty we've suffered without certain features of the car working reliably/at all isn't covered by the $250 for me.
As an example, the dealer had it for about 2-3 weeks near the end of July to replace the front diff - no loaner available during that time. You can't even rent a car for just one week for $250, let alone three weeks!
More recently, the car went into limp mode while my wife was out picking the kids up from school. The whole ordeal for her and the kids was on the order of about 4 hours dealing with the issue on the side of the road, I had to leave work early, missing an important meeting, to meet up with them for about 2-3 hours of that. During this time, the tow driver, local Ford dealer, and corporate Ford struggled to figure out how to get the car in neutral for the tow without the engine running - no one could figure it out. Does $250 cover the stress and aggravation of a family of 5 + dog dealing with 4 hours of that garbage on the side of the road in the hot sun??? Meanwhile, the car sits back at the dealer awaiting diagnosis and repair.
(EDIT: In the time since my original comment here, the dealer has informed me they've found a stuck open fuel injector port. Still diagnosing. Meanwhile, still no loaner available...yet. So, once again we're dealing with significant loss of use. That $250 keeps looking less and less adequate from where I sit.)
The $250 is better than $0 for sure, but my bigger concern than the perceived adequacy/inadequacy of the $250 is that the problems just keep coming, including several of the same ones. Why should I expect they'll ever stop? I get the feeling Ford is just biding time to get through the mfr warranty period and then it's gonna be "not their problem."
My theory is the only reason these cars are so expensive these days is because they're building in SIGNIFICANT padding to cover the expected warranty repair work in the first 3 years. I wouldn't be surprised if they've built in a $10k - $15k excess per vehicle in this regard. Why take the time to build a superior, lasting product when you can deliver something sub-par on the cheap and make the owner pre-pay for the anticipated failures? Keep that profit margin high!!!
