Hi all. Just recently I had the Airbag light come on and continue blinking upon subsequent starts and vehicle use.

I initially took the car in to my local dealer here in the McKinney Texas area and they determined that the passenger airbag needed to be replaced. When I bought the car I purchased the Gold Preferrred extended warranty for 84 months and 100,000 miles. The coverage indicated that the airbag modules were covered under the warranty as indicated by the literature I received when the car was new. This same coverage matrix can be found on the internet at the following link:

http://www.nissanextendedwarranty.co...erageChart.pdf

The problems for me started when the dealer called me back to stated that the airbags were not covered and I would have to pay $1500 to have the one airbag replaced. Not cool. It should have been a warranty item.

I ended up calling Nissan North America to open an incident with them. 1-800-NISSAN1 (ticket # 7056887). They took all of my information down, Name, VIN info, address, etc. and sent this to a regional specialist. They then indicated that they would research the issue and get back to me. Well at this point they haven't yet, but that doesn't matter.

I ended up sending the above matrix coverage web link to my dealership service rep. for his review and discussion with his superiors. Well the first day of this trial left me dissapointed that perhaps the warranty was not worth the paper it was printed on. The extended warranty's are not cheap.

The next day started out with more of the "it's not covered" game from the dealership. Nissan North America warranty folks were very slow to respond, at least the specialist was. I eventually heard from her and then nothing. Towards the end of the day I got a surprising call from the service rep. at the local dealership and good news ensued. The said the after all I was right. The airbags are indeed covered by the extended warranty. The computers at the dealership service bay were wrong, and still are. The change in attitude occurred when the service manager decided to get an updated coverage matrix from nissan on his own. Low and behold it matched what I had been saying all along. "The airbags are covered" by the extended warranty as long as you have the right warranty. They needed to order the airbag and I would need to bring my car back when the part came in. Props to the service guys at Nissan of McKinney (John Prendergast, x6441). I got a comped loaner car, free oil change, and K&N filter cleaning thrown in to boot.

Bottom line: Don't ever give up when the warranty coverage is printed in black and white. Stick to your guns. Hopefully this long winded saga can help some of you other folks out there that may be suffering with this same issues. I got the part replaced today. Overall I'm happy with the results. What a struggle though.

Nissan of McKinney (Texas) can be reached at 214-491-6400

2006 350Z LeMans Sunset, enthusiast, 6MT 70k miles

 

I like the Simpsons episode where Moe hammers the crayon back up Homer's nose into his brain cavity far enough that Homer says, "Extended warranty. How can I lose?!"
I'm not calling you a dummy. There's just so many times that these things don't deliver what they promise, and like you said, they aren't cheap! I'm glad it worked out for you, but angry that they tried to treat a customer who was so good to them poorly.

 

I've got the same warranty on my '08. haven't had to use it, yet, but for $1700 I think it was a good purchase. I'm not selling this car anytime soon, and as the OP stated, just one simple part, i.e. an airbag, is $1500. I might also guess, as the car gets older that some of the parts prices will increase, too.

I've also got Apple Care (Apple's 3-year extended warranty on my 3 Mac's). Two of them went unused and expired, for a ~$240 loss. But I used the other one to get a free replacement for my Time Capsule, which saved me ~$500. So, I'm still a few hundred $ up. Extended warranties are a gamble, and sometimes you win, other times you lose, but I'm happy knowing I won't have any unexpected expenses on my Z for a long while.