If you happen to be a customer of Stellantis’ Lifetime Maximum Care warranty and you’ve found service surprisingly slow since spring, you’re not alone. A popular story has been circulating around enthusiast forums since April: one owner brought in their Chrysler, Dodge, insured cars for life. Jeep car, or Ram taking on a routine repair job, only to spend a week or more waiting for the work to begin — often without their car. The delay was not due to a shortage of personnel or parts, but to a request for approval. Meanwhile, the owners were left in the dark.
Jalopnik recently contacted a Jeep owner in California who spent a week waiting for service to begin on their 2012 Grand Cherokee, which was leaking oil. This person, who wished to remain anonymous, said they have been a satisfied user of Lifetime Maximum Care for more than a decade. “Never had a problem,” the Jeep owner told Jalopnik by phone. “I’ll take it, I’ll deal with the same service advisor… they’ll call to fix the problem, they’ll get the permit, if they have to order a part, it’ll take them a day to get it, they’ll fix it and I’ll get the car back. Easy.”
But on the most recent occasion in June, things went much slower.
“Suddenly, the program changed,” the owner told Jalopnik. “Now we have to email this voiceless center. There’s nothing we can do — we just have to wait for their response.”
Followed by a week of silence from Stellantis Maximum Care team. Previously, service personnel would call to request approval. But as of April 1, that is no longer possible, according to stories from customers posted on forums as well as stories contacted by Jalopnik. Consent must now be entirely via email and both Chrysler and the lines of Mopar Vehicle Protection seem to have a gag order on explaining why. An owner at Ram Forums summarized the issue in an April 11 post:
For our owner, this radio silence kicked off a week of subscriptions via text message with the agent about the status of their claim. “I would get a response from the service advisor and every day we just chat back and forth and he’s like ‘bro, I’m sorry. I called, no one to talk to.’
“The salesman said it was bad for them because their people were waiting for permission. They have departments, they have people, and they can’t do anything about it.” The only way that the owner is given is a post office box to send mail to.
Generally, they have to wait 10 days to get the car back – seven days for approval, and then another three days when the final repairs can be done in a weekend. Some customers experience longer delays. “I waited over 2 weeks for repair approval with no end date,” a Pacifica owner shared on a forum on April 21. At least in that particular case, the owners in question were able to keep their trucks while they waited, which is usually not a process while Maximum Care claims are pending.
Jalopnik has reached out to Stellantis for comment. Eric Mayne, the automaker’s customer experience media relations manager, responded with the following statement:
We recently adapted the Mopar Vehicle Protection process to our vehicle warranty process to streamline our response to claims. This transition involves additional staff training, which can contribute to occasional delays. The transition is now complete and we are again responding to agents on behalf of our customers in a timely manner.
According to Stellantis, the lifetime warranty approval protocol has not been permanently switched to purely email. Now that the training is complete, everything should go as usual as the backlog claims have been resolved. All experiences shared online take place in April, so maybe that’s partly true.
However, Stellantis could not explain why customers were left in the dark for weeks. A little communication could have gone a long way here. If you also have a Lifetime Maximum Care warranty on your vehicle and have recently requested or expect to claim it soon, please share your experience in the comments below.
