In this Q&A: Just how legitimate is Mitsubishi’s purported 10-year warranty in Australia, and what are the traps if you get your Mitsubishi serviced independently? Is it mostly statement over substance?

Short version: The second five years (of 10) is really just an extended warranty. It’s really just there A) as a marketing ploy to get you to buy the car, and B) to keep you paying for expensive dealership servicing for the next decade. The good news is that while you terminate the extended warranty if you get your car serviced by the local mechanic, you do not lose your consumer law entitlements if something major fails prematurely.

QUESTION

Hi John,

A quick question regarding Mitsubishi’s warranty program.

I own a three-year-old Mitsubishi Pajero Sport, due for its 120,000km service. The local Mitsubishi dealer has quoted around $1200, which struck me as fairly expensive. I have a trusted local mechanic who does excellent work and I would much prefer to use.

The complication is Mitsubishi’s warranty structure. As I understand it, the vehicle has a standard 5-year/100,000km warranty, but Mitsubishi extends this to 10 years/200,000km provided all scheduled servicing is carried out through an authorised Mitsubishi dealer network.

My question is whether this is genuinely enforceable in practice, or whether it is primarily a marketing mechanism designed to retain servicing revenue within the dealer network.

My understanding has been that warranty obligations generally relate to whether maintenance has been carried out correctly and in accordance with the manufacturer’s requirements, rather than who specifically performed the work. If a qualified mechanic services the vehicle using the correct procedures, parts and fluids, I struggle to see how that should affect a future claim.

My concern is that if I use my preferred mechanic and then suffer a major failure — turbocharger, DPF, transmission, injector system or similar — Mitsubishi could simply point to the servicing history and decline to support me under warranty.

Have you had much experience with this particular Mitsubishi arrangement? Is it something they are genuinely entitled to do, or is there more nuance to it than the advertising suggests?

Thanks for your time.

ANSWER

MMAL does not really offer a 10-year warranty. But their marketing is clever and they want you to think that’s what it is (successfully so, in your case).

It’s a five-year factory warranty plus a five-year extended warranty contingent on you getting authorised dealership servicing on time and under the required distance. (Extended warranties are contracts; it’s a breach of the contract that effectively terminates the extended warranty if you service the car independently.)

What people forget is that they still have legislated consumer law entitlements, such as the legislated guarantee of ‘acceptable quality’ which (in part) means goods and services have to meet the durability expectations of a hypothetical reasonable consumer (provided the product hasn’t been abused).

They could do exactly what you worry about (deny a warranty claim) - but if the car has been serviced on time, and according to the schedule (by anyone qualified) they cannot deny your consumer law claim under the durability provisions of S54 of Australian Consumer Law.

The key provision here is section 54 of the Australian Consumer Law: Guarantee as to acceptable quality.

More specifically: ACL s 54(2) says goods are of acceptable quality if they are, among other things: durable.

That durability requirement sits inside the broader guarantee that goods must be of acceptable quality. The test is what a reasonable consumer fully acquainted with the state and condition of the goods would regard as acceptable, considering things like the nature of the goods, price, statements made about them, packaging, etc.

For a vehicle defect argument, the clean formulation is:

“Under section 54 of the Australian Consumer Law, goods supplied to a consumer must be of acceptable quality, which includes being durable. A vehicle/component that fails prematurely under ordinary use may therefore breach the consumer guarantee of acceptable quality.” (ACCC)

Check the ACCC’s official PDF about the guarantee of acceptable quality

So, provided you get the car serviced by qualified people (proper mechanics) you could terminate your extended warranty, but you DO NOT terminate your entitlement to S54. It’s baked into the transaction and cannot be negotiated away.

Let’s say your DPF fails after you get the car serviced independently. They might say you voided your warranty (a true statement, made in the hope that you’ll go away or pay for an expensive repair). They might hope you’re sufficiently ignorant of Consumer Law that you don’t realise you are actually still entitled to a free repair in these circumstances (provided the car was serviced correctly, even if independently).

You can download the official Mitsubishi 10-year warranty terms and conditions here >

Hope that helps,

John Cadogan

Mitsubishi 10-Year Warranty: Can You Service Outside the Dealer Network?

QUESTION

ANSWER