A service contract is only as useful as the place it sends your car. Many contracts say covered repairs must be done at a licensed repair facility, and many add a condition on top of that: the shop must be one the provider has approved, or you must contact the provider before any work starts. Read that clause before you compare anything else. It decides where you can take the car on a bad day, and whether the shop you already trust is allowed to do the job.
What to find in the form
Look for three things: who may perform repairs, how approval is requested, and what happens if the shop is not on the provider's list. Some contracts let you use any licensed shop. Others require a shop in the provider's network. Some allow a shop of your choice but limit payment to what the provider would have paid a network shop. Write down which of those arrangements the form describes, in the words the form uses, before you rely on your memory of what the salesperson said.
Questions to ask before you pay
Put these to the seller or provider in writing, and keep the answers:
Can my regular independent shop be used, and if not, what is the process for adding it? Who calls for authorization, me or the shop? How long does approval usually take, and what happens to the car while I wait? Is there a written list of approved shops, and when was it last updated? If I move or travel, does the list change, and which shops near my route are on it?
Test the list against your life
Take the approved shop list and check it against the addresses you actually use: home, work, the route you drive most, and the towns you visit. A list can look long on paper and still contain no shop within easy reach of your street. Call one or two of the nearby listed shops and ask whether they accept this provider's authorization today, how they handle the approval call, and whether they will work from the contract number. Do not assume a listed shop will take your car just because its name appears on a page.
Keep the paper that proves approval
When a claim is opened, save the approval number, the name of the person who gave it, the time of the call, and the written estimate. If the provider later questions a bill, the record of who approved the work tends to settle the argument. Memory of a phone call usually does not. Keep these with the signed contract and the copy of the sample form, so the whole file lives in one place.
Where the published figures fit
This site's tables show which providers post a sample contract you can read before you buy, and they carry the other published terms we track. Use them to narrow your list, then read the contract that will actually govern your purchase. The sample is useful, but the signed form is the document that counts. Our scoring approach is explained on the methodology page, so you can see what the tables measure and what they leave out.