Warranty provider cuts 75 employees, hints at more layoffs coming

Protect My Car, a St. Petersburg automobile warranty and maintenance plan provider, laid off 75 employees last month in what may be the first of several rounds of job cuts.

In a letter to the state posted online Thursday March 2, the company says the cuts “must be made due to unforeseeable business circumstances.” It did not detail what the circumstance were but said that “based on the best available information available at this time, there will be a mass layoff” and called the 75 jobs cuts “the first separation.”

The eliminated jobs were at the company’s offices at 570 Carillon Parkway. Protect My Car is a d/b/a for Advance Marketing and Processing Inc. The company’s LinkedIn page says it was founded in 2005 and employs between 201 and 500 people.

There currently are no open positions available on its website.

Sara Lynch, Protect My Car’s senior vice president of human resources and the person who wrote the letter, did not respond to questions about how many people are employed at the company, how many total jobs will be cut or what led to the decision to lay off employees.

The letter was sent to meet WARN Notice requirements — Federal law requires companies to provide states with Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification notices when making job cuts. Protect My Car’s letter did not include which positions were eliminated but said the 75 people lost their jobs on Feb. 23, which is the same day the letter was written.

The state was notified March 1 and the cuts appeared on the Florida’s WARN database March 2.

According to its website, Protect My Car “aspires to be the premier provider of extended car warranty and extended vehicle warranty service products which we will market and administer with integrity – always with the needs of our customers at the forefront.”