Manufacturer can't find or repair fault under warranty

foxy1509

In Feb 2009, I bought a used Focus from a trader (i.e. non-franchised) on finance. The finance has since been repaid. It was a year old when I bought it and the remainder of the manufacturer warranty (2 years left) transferred with the car purchase.

The car has recently developed a fault which on a number of occasions has left me stranded on the hard shoulder of motorways without any response from the accelerator.

The car is now with my local franchised Ford repairer for the fourth time. On the first three occasions they couldn't find the fault, but on the last occasion, their technician did speak to Ford UK who gave him advice over what 'might' be the problem, and he allegedly followed the advice they gave him over what to do to fix it.

Needless to say it didn't fix the problem.

My question is, what are my rights? If they still can't find the problem, can I insist that they take the car back and give me a replacement or cash as an alternative?

Each time they have the car it costs me money to have the loan car they give me - I have to pay an excess waiver or risk having a £1000 excess in the event of a claim, and the cost of the petrol for the smaller engine in the loan car is almost double what I pay in my own car. Can I reclaim those costs?

Any advice anyone can give me (with legislation etc to back it up!) would be very much appreciated.

johnnyroper

Firstly it is not the manufacturer that can't fix fault it is the dealer.

The problem with faults like this is if it does mot play up for them or log a fault code then you ate almost working blind,having said that I have a tranny connect that had accelerator potentiometer fail giving no throttle.simple job to do but dealer will not change unless it can be proved to be at fault as ford will not reimburse them if it tests ok,this is the reason dealers phone technical for advice if they say change and it does not work dealer still gets paid.
As for changing car getting Cash this will not happen they will just keep having it in,maybe if car was purchased from them you could work something out.
I also doubt you can claim loan car expense back as dealers provide car as a goodwill gesture but any insurance or fuel costs are down to you.

Sandoval

Unfortunately you're always gonna have a problem when the garage can't find a fault with the car.

I'm not disputing that there is a problem but from their perspective there is just your word to go on, and no one is gonna take a car back with just the word of the owner that there is a problem with it but no actual 'evidence'.

ukjoel

The fault needs to be documented.

When you break down how long does it last for,
Is your car being recovered or does it sort itself out after a few minutes.

If its being recovered dont let the recovery guy try and fix it. This can often wipe out fault codes that are stored making it harder once at the garage.

May be worth trying another main dealer - quality can vary significantly.

Document each and every fault - if you have a video camera take it with you and then record whats happening. Note how long you have been driving in what conditions, is the car warmed up or still cold.

Also out of curiousity who owned the car before you. If the car was only a year old then may be relevent. Fleet cars dont get sold that early usually, so possibly an ex rental (but even those are often on buyback agreements with manufacturer.

Agree with you about the frustration though. Intermittent faults with no codes along with waterleaks are a garages nightmare.

If all else fails try and engine specialist. Main dealers are very much on the clock with efficiency being measured above all else.

Your diagnostic time on first 3 visits may have been as little as 5 minutes a time (or less) and may explain why nothing was picked up.