Car bought in Feb, Air Con not working, where do we stand?

Flyboy152

chim289 wrote: »

Having contacted the finance company and sending yet another letter to the dealer we have received a call from him today. He has offered to pay half which had he replied to our original email we would have accepted however we are not sure what to do. As it stands he seems happy to allow us to have it done where we want it (this is tbh probably the best place locally for a/c so he can have no complaints) so we're glad about that as they are good, it will come with a year warranty and we know that it will be done properly, nothing else will be messed around with and it will be done within the next couple of weeks. (Having done a few hundred miles in the car this weekend we can vouch for the fact that it is unbearable without the a/c as there is no air flow whatsoever without it so t get it done asap would be fantastic). BUT he's only contacting us now as we've got heavy whereas before we were trying to be nice about it, he's trying to fob me off over the phone about how he only gives 3 month warranty, not 6 and he doesn't cover a/c on it and although soga does cover it for 6 months he's trying to scare me off saying a court would find in his favour because it's only air con not a vital mechanical part of the car. So because of that I want to push him for more. ALso I don't want to accept his first offer so to speak I want to try to get more out of him and there's a big part that wants to go the whole way out of principle. A dealer should have known about the problems that the Galaxys etc have with the a/c so he should have had it tested imo before selling it. We only found out about the problems afterwards and through specific Ford Owners club searches, it shouldn't be down to us to get a car tested for a/c problems before we buy it so imo he should pay for it all, especially considering the amount that we've had to chase him. But I don't want to push him too far and insist that he has his own people look at it or to end up in court as we need the a/c now not in 6 months time.

So do we
1. Accept half andf half and get it over and done with
2. Push for a bit more & then accept somewhere in between if he offers that
3. Wait for the finance company to get back in touch to see what they will offer
4. Push the dealer for full payment but risk having to spend the entire summer with no a/c while we are waiting for it to go to court (or would the finance company have sorted it before that point)

Advice very much appreciated, thank you

I think your best bet is to contact the finance company and keep them abreast of any communication with the seller. Let them know that you are not satisfied with the sellers solution and leave the ball in their court.

Obviously the fiance compnay has been in touch with the seller and told them to sort it out pronto and they are just testing your resolve. They are assuming that the finance company will say, "well you have been offered something, you might as well take it." But most finance companies do not (or at least shoudn't) treat section seventy-five as lightly as that.

pitkin2020

chim289 wrote: »

FAO Tilt & others wanting to help

The dealer has chosen not to respond to any email, message or letter that we have written to him. What is our next step?

Just to confirm some details that I have noticed while skimming through the thread, can't be bothered getting deeply into it, I only came for advice not a pasting as others have pointed out to certain posters.

The info I gave about brakes etc was as background info about the dealer. The brakes were knackered but his MOT place said they were fine. We had specifically asked for the brkes to be changed but as his mechanic had given them a full bill of health despite us asking it was clear we wouldn't get anywhere by asking him again to do it. Brake discs aren't hard to change so we did them ourselves.

The car has climate control so therefore when the temp outside is 2 degrees, you can't put the a/c on. If we set the temp inside the car to say 20 degrees, the air con will only come on if the temp in the car is currently over 20 degrees. So if the temp is 2 degrees as it was when we test drove the car it will be the heater that gets the temp up to our desired temp, not the a/c taking it down. We only knew about the fault with the a/c once the temp went over our desired in car temperature. There is no individual a/c button, it all works through the c/c.

We purchased a canister hoping that it just needed a regas, trying to keep costs down - it was cheaper to buy this than to take to a garage for a regas. All we were doing was trying to save some money, we had no idea it was faulty until it would not take a charge from the gas. We haven't tried to repair the system or touch it in any way other than connecting a can in an attempt to refill the system.

The car was advertised as having a/c. Due to being unable to test the system we bought it in good faith that it was working. For all I know the dealer may not have known about the fault if he did not have it tested himself. I believe he purchased the car in the winter also so would only have been able to test the heater part of the climate control. At no point were we told that the a/c was not working.

The car is a 2003 Ford Galaxy - car is unusable on a hot day without a/c as it's a big space with lots of glass. It has 1 previous owner and 85,000 miles on the clock (all backed up by a huge pile of receipts including the original Hendys receipt). We paid £6,000 for the car, £3,000 on finance. Book price means this is extremely high, but living on the South coast means we have to pay an extortianate amount for cars compared to the rest of the country. The same car 200 miles away would have been about £5,000.

Any other relevant questions I will be happy to answer, but I'm not getting into rucks over who did what, who said what etc, I just want advice, cheers.

So you didn't even take it for a proper refill to begin with, the DIY method could have damaged the aircon system.
The dealer has been more than fair seeing you didn't give him the opportunity to inspect or even repair the system before you tried to do it yourself then got another garage to look it. I would snap his hand off for half the costs its more than generous.

chim289

Yes Tilt, it was advertised as having air con (I did point this out to him on the phone today). We have considered repairing and pursuing afterwards, but with tax, a new exhaust and 2 new tyres on the horizon we're not really in a position to do that.

Flyboy, I will get DH to authorise me to talk to the finance company tomorrow to find out their position on the matter.

Thank you very much both of you for your help.

eschaton

chim289 wrote: »

The car is a 2003 Ford Galaxy - car is unusable on a hot day without a/c as it's a big space with lots of glass.

Do the windows go down?

chim289 wrote: »

It has 1 previous owner and 85,000 miles on the clock (all backed up by a huge pile of receipts including the original Hendys receipt).

Have you tried to contact previous owner to see if C/C was worrking when they flogged it?

chim289 wrote: »

We paid £6,000 for the car, £3,000 on finance. Book price means this is extremely high, but living on the South coast means we have to pay an extortianate amount for cars compared to the rest of the country. The same car 200 miles away would have been about £5,000.

Are you being serious here? Do you not consider travelling 200 miles to buy a car and save £1,000 a good idea?

s_b

Tilt wrote: »

Mmm, tricky one as you highlighted in point 4. Can you remind me that the car was advertised as having Air con when you bought it? If so then your rights under SOGA will be as they were when you made the original compliant. The problem is that although you can persue for a full repair at no cost to you, if you take him to court, you will as you say probably end up going through the summer without the air con working. Having said that, you could get it fixed and then persue him for the full repair cost afterwards. I'm not sure what (if anything) the finance co will do unless you rejected the car but i'm not sure that you are in a position to do that now. as you say, the dealer's comment; 'the court won't do anything because its just air-con', is quite frankly just an attempt to fob you off and an insult to your intelligence IMHO.

the sensible folk are being ignored by the la la im not listening people tilt

quiet frankly i would love the supplying dealer to read this thread and tell consumer to take me to court seeing as they have had their hands in the pie

pitkin2020

SB this is another one of those threads where the OP only wants to listen to what they want to hear. If the engine blew up within 1 week of purchase and I decided to strip it down to see if I could fix it, then realise I don't have a clue what i'm doing could I get the dealer to fix at their cost as obviously it was broke anyway..........

JohnM5206

"we can vouch for the fact that it is unbearable without the a/c as there is no air flow whatsoever" - that does seem odd - Aircon will simply cool the air but does not change the basic function of the heating/cooling/ventilation? Any failed aircon I have driven is still capable of circulating the air through the blower motor.

mambo69

The car has climate control so therefore when the temp outside is 2 degrees, you can't put the a/c on. If we set the temp inside the car to say 20 degrees, the air con will only come on if the temp in the car is currently over 20 degrees. So if the temp is 2 degrees as it was when we test drove the car it will be the heater that gets the temp up to our desired temp, not the a/c taking it down. We only knew about the fault with the a/c once the temp went over our desired in car temperature. There is no individual a/c button, it all works through the c/c.

I have a mondeo with c/c and am sure it works at temperatures above 4 degrees, and since feb there have been many days like this, so i dont think your correct. once the outside temp is above 4 degress i think its the a/c working to get the temperature

chim289

Having just checked the title of this website I can confirm it is called Money Saving Expert. I don't quite understand why I'm getting started on for trying to Save Money. We were hoping that the it would be a simple fix that would have cost us a hundred quid or so, in which case we would have sorted it ourselves and not bothered the dealer. I don't quite see what is wrong with that and how we have done anything wrong. Incidentally the specialists we used are the same ones that the dealer himself would have used so we haven't had some dodgy bloke pulling it apart. No-one has touched it, no one has made it rusty. If it wasn't for the fact that the cost was so high I wouldn't have even considered contacting the dealer I would have swallowed the cost.

Yes the car has windows, yes they go down. I don't quite see what that has got to do with it when the car was ADVERTISED AS HAVING AIR CONDITIONING.

Why did I not travel up north to look at cars? Because by the time we'd spent a few months travelling back anfd forth looking at cars that dealers promised us were in great condition but were in actual fact wrecks we'd have spent more than £1000 on baby sitters and diesel.

Thanks very much to those of you who have helped (Tilt & Flyboy), now I must remember not to come here for simple advice again.

s_b

from a proper warranty company i use

exclusions.......any claim arising from foreign material introduced into the fuel/cooling/airconditioning system,also failure wholly or partly due to negligence,abuse or accidental damage