Leaky door seal in new Ka

fox2319

My mother in law bought a Ford Ka a few months ago which she's generally quite happy with. However, she's noticed a 'lot' of water inside the car when it's raining. Not exactly huge puddles but the seat and carpet are wet to the touch and it makes the in-laws feel pretty cold when used (both are retired / pensioners). The car has only done around 1000 miles since new. One of her friends got a Ka at the same sort of time and it's also got similar problems. Theirs seems to cause significant condensation inside the car when used which freezes on the inside.

The garage have spent a few weeks looking into it (they're a main Ford dealer) and have contacted Ford about possible fixes. Ford have apparently said that although they acknowledge that there is a problem (not exactly sure how official that is), there aren't enough complaints for them to look into a fix / recall to address it. Consequently she's been given 2 options:

1 - Keep the car and live with it as-is
2 - Swap the car for one from the garage with a similar number of miles.

She's currently mulling it over and I was wondering if their offer is fair or if there's any other alternative she should be pushing?

TradePro

The dealer is being quite fair I would say, but I definitely wouldn't take option 1, over time the damp will create further problems I expect. I would take option 2, or even better, have them keep trying to fix it, surely they must be able to find it eventually.

Is it the newer shape Ka? If so, they are built alongside the Fiat 500, and share some components. There are many more 500's around (the new Ka hasn't sold very well compared to it's predecessor for some reason), is it possible that Fiat have had a similar problem and managed to find a solution?

Might be worth checking out Fiat 500 forums..?

fox2319

Cheer's, will check out the 500 forums.

She bought the car new and is a bit reluctant to get a second hand one instead. I'll have a bit more of a scour of the various forums and call her later in the week.

TradePro

If she bought the car brand new and it has an irreparable fault, there should be no problem in getting Ford UK to replace the car I would expect, speak to their main Customer Relations helpline when you have an opportunity.

mattyprice4004

What else do you want them to do? They can't repair it, so have offered to replace.

UsernameAlreadyExists

mattyprice4004 wrote: »

What else do you want them to do? They can't repair it, so have offered to replace.

They can't repair it? Unnacceptable.
Would you take a 1000 mile car in probably a different colour and different spec level, and driven bouncing off the rev limiter since the day of purchase? They chose this car from brand new, and it's faulty. So fix it.

Come to think of it ... a car on the forecourt with 1000 miles is likely to be an ex-demonstrator. They're going to have been driven by a load of people, including the staff, with no consideration what-so-ever.

colino

Not entirely unknown fault, but don't ponder too long. Get it back into them to fix and take it from there. Ford are sharing info. all the time on tweaks to their cars.