Bought a car 3 months ago, problems not covered under warranty

arcon5

motorguy wrote: »

So heres one for you then

As per your recommendation, the O/P goes down the legal route straight away and six month later ends up in court.

Dealer says

"heres our procedure for checking faults before a car goes out"
"heres 50 examples of how when we find a fault we fix it"
"heres the document produced during the inspection - clutch checked, no fault"

They then bring in some expert who says "well, yes, a clutch could be burnt out in three months if someone was unfamiliar with a new car, not used to sitting upright, perhaps riding the clutch, etc, etc"

They then also produce historical docs showing how in the past they've had to replace clutches on various new cars after 3000 miles because of misuse by the customer. (i've seen clutches burnt out on new cars in less time)

Also, the customer tried to claim for a new air con condenser off their warranty but it turned out that it had been damaged when they owned the car - probably by a stone.

And they then say "well we told the customer to contact our head office and they never bothered, they just took this to court"

Wheres your "fair wear and tear now"?

Are you really standing by "take this straight to court, you will win"??

If they can prove the clutch was burnt out then that's accidental damage by op.

But there's no suggestion of that here - and they'd need to prove it based on the balance of probabilities.

But now your changing ops situation to try support your misinformation.
Your taking this thread well out of context!

arcon5

motorguy wrote: »

You said "if no manufacturers warranty was given a consumer has no rights."

I said "No, if apple didnt provide a warranty then the customer would have statutory rights under the SOGA."

And you replied, no, no, no, its actually this "Any rights of redress against the manufacturer, given to the consumer under a product warranty, are in addition to their statutory rights against the retailer"

ie, a warranty is over and above a customers statutory rights.

In addition to statutory rights, if the warranty goes over and above statutory rights in terms of its offerings then that's down to the terms of the warranty.

Ops said the warranty might not even cover it - and if it doesn't op would still have rights under SOGA if she hasn't damaged it herself and used it in the way it was intended. For which you are implying she wouldn't simply because it's a 'wear item'.

So heres one for you then

As per your recommendation, the O/P goes down the legal route straight away and six month later ends up in court.

Dealer says

"heres our procedure for checking faults before a car goes out"
"heres 50 examples of how when we find a fault we fix it"
"heres the document produced during the inspection - clutch checked, no fault"

They then bring in some expert who says "well, yes, a clutch could be burnt out in three months if someone was unfamiliar with a new car, not used to sitting upright, perhaps riding the clutch, etc, etc"

They then also produce historical docs showing how in the past they've had to replace clutches on various new cars after 3000 miles because of misuse by the customer. (i've seen clutches burnt out on new cars in less time)
[snip]
And they then say "well we told the customer to contact our head office and they never bothered, they just took this to court"

You're well and truly taking this out of context now. If they want to prove it's not faulty but ops damaged it then fine, but there's absolutely no suggestion there that they think op has caused the damage!

Producing statistics to show how many clutches on that model of car is hardly evidence of anything either!

What the law says and what is deemed to be fair are not necessarily the same thing.

If you have to demonstrate you checked a car then having a verified check list showing all that was done will cover you in that case. It doesn't mean no faults are present or will develop, just that they weren't there at the time of the inspection.

Aye, I understand what he's saying, but a checklist saying no faults were present at point of contract being formed is meaningless. SOGA isn't just about whether something works at point of sale or not, it goes much further than than.


I'm happy to agree court would be the slower option - but ops clearly unaware of what rights she has or even how to proceed (hence being here), and basically implying she has no rights simply because its a 'wear' item is misleading and factually incorrect.

motorguy

arcon5 wrote: »

In addition to statutory rights, if the warranty goes over and above statutory rights in terms of its offerings then that's down to the terms of the warranty.

Ops said the warranty might not even cover it - and if it doesn't op would still have rights under SOGA if she hasn't damaged it herself and used it in the way it was intended. For which you are implying she wouldn't simply because it's a 'wear item'.



You're well and truly taking this out of context now. If they want to prove it's not faulty but ops damaged it then fine, but there's absolutely no suggestion there that they think op has caused the damage!

Producing statistics to show how many clutches on that model of car is hardly evidence of anything either!

Its the sort of thing dealers will do to prove its not necessarily their fault, if they have to go to court.

arcon5 wrote: »

Aye, I understand what he's saying, but a checklist saying no faults were present at point of contract being formed is meaningless. SOGA isn't just about whether something works at point of sale or not, it goes much further than than.

"The seller must prove the fault was not present at the time of sale"

arcon5 wrote: »

I'm happy to agree court would be the slower option - but ops clearly unaware of what rights she has or even how to proceed (hence being here), and basically implying she has no rights simply because its a 'wear' item is misleading and factually incorrect.

I'm not saying the o/p has no rights, i'm saying its not the guaranteed solution that you might think.

I keep repeating this, but you keep not reading it - i'm totally behind the o/p - it should be sorted and if theres any fairness in the world it will be. I just didnt like the way at the first sign of hassle the seller produced the "well heres the evidence it was fine at the time of sale". I predicted they would and i can see why they did but I think thats a bad sign.

Anyways, you've an opinion and i've an opinion and clearly we're not going to agree, so happy to leave it at that if you are - the O/P seems to have some traction now and hopefully the finance company will add some weight to get this sorted quickly.

Charliezoo

Thanks for all the advice so far. Nissan UK have been unhelpful and dismissive so far unfortunately. They're not responding to any of my requests to speak to someone and aren't returning my calls. Very disappointing, this will likely be my 3rd and final Nissan car.

I have some questions about the fault itself if anyone minds using their expertise to help me.

Is this definitely a worn/burnt out clutch that has occurred in the 4 months we've driven it for? I genuinely had no idea this was an issue with the clutch, I have owned a car where the clutch went many years ago (it'd done 110k I'll add) and it was a totally different situation to what we've experienced with the Qashqai. The Qashqai's biting point felt like it was in the right place, not high at all, the problem only ever occurred when pulling away in first gear from stationary, from 2nd gear onwards or in reverse the car drove completely normally. There was never any smell or smoke from the clutch and the clutch never felt hard to operate or had any rough feel when operated. There was never any difficulty selecting gears, stiffness, judder, excessive noise or unusual pedal feel. If I'd never driven the car before I would just assume it was very gutless at pulling away.

I'm avoiding phoning the garage simply because I want to hold onto the courtesy car for as long as possible but when I do have to speak to them I need to ask a few questions about what checks they've done to ascertain that this is definitely a worn/burnt clutch. If anyone can help me with good questions to ask the garage I'd be very grateful.

Thanks again.

Charliezoo

Thanks for all the advice. This is a tricky one because I agree that the clutch is a wear and tear item that can be worn quickly with bad driving but I truly believe that we're not to blame for this. The fact that we've had the car for so little time and its only 20 months old and done 14k is what I seem to be struggling to get the dealership and Nissan to take into account. My dad was a driving instructor with what must've been heavily abused clutches in his cars, he still managed to get 70k at least our of his learner cars.

Santander have acted quickly and sent a letter to the dealership asking what they intend to do about it, I popped in there yesterday to pick up some paperwork that Santander require and left absolutely fuming. I had to sit through a lecture about riding the clutch and how they advise some people to buy automatics to save them the cost of repeat clutch problems because their driving style doesn't suit manuals - sorry but that's irrelevant to us as we've never burnt a clutch out in the 19 and 15 years we've been driving for. I was surprised to see that the engineers report stated that the biting point was very high and when hot the car was over revving, things neither of us had noticed even though we'd done a couple of hundred motorway miles the weekend before. I was also angry to see that the service we were promised had been done before buying the car hadn't been done at all, we now have a car that's overdue it's major service, £245 on top of the £870 for the clutch. The leaking condenser will potentially cost £745 if warranty won't cover it.

I popped into the showroom to calmly (although in a loud voice) explain what had happened. They did seem genuinely concerned about everything that had happened and took copies of the paperwork to look into it themselves. On the way out we bumped into the salesman who sold us the car, he was absolutely mortified and asked us to ring him. He said he remembered everything about the sale of the car and would back up what was said about the service, etc.

What an awful situation, I feel completely ripped off by this whole experience.

motorguy

Charliezoo wrote: »

What an awful situation, I feel completely ripped off by this whole experience.

Thats horrible.

When you spend big dough on a car, part of that is for hassle free motoring. :eek:

Hope somebody steps up and sorts it soon.

Mad101daN

I just read this whole thread, how did it go in the end?

bigjl

In my experience a clutch problem is mpre likely to occur in higher gears under load.

A clutch is not under much load in 1st gear.

My wifes Clio with the 1.5dci lump had a very high clutch biting point when we bought it in 2009 with less than 30k on the clutch.

Still in the same place and now with a very slight occasional judder when cold.

Is it just me that thinks the fault diagnosed by Nissan doesn't fit with the symptoms of a burnt out clutch?

Obviously i am at a disadvantage as i have never driven the vehicle.