Problems with brand new Vauxhall Corsa

glauber_berti

TBF to the lease company, they never said I wasn't driving it right. It was Vauxhall that said that.

Thanks for all the replies. I've come to the conclusion that Vauxhall are just taking the proverbial so will push it with them that the cost of repair should be covered by warranty due to timeframe/mileage.

Oh, and I chose the car mainly because it was the cheapest 5 door available. However, I've recently started a new job that involves a fair bit of travelling so the MPG would help keep costs down a bit (or so I thought!).

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

FWIW, we have a 2.1 litre diesel which spends quite a long time doing short journeys and then occasional long journeys. No hints of any problems. Never been over 2,000 revs aside from a few seconds, driven to speed limits.

I would say that it is not incumbent on a buyer to know about the limitations of some hidden engineering (though some posters on here believe consumers are supposed to know how cars work in intimate detail). If the dealer were to depend on this it should have been be clearly brought to your attention before the sale - they cannot rely on you discovering this after the sale when reading the manual, for example.

5 weeks, 1000 miles, 200 miles a week, 30 miles a day, probably more with the odd day not using it, that is not stupidly low mileage and unless someone is driving down to the local shops 5 times a day, Also, in terms of a 10,000 miles a year lease it is bang on target and it is hard to see how you could be expected to drive it differently given that target mileage.

glauber_berti

Bit of an update - just picked up my car from the dealer. Ended up costing £420 so slightly less than expected.

Just got the standard line of 'This happens when you don't drive it properly' that I've been getting all day from the woman on the service desk. When I asked what 'properly' means she just told me to "do whatever it says in the manual".

Turns out it was the sensor pipe that had blown. Does this shed any further light on whether it's likely to have been caused by driving style?

Pipe cost £54. Rest was all labour costs of fitting and clearing out DPF.

Vauxhall Customer Service have said they'll get back to me tomorrow but not holding out much hope of a refund. Where do I go from here? CAB?

AdrianC

It isn't driving style. That is absolutely fair and square a warranty issue. DPF after a thousand miles from new? I think not!

photome

OOO in my opinion.

No way should you be paying after 5 weeks and a 1000 miles.

I do think salesman should tell the truth when people want a diesel, you see these small diesel cars being driven by old folks to the local shop and back once a week, when they clearly should be driving a petrol model

Strider590

AdrianC wrote: »

I strongly suspect the OP was blinded by low VED and high official MPG figures, so just assumed diesel was the obvious choice...

But even if the DPF is blocked (unlikely), that wouldn't have caused a hose to burst.

I doubt was even that, most people just don't want to think about all that stuff, they just want a shiny new car on the drive.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

glauber_berti wrote: »

Bit of an update - just picked up my car from the dealer. Ended up costing £420 so slightly less than expected.

Just got the standard line of 'This happens when you don't drive it properly' that I've been getting all day from the woman on the service desk. When I asked what 'properly' means she just told me to "do whatever it says in the manual".

Turns out it was the sensor pipe that had blown. Does this shed any further light on whether it's likely to have been caused by driving style?

Pipe cost £54. Rest was all labour costs of fitting and clearing out DPF.

Vauxhall Customer Service have said they'll get back to me tomorrow but not holding out much hope of a refund. Where do I go from here? CAB?

So what does it say in the manual? Have you done anything different - I suspect not!

BeenThroughItAll

welfayre wrote: »

If the lease company refuse to cover the repair under warranty as they should then yes the OP should consider bending the truth. In my experience lease companies/dealers/management companies will bend the truth in circles if it saves them some money and if the only thing the OP will get if they accept responsibility is a £480 bill

The lease company have already proven they're willing to do as much by peddling the "your driving it wrong" line when anyone with a little bit of knowledge on the subject (which they should have since they sell them) would no that that's not the case here.

Secondly it's the salespersons job to ask those sort of questions and give the buyer all they info they need to make an informed decision. The buyer might have no knowledge on those sort of things and goes to the "expert" for help in making the right decision. If salesperson didn't mention that diesels aren't got town cars then they are to blame not the buyer.

There's no excuse for lying to get a result IMO. Be factual. In cases like this there is NO NEED whatsoever to bend the truth/lie as it's clearly a warranty issue.


It's not a car salesman's job to tell people everything. It's a car salesman's job to sell a product; they don't have to, nor are expected to care whether it's the most appropriate product - they have to assume a level of intelligence on the customer's part, which they could rightly argue extends to reading the manual when they buy a complex machine like a car, and/or doing some research before they buy.


The car salesman's job is to spend the bare minimum of time imparting the bare minimum of information necessary to get the customer to sign on the dotted line.

photome

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

There's no excuse for lying to get a result IMO. Be factual. In cases like this there is NO NEED whatsoever to bend the truth/lie as it's clearly a warranty issue.


It's not a car salesman's job to tell people everything. It's a car salesman's job to sell a product; they don't have to, nor are expected to care whether it's the most appropriate product - they have to assume a level of intelligence on the customer's part, which they could rightly argue extends to reading the manual when they buy a complex machine like a car, and/or doing some research before they buy.


The car salesman's job is to spend the bare minimum of time imparting the bare minimum of information necessary to get the customer to sign on the dotted line.

that would depend very much on what questions were asked by the buyer

even then, one should never trust a car salesman

BeenThroughItAll

photome wrote: »

that would depend very much on what questions were asked by the buyer

even then, one should never trust a car salesman

Quite right - a car salesman should answer questions truthfully, but if the customer doesn't ask:

"Will the DPF clog and land me with a big bill within a few months if I only drive it five miles a day?"

or

"If I only drive 5 miles a day, would it be a better choice to buy a petrol? Could you explicitly state that whether this diesel is the right choice?"

He isn't going to say anything. Ultimately, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to expect that if someone's paying out thousands of pounds for a product that they'll have done at least a modicum of research.

It's not like the diesel/petrol debate is hard to come by on the internet, or that DPF issues haven't been covered at length on consumer TV programmes, car buying advice websites, etc.