Grounds for rejecting a car

BeenThroughItAll

marks87 wrote: »

I've seen that suggested elsewhere, but they're not. It's definitely something to do with the mechanics of the car.

I had an update email from the general manager who says they're still waiting for an update from the manufacturer.

Actually, I don't know I'm being cloak and dagger about the car itself! It's a Renault Captur. And so it's Renault they're waiting to hear from - which as I said can take anything from days to weeks to months.

Good luck then. It took me a year of arguing with Renault to get them to take my car back earlier this year. I only owned it for 356 days, and they had the thing for 222 of those before they'd take the damn thing off me. If they'd just given me a new one when I first had a problem I'd have been happy, whereas now I take delight in putting as many people as I can off buying a Renault, ever.

sheramber

W e had an intermittent clonk with a new Renault car.. Renault would take nothing to do with it. The car had been back so many times that the are manager of th garage chain involved had to be present to hand the car back.

They came up with different reasons and solutions that didn't work.

We had had two previous Renault cars and my husband had had two Renault vans but we now wouldn't buy another Renault.

We tried to reject it but as it was in Renault finance they were the owners and they refused to reject it, saying Renault had advised them there was no problem.

We never solved the problem and in the end traded it in for another make. We would now not buy another renault.

A couple of year ago our Skoda developed a problem with the radio signal. Despite many attempts the garage were stumped. Fortunately, the car was under warranty so there was no cost to us.

A complaint to Arnold Clark himself- per the leaflets on display in the garage- resulted in a £70 cheque as compensation for the fuel costs involved in repeatedly visiting the garage.

After 21/2 years of repeated visits a VW car in another area developed the same fault. The engineers in that garage were able to replicate the fault and solved the problem.

It turned out that the ariel imbedded in the front windscreen was broken. My husband had suggested this to them months before but 'the engineers' said they had tested it and it was working.

A new windscreen was fitted and Eureka, the radio worked fine.

The service manager did explain that they had to follow a set method of investigating a fault as laid down by Skoda. They could not skip any bits.

We did come to 'an arrangement' with the service manager once the car was fixed.

marks87

That doesn't bode well...

Of course, I'm technically not bound to Arnold Clark. Any Renault-approved garage will be able to do warranty repairs - and given they would have no vested interest, might be more prepared to say if things are very wrong.

Should the need arise, I paid the deposit by credit card would be covered by s.75. Although it's on PCP so I guess I'd be covered anyway?

BeenThroughItAll

marks87 wrote: »

That doesn't bode well...

Of course, I'm technically not bound to Arnold Clark. Any Renault-approved garage will be able to do warranty repairs - and given they would have no vested interest, might be more prepared to say if things are very wrong.

Should the need arise, I paid the deposit by credit card would be covered by s.75. Although it's on PCP so I guess I'd be covered anyway?

Again, good luck. I went through three different dealerships from different groups with Renault's agreement, but they were all equally incompetent.

marks87

After sending an email on 22nd September outlining the faults, I received a follow-up on 29th September saying they were still waiting for Renault to get back to them.

How much longer should I give this? It's starting to become a bit of a joke now (and all the while I'm being slowly driven mad by the incessant buzzing from the driver-side door).

dannyrst

That depends what you're looking for as a resolution now.

Have you been driving the car since you reported the issues? If so, you aren't going to be able to hand the car back and get a full refund. You'll have to pay some towards the extra age and mileage you've put on the car. Chances are, AC will not accept a refund either, so you're looking at possibility of small claims.

marks87

dannyrst wrote: »

That depends what you're looking for as a resolution now.

Have you been driving the car since you reported the issues? If so, you aren't going to be able to hand the car back and get a full refund. You'll have to pay some towards the extra age and mileage you've put on the car. Chances are, AC will not accept a refund either, so you're looking at possibility of small claims.

I wasn't necessarily looking for a full refund. I'm happy to start a new PCP contract on a new car, although I'd expect either some money back from my current contract, or a discount on the new one to reflect the fact the current car wasn't up to scratch.

In other words, I'm happy to pay for the usage I've had, adjusted to reflect the the fact it wasn't in a condition expected of a delivery mileage car. If it does get to the rejection stage I don't think that's unreasonable.

EDIT: However I should point out that my preferred remedy, having spoken to AC since originally starting this thread, is for my current car to be fully and properly repaired. It's the option with the least hassle.

pulliptears

I've handed a car back to AC for a full refund, ironically because they couldn't fix a vibration.
Of the 6 weeks we owned the vehicle (it wasn't new, it was 2 years old) AC had it for 4 of them. They handed it back to us 3 times declaring it fixed. After the third time we asked for a full refund and received a full refund the following day.

Not a fan of AC by a long chalk, but they were very reasonable over it.

marks87

After sending the list of faults on 22nd September, I've heard nothing except the "we're still working on it" email of 29th September.

I sent a reminder email on 17th December asking when I might expect a response, but so far I've had no reply. Even allowing for Christmas, I don't think that's acceptable. Even a simple "we're still waiting for Renault" reply would have sufficed (to which I could have then replied asking for a timescale - i.e. I at least know there's an open communication channel).

I'm about to send another email to the general manager, and I was wondering if people think it's reasonable for me to say that if I don't receive a response within 7 days, my next communication will be a formal rejection of the car under the Consumer Rights Act 2015?

In parallel, I was also wondering about contacting the finance company? The literature I got from them said that they can get involved if/when there's problems with the car because technically they're the legal owners until the finance is paid off.

Mercdriver

Nothing unusual about a garage manager giving you his company car in lieu of a courtesy car. When I had an intermittent fault with my Merc, the courtesy cars were already booked out, and so I had the after care manager's car while they tried to replicate my fault, which they managed to do and fixed. Most garages have no more than 2 or 3 official courtesy cars and they are usually booked out in advance for weeks.