Seat Altea Gearbox Issues

Newman1000

Afternoon
After some advice please. I bought a 2011 SEAT Althea 1.6TDI in February 2016 from a SEAT Dealer. At the time it had 26000 miles on the clock and we have done 10000 miles since then. The car came with a year’s warranty and was serviced and MOT’d (by the same dealer) in February 2017 with no issues.

On Tuesday my wife was driving down the motorway when the gearbox suddenly started missing gears and then would not change out of 4th. RAC attended and the car was towed back to the same garage. At the moment they are still not exactly sure what the problem but have charged me a total of £450 to remove and inspect the gearbox with the added possibility of up to a £1000 depending on the repair.

My view of all of this is that a car with a full service history and only 36000 miles to its name should not have major gearbox problems. I have also been doing a bit of research and have found that this seemed to be a common problem with SEAT/VW DSG gearboxes from those years ( 2011 – 2013).
I have not raised any issues with the garage yet but feel that SEAT should at the very least be making a contribution to the repairs as it is to my mind a design fault rather than just wear and tear . I also don’t class a gearbox as a “consumable” and would expect it to last at least 100k miles before any issues .

Is it worth taking this up with SEAT directly or should I go through the garage or am I wasting my time?

davidwood123

You're wasting your time

verityboo

Unfortunately the VW 1.6TDi with DSG gearbox does not have a good reputation. The VW Golf with the same engine/gearbox combination is about the most complained about car on the Honest John website here:

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/volkswagen/golf-vi-2009/?section=good

I would be putting pressure on both the SEAT garage and SEAT themselves to at least contribute to the repair costs

VW group have also extended the Warranty on DSG gearboxes in some countries (not the UK of course) to 10 years / 100K miles because of all the problems and customer complaints so it is a well known problem

Newman1000

Thanks very much Verityboo I will be starting to put pressure on SEAT and see how I get on