PCP - Kia dealer can't fix my car! Can I demand a replacement?

Eddie_Lives

Hello,
I was hoping some of you learned folk could help us with some advice!
Last February we bought a Kia Carens on PCP from Arnold Clark - we paid a deposit of £2000 and the payments are £225 per month. The car is an approved used (2016) Kia and as such came with 7 years' warranty.
On Dec 12th 2018 the car wouldn't start when my wife returned to it after work and we had it towed to Arnold Clark.
To this date, we have still not had our car back. There appears to be some sort of computer problem which they cannot get to the bottom of. They have tried many solutions, including replacing the wiring harness which is a huge job (our car was in bits in the garage) to no avail. The garage has given us a small courtesy car in the meantime which we do not have to pay for but as the Kia has 7 seats I can't fit my family in! This curtailed our visits at Christmas etc and is now becoming irritating.
The issue my wife and I have is that we now have no faith in the Kia we bought. A mechanic friend has told us that once this sort of problem presents itself, it is almost impossible to fix and this seems to be the case. We have phoned Kia many times who have now told us that we need to talk to Arnold Clark and not them which is quite disappointing. We have also been in contact with the latter many times but they have not phoned us for over a week now.
Where do we stand with getting (some of) our money back/demanding a replacement car? I realise the PCP element complicates things! Can we say the car we bought from them less than a year ago is not fit for purpose?
Thank you for your time.

AdrianC

You bought it in Feb 2018, the problem first manifested itself in December 2018. That's after six months from the date of purchase, so the responsibility is on you to prove that the problem was present at the date of purchase.
Exercising your consumer rights against the supplier would require you to prove that the root cause of the problem was present at the date of purchase - the fact they come under the manufacturer's warranty does not necessarily in itself prove that. That warranty is on top of your consumer rights, and does not feed back into them.

The car is still under the manufacturer's warranty, so repair is Kia UK's problem, not the supplier's.

In your position, your best bet is to lean on Kia UK to authorise an exchange against another suitable used vehicle - or, at the very worst, and you don't want another Kia - to authorise a buyback at a value which ignores the presence of the problem.

Eddie_Lives

Thanks Adrian, good advice. I'll press for the exchange.