Car Lease - "Damage" costs on return

MercilessKiller

Hi All

I had a serious car accident last year which involved going through insurers to get a full repair (a van driver fell asleep and drove into me - that was fun).

The car repair looked brilliant and was done by an authorised garage as instructed by the legal company via my insurer. Either way, all above board.

Car got picked up today at the end of the lease and the inspector wasn't happy about the paint job. It looks perfect to the naked eye but he got out some little card that reflected light (and had black and white lines) and it showed a ripple effect in the paintwork. He said this meant the pain job wasn't done properly and it will all need to be repainted (at a cost of over £500).

What rights do I have here? Is there anyway I can argue this or will I just need to pay? I haven't got any invoice from the garage that did the work but I do have the engineer report of what was damaged and needed to be fixed. This has the garage name on. In addition, the legal company said they DO have the invoice/receipt including all repairs made but won't provide it to me.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Separately, I did something dumb personally - The service book wasn't stamped by the Vauxhall dealership and I didn't check so I'm also getting pulled up for that. The dealership has now closed down too. Currently in talks with Vauxhall customer care to see if they have a record their side RIP.

foxy-stoat

The repairs should be guaranteed for a length of time, 12 months against defects, get your insurers to sort it out. You shouldn't be out of pocket for this.

As for the service book if, you should have the invoice for the service, if that isn't enough to satisfy the lease company then take a read of the terms and conditions about servicing - they may be trying it on unless there is a line in the T's and C's that it should be serviced and stamped. Could be an expensive lesson there.

MercilessKiller

foxy-stoat wrote: »

The repairs should be guaranteed for a length of time, 12 months against defects, get your insurers to sort it out. You shouldn't be out of pocket for this.

As for the service book if, you should have the invoice for the service, if that isn't enough to satisfy the lease company then take a read of the terms and conditions about servicing - they may be trying it on unless there is a line in the T's and C's that it should be serviced and stamped. Could be an expensive lesson there.

Cheers - Vauxhall already provided proof to me now of the service which I've passed on to the finance company so will see what they say.

Regarding the paint - that makes me feel a little better. The repairs were indeed guaranteed for 12 months and took place in April 2018 so a good month or so to argue. I've also got proof of repair from the garage in the reference of an engineer report which names both the garage and the lawyers. Ideally I'd rather not use it as it details all the major damage done to the car in the accident - I worry that providing that may expose other issues in areas seeing as it seems like they're trying to find everything they can.

Either way - I'm first contesting as the paint appears to be absolutely fine to the eye (so I'm not sure their photo's will reveal anything). Once they come back, if they stand their ground then I'll push them to the repair garage.

Thanks!

foxy-stoat

The average person cannot identify if the paint was sprayed correctly or not, so thats a little unfair of the lease company.

What is this little card you spoke of?

MercilessKiller

foxy-stoat wrote: »

The average person cannot identify if the paint was sprayed correctly or not, so thats a little unfair of the lease company.

What is this little card you spoke of?

Indeed the naked eye could not reveal anything. He had to show me by using this card thing and even then I said I wasn't sure what he meant...

It was about an envelope size and it was black and white vertical stripes. He put it against the car to look at the reflection. he said the bit that was spray painted was slightly fuzzier - he called this a "ripple effect" which was shown as the image from the card reflected in the paint was slightly fuzzy and that this ripple effect is proof of a bad paint job. He compared it to another part of the car where it was less fuzzy.

The area he did this on was definitely repainted after being involved in a crash. However he wouldn't have identified this without using this card I imagine (the first thing he did in the inspection is pull it out and start looking around the car using it so he must be used to doing that..)

Either way, the pictures won't reveal anything. There was a minor tiny dot that you can't capture in a picture where he said it was dust in the paint when it was spray painted - He took a picture of it with an card arrow pointing at the dot but I'm pretty sure it will be invisible when the image is sent back.... I tried gettign a video/picture myself and just couldn't get it to show.

We'll see anyway. He might be right in the sense that the paint job isn't a good enough standard but not sure who that would then fall on and agree that it's unfair if I end up liable for this cost!!!

foxy-stoat

And I bet you didnt check the whole car over with the card thing when you collected it from the lease company did you?

Good lucks

MercilessKiller

foxy-stoat wrote: »

And I bet you didnt check the whole car over with the card thing when you collected it from the lease company did you?

Good lucks

I mean, I can't even find this card thing on google so I have no idea. Maybe it was just this guys unique way of identifying different types of paint on the car... I.e to show variance meaning it must have been a paint job for a nice extra bit of cash on his damage report....

Then again - maybe I'm being unfair because at the same time, it definitely has been repainted so credit to the guy for spotting it - just not sure that should result in a charge simply for that reason. I did take a few pictures of the side of the car and it just looks like the normal side of a car so we'll see.

Stresss!

foxy-stoat

MercilessKiller wrote: »

Stresss!

One of the down sides to leasing.

MercilessKiller

foxy-stoat wrote: »

One of the down sides to leasing.

My 4th lease - luckily my first 3 were returned with no damage report what-so-ever so maybe had a more optimistic expectation.

Indeed the service book mistake is a lesson learnt. For some stupid reason I figured using the official dealership would negate/help avoid these types of problems. There's my stupidity for you.... But Vauxhall do seem to be helping at least so credit to them!

Penelopa.Pitstop

Which company picked the car up? Manheim?

I never seen BCA to check paint and they never spotted repainted part on my leased car. In one case, I was told that car will be taken to Mercedes workshop to check it in more details but they never came back to me with any comments. So far, my 4 leased cars were returned without any charges.

chrisw

I've not seen the card, but strips of lights are commonly used in paintless dent removal or smart repairs to check the surface is even. They are very effective as the OP has discovered.

Eg
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paintless-Repair-Removal-Newest-brightness/dp/B0755ZHQQY