Dealer refusing to repair used car

android12

A bried summary of my issue.

I bought a Vauxhall Astra used car from a Toyota main dealer for £7000 in April 2017. When I noticed that it is hard to get the key off from the car ignition all the times, I contacted the dealer within 5 days and explained him the situation (in addition to lack of service book and incorrect warranty information). Since the service personnel did not respond properly, I sent an email to the dealer's CEO and one of their directors contacted me and resolved the issue with the service logbook and warranty information. He informed me it is ideal to get the key issue sorted out at a Vauxhall service centre myself, despite me repeatedly asking him to getting it repaired by his dealership. I budged and the Vauxhall service centre replaced the key capture solenoid actuator and charged me around £200 including labour charges in July 2017. The Toyota dealership refunded me the amount.

The issue started happening again after 3 months and I contacted the service centre again who could not reproduce the issue. Since this was intermittent, I just lived with it for a few months. After a few months, around mid of 2018, this started happening very frequently. I contacted the director of dealership again who said his dealership would not repair it but he would either a) pay me the repair cost of Vauxhall as final or b) part-exchange Vauxhall for a Toyota or 3) Buy back the car minus usage. I said yes to part exchange and he took more than a couple of months to come up with alternatives but since the cost was prohibitive, I declined the same. With respect to buy-back, I declined since he was quoting far less for the car than the market value.

I went back to Vauxhall, who replaced the key capture solenoid actuator again for free but the issue came back after a few days. They then said it would cost £550 for the gear selector to be replaced but cannot guarantee that the problem would resolve forever.

I went back to the Toyota dealer to repair the car by themselves, but they said I have to repair it myself by Vauxhall once and for all.

I went to another Vauxhall service centre, who said they cannot identify why this is happening and wants it to be extensively investigated at another location for at least a couple of days.

I have spent a lot of time sitting and waiting to take the key out in several car parks or in front of home or at my little one's nursery car park, as this has been happening very frequently. Sometimes I had to just wait more than half an hour just trying to take the key out. I even missed a hospital appointment and spent a lot of time visiting garages, etc. This happens for a month or so and then works fine for a few months and then comes back later.

The dealership asked me to contact the Motor Ombudsman, but I am more inclined towards going to the Small Claims Court. If the latter, how much should I claim for, approximately?

Any advice would be appreciated.

forgotmyname

You claim for your losses where the dealer failed to provide the correct service. Seems like they have done what they need to do.

The new part purchased by yourself in your name, so you should have a better chance of claiming that was faulty, although the other dealer replaced that also.

19lottie82

Not a very helpful comment, but my mum has the exact same problem with her 2012 Astra shortly after she bought it (it was 2 years old at the time), so I’m guessing it’s a common problem with this model.

Exemplar

2 instances makes this 'common'

My old car had a puncture, so did a mate's. Weeeeird!

System

Has that car ever had a accident ? Could possibly be the steering column has slightly collapsed and the issue is with the column itself rather than the lock, When you try and get the key out are you slightly moving the steering wheel side to side? If the airbag has been deployed that may also affect the column etc

Goudy

This is fairly common for certain Vauxhall automatics.

There is a switch in the auto gear shifter that detects the lever is in park before you can remove the key from the barrel.

Saab used a similar system, so you could only remove the key when the manual lever was in reverse, but the difference is the Saab switch could be replaced on it's own. Vauxhalls require the whole shifter to be replaced.

As far as I know the part hasn't been updated, so the new will be the same as the old and over time it's likely the problem will return at some point in the future.