When vehicle diagnostics go wrong.....

Antzpants

Hello- I own a 2008 Ford Galaxy. It’s done 78k miles and has a full service history and probably worth no more than £4000.
Back in June/July time this year it developed electrical issues which drained the battery down- RAC were called out on a couple occasions to get me going.There was obviously an electrical fault with the car.

So I booked the Galaxy into a main Ford dealer for a vehicle diagnostic check. This was carried out on 5/08/2020 at Lookers Ford in Chelmsford. I was told the fault lay with the vehicles entertainment system which incorporated the satnav and climate control. They stated there was no repair for this fault and as the unit was “specialised”; moreover it was no longer made. The remedy was to order a bespoke replacement unit from Germany at an estimated cost no less than £5500.
Ouch! This made my Galaxy a financial write off. I got some quotes from scrap companies and came close to binning the car.
However I luckily found a specialist auto electrical company who were authorised dealers for Bosch- make of my system. At a cost to myself , I arranged for the company to send the system off to Bosch in Germany. They subsequently stated there was absolutely nothing wrong with the system! It’s now back in the Galaxy.

I’m currently in discussion with Ford Lookers. At present they have identified a problem with the rear wiring loom near the tailgate!

-My point is this. What repercussions do companies have for wrong advice? Do I have any consumer rights in this instance?
Makes me wonder how many vehicles faced with similar issues have been scrapped without the real reason ever been detected. 

AdrianC

You paid for them to run diagnostics on a vehicle with known electronic issues. They ran diagnostics, and told you what those diagnostics had identified as the cause. They did what you paid them to do.

They should also have explained to you that electronic issues can cause diagnostic results to be fallible. That appears to be the case here. Basically, the computers in your car got confused and gave the wrong answer when asked about the issues... because the computers were having issues. It may also be that disconnecting the entertainment and leaving it off-power for a period reset it, and that a combination of both the entertainment and tailgate wiring were causing your battery drain.

A main dealer is only ever going to tell you what the official manufacturer-backed solution to an issue is - and that will involve replacing parts, not repairing them.  That's why the advice on here would have been to take it to an auto-electrician in the first place, not a main dealer.

Yes, combining entertainment, navigation and climate on a single screen is a nightmare when it comes to maintainability, because it removes the simple solution of simply replacing a faulty head unit with an aftermarket one as it would remove all the essential heating controls.

At 12yo, your car is less than two years under the average age for scrapping of a car in the UK.
You're right about the value - of 21 2008 Galaxies on Autotrader, only six are advertised for £4k+, while 11 are <£3k. I presume it's a diesel (just one of the Autotrader cars is petrol), so will soon be subject to the ULEZ charge 24x7 within a wide swathe of London, reaching to just 20 miles from Chelmsford, rendering it even less desirable in your area.

fred246

It's quite common for garages to make big mistakes. Main dealers are no better than other garages and may be worse. The normal procedure is that the customer pays for the garage's mistake. It's always been like that.

DiddyDavies

fred246 said:

It's quite common for garages to make big mistakes. Main dealers are no better than other garages and may be worse. The normal procedure is that the customer pays for the garage's mistake. It's always been like that.

Why do you seem to have so many problems with garages?
The vehicles in my household have been serviced and repaired at a number of different garages over the years and I've never had the sort of experiences that you constantly post about.

AdrianC

DiddyDavies said:

fred246 said:

It's quite common for garages to make big mistakes. Main dealers are no better than other garages and may be worse. The normal procedure is that the customer pays for the garage's mistake. It's always been like that.

Why do you seem to have so many problems with garages?
The vehicles in my household have been serviced and repaired at a number of different garages over the years and I've never had the sort of experiences that you constantly post about.

He's the motoring forum's equivalent of crashy_time over on the house forum...

EdGasketTheSecond

I think most people and the OP should expect better from a diagnostic than completely false information. Sounds like the garage didn't do a simple thing like put an ammeter in series with the battery and pull the fuse to the entertainment system to confirm what they were telling the customer. With this type of problem you are better off going taking the car to a specialist in auto-electrics. They will hopefully do more than just plug a computer in and parrot what it tells them.