Brand new car with fault

Catslovelycats

Can anyone give me some advice please?
I have a Kia (bought brand new in October 2020) which has an ongoing intermittent fault with central locking (and various other oddities that seem linked). The dealership have seen the fault as I've been able to drive the car to them 3 times when the fault was happening. Each time they have failed to fix it. It seems to reset itself overnight. The car has been at the garage now since Thursday but the fault isn't happening and so they say they can't fix it. They do not know what is causing the issues.
Can I stop paying for the car and return it to them? I know it's a bit drastic, but I've really had enough now and just want rid of it. I don't know what else I can do. I don't want to keep driving around in a car that is faulty and depreciating. I've contacted 'customer services' but have no idea how helpful that will be.
Thanks for any advice.

TadleyBaggie

Who is the finance through?

Catslovelycats

Kia Finance
I have emailed them this evening too

m0bov

Complain to Kia finance, is this dealer the supplying dealer? If they can't fix it, they need to escalate it with Kia, or swap the car.

DrEskimo

When was the fault reported?

To reject the car, my understanding is that if it was outside the first 6-months from delivery, then you need to prove that the fault was present at the time of delivery, which seems unlikely. So I don't think this is a viable option.

Have you just been going back to the same dealer? Are there other dealers from other groups you can take it to? I would try the complaints procedure to see if you can escalate the issue.

Catslovelycats

Thank you all. Kia Head Office say go to the dealer. I'm doing that later.
Waiting to hear from Kia Finance.
I have no idea when the fault began. I was first aware of serious issues at the start of June but had odd things going on prior to that, which with hindsight I think were part of the problem. Yes, I am way out of the 6 month period.

Grumpy_chap

Catslovelycats said:

Can anyone give me some advice please?
I have a Kia (bought brand new in October 2020) which has an ongoing intermittent fault with central locking (and various other oddities that seem linked). The dealership have seen the fault as I've been able to drive the car to them 3 times when the fault was happening. Each time they have failed to fix it. It seems to reset itself overnight. The car has been at the garage now since Thursday but the fault isn't happening and so they say they can't fix it. They do not know what is causing the issues.
Can I stop paying for the car and return it to them? I know it's a bit drastic, but I've really had enough now and just want rid of it. I don't know what else I can do. I don't want to keep driving around in a car that is faulty and depreciating. I've contacted 'customer services' but have no idea how helpful that will be.
Thanks for any advice.

If you were to reject the car now, then there would not be a full refund but a deduction made for the amount of beneficial use you have received from the car.

There are various comments by others suggesting that used car prices are currently at a substantial premium.  If you are at the point of wanting to return the car, what would you get if you did a simple sale / trade-in against another new car?  Obviously, the sale and purchase do not have to be the same dealer, nor do you have to stick with the current make if your confidence in them is reduced.

Ordinarily, swapping a car in the first year is not going to make any financial sense, but the following post suggests you may not suffer as badly as you might expect (though the deposit is not referenced in the post):

BOWFER said:

The PCP settlement figure from VWFS was £19800, the garage offered me £20300.
The garage settled VWFS and paid me the balance.
Hey presto, I'm out of a 4 year PCP deal after only 9 months and free to start again.

BOWFER

I agree with Grumpy Chap that it might be worth your while getting a settlement figure from Kia Finance and seeing about selling the car to the likes of We buy any car or a dealer.
Nearly new car prices are silly just now and I recently heard/read (might have been on here) of someone being offered £20K for a Kia Sportage that they were only offered £15k for a few months back.
hopefully you'd have equity to allow you to place a deposit on something else and move on.

DrEskimo

Aren't the high used prices being fuelled by low stock in new cars? Unless the OP can trade it in and obtain a good discount on a new car, without significant delay, then trading in at a high price, just to buy at a high price would seem to not result in anything in terms of net gain?

Can't help but feel it's like buying a selling in a housing boom...sure you get a good price when you sell, but if you have to buy during that time as well you are just paying over the odds on the next one too!

BOWFER

DrEskimo said:

Aren't the high used prices being fuelled by low stock in new cars? Unless the OP can trade it in and obtain a good discount on a new car, without significant delay, then trading in at a high price, just to buy at a high price would seem to not result in anything in terms of net gain?

Can't help but feel it's like buying a selling in a housing boom...sure you get a good price when you sell, but if you have to buy during that time as well you are just paying over the odds on the next one too!

Yes, that's one side of the coin - literally no point ordering a new car that will take months to come.
The other side of the coin is there are plenty of new cars sitting in stock at dealers and August is a great time to get a deal on any pre-registered ones they have before the 71 plates come out.
I've bought two brand new cars in the past 2 weeks (Nissan Leaf and VW Polo) and the deals on those were not inflated at all, just as good as they would have been months ago.
So it was a win/win.

Goudy

Does your Kia have an ignition key rather than a start button?

If so, there has been lots of problems with the "key in" switch inside the ignition barrel sticking on lots of Kia's.

The switch sticks so the car thinks the key is still in the barrel, this means the remote central locking fob won't lock the car.

There's a few fixes, one involves removing the barrel and lubing up the switch with PTFE spray.