Technician broke car

topper19590

History : I arranged for a well known remapping company to remap my van for economy purposes , they guarantee results and state are fully insured etc , prior to remapping the ECU needs read for faults etc and a copy of the original map within it taken , during this process the ecu has been broken , I was initially abandoned with a broken van and thankfully the AA got me home , after lots of discussion the technician accepts that the fault has occurred Whilst he and his machines have accessed the vehicle ecu and it’s ‘ possibly His responsibility ‘however he now wants me to have the car transported 80 mls at my expense to their main franchise for them to examine , only then will he accept any financial responsibility, I have had an independent look at van he confirms the issue has been caused by the initial technician, I don’t have faith in the company admitting the fault was their doing , bearing in mind he left me stuck initially . The main company based in York have confirmed nothing and are proving very elusive ie after initial call to them I appear blocked . Am I within my rights to simply take the vehicle to a dealer of my choice and my thoughts were ask him to reimburse or claim against him if he won’t. Having the car transported alone is approx 350/400. 
Please I know remapping is questionable however it is ok if I notify insurance etc , and these days every penny counts but it’s gone wrong . Cheers John 

mattyprice4004

Remapping is fine, it's done all the time and it looks like they're willing to sort the problem out. 
Is it a van or a car? £400 to transport something 80 miles seems incredibly expensive, I'd use a site like Shiply to arrange delivery and it'll be a lot cheaper. 

If they are willing to sort it themselves, you'll likely get nowhere if you get it done elsewhere then just expect them to pay the bill. 

MattMattMattUK

topper19590 said:

History : I arranged for a well known remapping company to remap my van for economy purposes , they guarantee results and state are fully insured etc , prior to remapping the ECU needs read for faults etc and a copy of the original map within it taken , during this process the ecu has been broken , I was initially abandoned with a broken van and thankfully the AA got me home , after lots of discussion the technician accepts that the fault has occurred Whilst he and his machines have accessed the vehicle ecu and it’s ‘ possibly His responsibility ‘however he now wants me to have the car transported 80 mls at my expense to their main franchise for them to examine , only then will he accept any financial responsibility, I have had an independent look at van he confirms the issue has been caused by the initial technician, I don’t have faith in the company admitting the fault was their doing , bearing in mind he left me stuck initially . The main company based in York have confirmed nothing and are proving very elusive ie after initial call to them I appear blocked . Am I within my rights to simply take the vehicle to a dealer of my choice and my thoughts were ask him to reimburse or claim against him if he won’t. Having the car transported alone is approx 350/400. 
Please I know remapping is questionable however it is ok if I notify insurance etc , and these days every penny counts but it’s gone wrong . Cheers John 

Do you know what the actual damage is? Have they fried the ECU, just messed up the firmware so much the engine cannot operate, has their attempt locked down the immobiliser, has the engine been run with the engine outside of operating parameters and caused physical damage to the engine?

topper19590

Had an independent look at vehicle , with the knowledge of original person . He’s identified that the initial attempt to read the mapping ( which created warnings of low voltage / multiple ignition on / off , then plugging a second reader in then a third , revealed he’d duplicated initial map , lost all vehicle programs wiping ecu , he tried to blame a historical fault code . Fortunately my independent of 24yrs experience explained what he has done and after discussion  he gave him the go ahead to attempt to rescue it , failing that it’s a new ecu . ( with an assurance he will not then try to blame the fixer fWhat was annoying was fact he abandoned job , blamed me , refused to accept responsibility, attempted to pass responsibility to parent company who weren’t interested , I’m still struggling to see whose going to eventually foot this bill for repair hence my question, even the transport thing was you pay for it if it’s my fault I’ll reimburse you , my reply you pay for it if it’s not your fault I’ll reimburse you wasn’t acceptable to him or him popping to my property to try and discover solutions, even after parent company asked him to , hopefully he accepts responsibility 

MattMattMattUK

topper19590 said:

Had an independent look at vehicle , with the knowledge of original person . He’s identified that the initial attempt to read the mapping ( which created warnings of low voltage / multiple ignition on / off , then plugging a second reader in then a third , revealed he’d duplicated initial map , lost all vehicle programs wiping ecu , he tried to blame a historical fault code . Fortunately my independent of 24yrs experience explained what he has done and after discussion  he gave him the go ahead to attempt to rescue it , failing that it’s a new ecu . ( with an assurance he will not then try to blame the fixer fWhat was annoying was fact he abandoned job , blamed me , refused to accept responsibility, attempted to pass responsibility to parent company who weren’t interested , I’m still struggling to see whose going to eventually foot this bill for repair hence my question, even the transport thing was you pay for it if it’s my fault I’ll reimburse you , my reply you pay for it if it’s not your fault I’ll reimburse you wasn’t acceptable to him or him popping to my property to try and discover solutions, even after parent company asked him to , hopefully he accepts responsibility 

I am still unclear what the actual issue is though, a bad remap usually triggers the immobiliser or fails because the checksum was not correct, both of those can be dealt with by reflashing the ECU. A replacement ECU will be expensive, but is rarely needed and the existing one will have a sale value as many companies refurbish them.

If there is physical damage to the engine then that is a different matter, however that will have a known costs due to parts and labour needed.

Liability will depend on the actual issue, the contract in place and ultimately the decision of a court.

topper19590

He initially stated he’d only read the ecu , but when he discovered van wouldn’t start apparently has tried to re enter data , this has somehow corrupted ecu , it had lost all the vehicle data and information / triggered immobiliser and no one could access information, resulting in me having to rely on aa to get home and him denying he’d done anything until the ecu was bench tested and found corrupted , unfortunately nobody seems able to fix correctly, the immobiliser has now been deleted and vehicle programs copied / pasted as have map , unfortunately this still hasn’t worked the vehicle runs but has Eml displayed ( an mot failure ) my understanding is if a problem occurs , give person chance to rectify , if this doesn’t work get fixed elsewhere and claim costs ? That is basically my initial request for info , although reading your responses you might have been a good help at the start of all this recovering my ecu 🙄

m0bov

They should be transporting it for you, otherwise get an independant to fix it and sue for the cost. Its their choice.