Help Dealing With Car Dealer - Faulty Car

MakingLifeMine

I am going to try and make this as short as possible;

I purchased a car in February this year from a Ford Dealer. This was a Ford Kuga 2018. I also purchased their 3-year extended warranty.

4 Months later, I had issues with the engine. It felt like there was a drag all of a sudden and by the next day (from the day I started experiencing issues), the engine warning light was on. I stopped driving it immediately, notified the dealership and they came to pick it up and let me know that they will look at it but if it is something that is not covered under warranty, I will have to pay for it.

2.5 weeks later, they said that there was a wiring fault. They replaced 4 spark plugs and told me that this is not something that is covered under warranty but as a gesture of goodwill, they will do it. 

Now oddly enough, my warranty was in the car in the glove compartment. I think they took it out because I can't find them. I have asked 3 times for a copy of the warranty that I signed and no one has responded to my request. 

4 Months after that (October last month, the engine issues occurred again. I was on the motorway driving to London from Nottingham. The drive didn't feel as smooth like there was a faint vibration. It occurred briefly and I didn't feel it again so I had written it off as just being paranoid. The next day I had to go to the store, I noticed a quarter way there, it was getting hard to change gears and there was nowhere for me to stop or do a U-turn to go back home for at least a mile. When I did finally find somewhere to do a U-turn to go back home, it became harder to drive and then the engine warning light came on again. 

They collected the car last week Thursday and it was booked to be reviewed last Friday. The recovery company that collected the car looked at the engine and basically said that it looks like they likely did a bad wiring job last time.

I had also written an email to the general manager last week Thursday to explain my concerns as this is the second time that the car has gone wrong in 8 months.

I have not heard anything back from him and I don't know what a reasonable response time is or what my rights are as this has happened 8 months after the purchase.

Does anyone have any guidance for a situation like this?

Grey_Critic

Contact Ford Customer Service - they will put pressure on the dealer to sort it out.

macman

Your main rights will be under CRA 2015.The 3 year extended warranty you paid extra for is primarily extra profit for the dealer, they exclude almost all parts that are likely to need replacement on the basis that they are 'wear and tear.' These policies are essentially worthless, so you need to reply on your statutory rights.
Assuming you know the name of the warranty provider, you can just download a copy of the terms from their website, for what it's worth, which won't be much.
What resolution are you seeking? Repair, or partial refund? This will determine your approach to the dealer.

diystarter7

OP
Car can wrong more than twice in 8 months. With a fault like on your car, at times you may get the fault a few times within weeks.

What do you want from them, I'm not clear. on

Am I safely assuming you are seeking to return the car or an exchange or some sort of compo?

do they give you a courtesy car and if so is it a higher spec than your car? The reason I ask this is that if they do, IMO they are caring.

Phone the manager as words go further than emails. Then confirm via email the chat you have with the manager as your evidence and you will soon find out if they disagree.

Good luck

MakingLifeMine

Ideally a repair done properly is what I want, but if it experiences the same problem again, I would prefer an exchange. They did not give me a courtesy car. I’ve been using hire cars as that’s the only way I can get around with my son.

diystarter7

MakingLifeMine said:

Ideally a repair done properly is what I want, but if it experiences the same problem again, I would prefer an exchange. They did not give me a courtesy car. I’ve been using hire cars as that’s the only way I can get around with my son.

Fair enough. Your car is a manual from what you said so not that complex and its a Ford Kuga, complex but not that much but at times, especially regarding faults like your car, they can take time to sort out.

The exchange if offered, what would you accept for your car? What is the exchange is worse? These are the things you need to consider.  I wish you luck and appreciate that even a  fault on a newish car once and you are going around your business is frustrating but twice, I hear you and again good luck.

MakingLifeMine

So I finally received a response from
the dealership and I think this means that they will fix it under warranty….

‘Injector number 3 has failed again. We have taken a fuel sample and found excessive swarf (metal filings) inside the fuel system.  We have contacted Ford Technical and they have advised us to remove the fuel tank to inspect where the source if the filings is. We have also contacted extended warranty who have advised we are to carry this out and obtain a conclusion as to what exactly has failed. Once this is identified we can progress with the repairs’

I don’t know if they are saying they will carry out the investigation under the warranty or the investigation and repair.

macman

No, they are not saying that the repair is covered by the warranty. They're saying that the cause of the fault has not yet been diagnosed and that they are doing investigative work to determine it. Then they'll presumably determine if it's covered under warranty. 
Wear and tear is not.

[Deleted User]

Seems like it would be difficult to charge you for this. They failed to sort it out the first time, which doubtless made it worse if there is swarf in the fuel. It's only 5 years old, so unless the mileage is huge it shouldn't be having faults like that due to wear and tear.

You might have to argue it but I think you have a strong case.

MakingLifeMine

[Deleted User] said:

Seems like it would be difficult to charge you for this. They failed to sort it out the first time, which doubtless made it worse if there is swarf in the fuel. It's only 5 years old, so unless the mileage is huge it shouldn't be having faults like that due to wear and tear.

You might have to argue it but I think you have a strong case.

Yeh, the mileage is slow. Around 19,000 miles on the car.

I'm getting a bit panicked because they promised a callback yesterday which I did not receive. I emailed this morning to find out if anyone would be reaching out to me and I did not receive a response.

A day at the office can get busy so I decided to call this afternoon to follow up someone was always available until I gave my name and reg number and all of a sudden, there was no one available to speak to me. For example, I would call up and ask to speak to service and they would check to see if someone is available, come back and tell me yes and ask for my name and car reg before passing me through and then when I gave the details, it was a 'oh sorry, we will have to call you back'.

I followed up with another email this afternoon and now I am a little freaked out. 

Even an email just to say 'we have not heard the results back but we will let you know once we have' would suffice.

[Deleted User]

Sounds like you might have to go down there.