Clutch and crankshaft went on M20

MrsStepford

Last Thursday, husband's Volvo broke down on the M20. He gets free breakdown cover with his insurance and only had to wait 20 mins.  RAC ran a diagnostic and his clutch had gone. RAC towed the car to a Volvo main dealer.

Normally, husband gets his car serviced by Halfords. He had booked it in to this main dealer for a service and MOT for this coming Thursday however.

The service manager arranged a hire car for him with Enterprise at 50% off. He got a call today from the service manager, telling him that the crankshaft on his 21 plate Volvo had gone as well. They have priority ordered a new crankshaft and clutch but don't know how long it will take to arrive.

Volvo admitted to the dealers that the clutch & crankshaft problem is a known fault. Volvo has extended the warranty on the car and enrolled husband into Volvo Fleet Care, free of charge. This means any time his car is being serviced or repaired, he gets to use a Volvo, free of charge.

They will let him know when a Volvo becomes available for him to use for free now, and will pay for the fuel until his car is fixed.That will be two tanks per week. 

Volvo will also reimburse husband for the hire car and fuel used.

All he will have to pay for is the service and MOT.

So using a local garage or something like Halfords might save a bit of money, but for something major like this, those places just don't have this level of customer service.

If it takes three weeks to get the parts, husband would get the money for six full tanks of petrol which would save us a lot of money. !

I doubt that husband will go back to Halfords !

chrisw

Volvo do seem to be pretty good at this. I had an engine and clutch replaced under goodwill at 5 years and 30k miles. Although you could argue they shouldn't break in the first place.

Volvo assistance including recovery is free for 12 months after each service. 

mgfvvc

I certainly wouldn't let Halfords service any of my cars.
It seems Volvo customer service has improved since the 1990s when my experience of Volvo dealers was terrible.

WellKnownSid

My son’s Volvo kept going into limp mode due to a fuelling / turbo issue / transmission issue which a local independent quoted many thousands to fix…

Short on cash he paid the local Volvo dealer to carry out a diag and they told him to replace one of the ABS sensors (cost £70, carried out on the drive) and the problem hasn’t reoccurred in 20,000 miles.

It’s an extreme example but shows the benefit of product knowledge.

JulieCrt

Hi - we have just had the same issue in May 24 - my husband was driving on the m11 when the car started to rev loudly - it said car was now in 4th gear when my husband hadn’t touched anything (manual xc40). When he took his foot off the accelerator it went back to 6th gear, again without touching it. Because we have had it serviced at our local garage, and it is 2 months out of warranty, Volvo are refusing to sort the issue, giving us a “goodwill gesture of 50%”. Would love to know who at  Volvo admitted the fault! Ours are not acceptable ring any responsibility.

Car_54

JulieCrt said:

Hi - we have just had the same issue in May 24 - my husband was driving on the m11 when the car started to rev loudly - it said car was now in 4th gear when my husband hadn’t touched anything (manual xc40). When he took his foot off the accelerator it went back to 6th gear, again without touching it. Because we have had it serviced at our local garage, and it is 2 months out of warranty, Volvo are refusing to sort the issue, giving us a “goodwill gesture of 50%”. Would love to know who at  Volvo admitted the fault! Ours are not acceptable ring any responsibility.

If it hasn't been serviced at Volvo dealers, I should think a 50% goodwill payment is a good result.

JulieCrt

@Car_54 - I would agree if it wasn’t a known fault when we bought the car - there are so many articles about this clutch/crankshaft issue. And our technician advised us that we would probably get 80-90% goodwill reduction.

chrisw

JulieCrt said:

@Car_54 - I would agree if it wasn’t a known fault when we bought the car - there are so many articles about this clutch/crankshaft issue. And our technician advised us that we would probably get 80-90% goodwill reduction.

I  think it depends to some degree on how supportive your dealer is and how much leverage they have with Volvo Uk. It was the dealership who negotiated the goodwill on my behalf.