Returning a car.

Badger36

We purchased a 3yr old Kia Sportage diesel mild hybrid from a dealership 25 days ago (cash sale).

The T&C's said we can return the car within 14 days if we didn't like it, and 30 days if there was a fault.

10 days ago we were driving down the M9, and the car did, what I can only describe as randomly rebooting itself whilst driving at 70mph.

It caused all systems to go down for 5 to 10 seconds - most dangerous being temporary loss of power steering and loss of brakes. Lane assist also seemed to suddenly pull the car suddenly left on rebooting, and pulled the car into the hard shoulder. We pulled in immediately and called RAC, who could find nothing wrong with vehicle, although agreed it shouldn't be driven.

The car was taken to the dealership whom in 10 days of having the car cannot find or replicate a fault, it's been in dealership since, we haven't got it back.

We want to return the car, we cannot trust it - but dealership are saying it's over 14 days and they can't find a fault, so won't accept a return.

What are our rights here?

Arunmor

Sadly,I suspect you have none if the fault can't be replicated.  I can only suggest you start digging around for similar stories.

I presume they have disconnected the battery and left it for a few minutes that will reset the ECU back to the start.  The car will then relearn to your style of driving.

Badger36

There are similar stories on the forums of the car rebooting itself whilst driving. Same story, it happens, car goes back to dealership and fault can't be found, then a long and drawn out battle with dealership. AFAIK despite it being fairly well queried on forums, Kia don't acknowledge it as a known fault.

Have seen suggestions when it's been fixed that it's issues with the voltage from the hybrid system and/or the alternator. Not sure what happens, but it shuts the car down whilst driving, whilst engine still runs. Assume it's the ECU responsible for safety systems and dashboard and not the ECU running the engine.

Problem is, we now don't trust the car and don't want to drive it. I don't really want my wife driving it and that happening again. If it happened on a A road, at a bend...... Yeah it could easily cause a crash. The car pulled us aggressively into the hard shoulder on reboot.

The loss of power assisted braking, ABS, power steering and then the lane assist randomly doing its own thing as the system restarted was IMO quite dangerous.

cw8825

Badger36 said:

There are similar stories on the forums of the car rebooting itself whilst driving. Same story, it happens, car goes back to dealership and fault can't be found, then a long and drawn out battle with dealership. AFAIK despite it being fairly well queried on forums, Kia don't acknowledge it as a known fault.

Have seen suggestions when it's been fixed that it's issues with the voltage from the hybrid system and/or the alternator. Not sure what happens, but it shuts the car down whilst driving, whilst engine still runs. Assume it's the ECU responsible for safety systems and dashboard and not the ECU running the engine.

Problem is, we now don't trust the car and don't want to drive it. I don't really want my wife driving it and that happening again. If it happened on a A road, at a bend...... Yeah it could easily cause a crash. The car pulled us aggressively into the hard shoulder on reboot.

The loss of power assisted braking, ABS, power steering and then the lane assist randomly doing its own thing as the system restarted was IMO quite dangerous.

all of your concerns are very fair but without being able to prove this fault exists i agree your going to struggle.

to play devils advocaat in fairness to the dealer, they don't know if you have just changed your mind and are using this 'fault' because its after 14 days

You could discuss with them whether they would accept it trade in against a new vehicle, something along those lines

Badger36

cw8825 said:

Badger36 said:

There are similar stories on the forums of the car rebooting itself whilst driving. Same story, it happens, car goes back to dealership and fault can't be found, then a long and drawn out battle with dealership. AFAIK despite it being fairly well queried on forums, Kia don't acknowledge it as a known fault.

Have seen suggestions when it's been fixed that it's issues with the voltage from the hybrid system and/or the alternator. Not sure what happens, but it shuts the car down whilst driving, whilst engine still runs. Assume it's the ECU responsible for safety systems and dashboard and not the ECU running the engine.

Problem is, we now don't trust the car and don't want to drive it. I don't really want my wife driving it and that happening again. If it happened on a A road, at a bend...... Yeah it could easily cause a crash. The car pulled us aggressively into the hard shoulder on reboot.

The loss of power assisted braking, ABS, power steering and then the lane assist randomly doing its own thing as the system restarted was IMO quite dangerous.

all of your concerns are very fair but without being able to prove this fault exists i agree your going to struggle.

to play devils advocaat in fairness to the dealer, they don't know if you have just changed your mind and are using this 'fault' because its after 14 days

You could discuss with them whether they would accept it trade in against a new vehicle, something along those lines

Our stance with the dealer has been that if you can find the fault and satisfy us that it has been rectified we are happy to accept the car - we both really liked it. It's a well spec'd car, big enough and fuel efficient enough to be a nice place to spend 20k miles a year. 

However being told they cannot find the fault and are unable to replicate gives us no confidence this issue isn't going to happen again. It's been 10 days now and we were without a car for the first 4 of them. 

In terms of trading it in, I'm not sure I'd want to give Kia or the dealership the business. I haven't found them engaged or as helpful as I'd think is reasonable.

Given we were cash buyers the car was a significant purchase, so we don't really want lumbered with something we can't use, and then we have the moral issue of selling it on - I'm not sure I'd want to sell something on that I know did something quite dangerous. 

cw8825

is your desired outcome to hand the car back, walk away with a full refund?

Badger36

cw8825 said:

is your desired outcome to hand the car back, walk away with a full refund?

I would say the preferred option (at first) was to get the car fixed and have a guarantee the issue was fixed and this wouldn't happen again and avoid the hassle of handing a car back, and finding a new one (which tbh, I don't really have the time for again). Initially everything was very positive 'these things happen'.

However..... I'm less than impressed with the dealerships handling of this, which has been a laborious process that's lead to several frustrating phone calls to get nowhere, and the fact they can't tell me what happened to the car and that it won't happen again. At this moment in time, I would like to hand the car back and get a full refund.

The issue may also be complicated by the fact we traded in our old car too, which we couldn't buy back for the trade in price (albeit not worth much, we had it 10yrs from new).

born_again

Odds on 12V battery either playing up or that connections are loose/earth lead needs cleaning up.

Sportage has electric power steering.


TBH, get rid. That engine is one that Kia have had many issues with in terms of tensioner belt.

Badger36

born_again said:

Odds on 12V battery either playing up or that connections are loose/earth lead needs cleaning up.

Sportage has electric power steering.


TBH, get rid. That engine is one that Kia have had many issues with in terms of tensioner belt.

That's my initial thoughts, being under warranty I'm not touching or testing anything. However it's clear there is some weirdness going on somewhere with the power system.

Battery has been tested by both RAC and Kia and is fine according to them. I'd like to think they'll have done the appropriate earth and terminal checks as a first port of call, and tbh at 16k miles I'd hope it wasn't suffering too much. 

Certainly customer service is one of the things Kia seem to undercut rivals in order to be good value cars. The worst.

Do you think it is worth taking legal advice here? Kia are not budging on there is nothing wrong with it. We are not budging on it exhibited a dangerous fault and want it rectified or refunded. I'm not sure we want it replaced.

cw8825

Badger36 said:

born_again said:

Odds on 12V battery either playing up or that connections are loose/earth lead needs cleaning up.

Sportage has electric power steering.


TBH, get rid. That engine is one that Kia have had many issues with in terms of tensioner belt.

That's my initial thoughts, being under warranty I'm not touching or testing anything. However it's clear there is some weirdness going on somewhere with the power system.

Battery has been tested by both RAC and Kia and is fine according to them. I'd like to think they'll have done the appropriate earth and terminal checks as a first port of call, and tbh at 16k miles I'd hope it wasn't suffering too much. 

Certainly customer service is one of the things Kia seem to undercut rivals in order to be good value cars. The worst.

Do you think it is worth taking legal advice here? Kia are not budging on there is nothing wrong with it. We are not budging on it exhibited a dangerous fault and want it rectified or refunded. I'm not sure we want it replaced.

Ultimately can you prove that there is a fault?
it’s going to cost you more money to keep investigating 

Badger36

cw8825 said:

Badger36 said:

born_again said:

Odds on 12V battery either playing up or that connections are loose/earth lead needs cleaning up.

Sportage has electric power steering.


TBH, get rid. That engine is one that Kia have had many issues with in terms of tensioner belt.

That's my initial thoughts, being under warranty I'm not touching or testing anything. However it's clear there is some weirdness going on somewhere with the power system.

Battery has been tested by both RAC and Kia and is fine according to them. I'd like to think they'll have done the appropriate earth and terminal checks as a first port of call, and tbh at 16k miles I'd hope it wasn't suffering too much. 

Certainly customer service is one of the things Kia seem to undercut rivals in order to be good value cars. The worst.

Do you think it is worth taking legal advice here? Kia are not budging on there is nothing wrong with it. We are not budging on it exhibited a dangerous fault and want it rectified or refunded. I'm not sure we want it replaced.

Ultimately can you prove that there is a fault?
it’s going to cost you more money to keep investigating 

Other than what happened and the RAC man seeing the dashboard frozen (which stopped when he tried to read fault codes). No.

It happened at random, it may happen again. It may not