Peugeot 5008 timing chain recall epic - am I being ripped off here?

gwenols

Hi,

I need a sanity check and some advice here. My car is currently being recalled Peugeot and I'm having an epic with it, and it feels like they are trying to massively up-sell work and make things difficult to deal with.

I live in a rural part of Cornwall where public transport is more or less non existent. I am a full time carer on carers allowance with two SEND children to look after. The loss of transport has seriously affected their school attendance and is putting a massive strain on the family. I rely on my car.

Basically I had to wait a couple of months for the work to be carried out and was told the car was Ok to drive. Then a warning light came on and they told it's not safe to drive, so I don't for a month. Now they have it, they are delaying work and charging me extra for investigtive work before the recall work can be carried out.

I'm at my wits end and don't know how to progress so looking for advice.

Thanks

The details:

1/05/2026 - Booked in with Vertu/Peugeot for recall work on the 20/07/2026. Told vehicle safe to drive, just get it in for 8am. Curtsey car booked for the day
29/05/2026 - Booking confirmed by text
01/06/2026 - Booking confirmed by email

21/06/2026 - Engine warning light comes on. Take to local garage ODB code (P00BC) - Faulty air mass sensor or Cam shaft timing issues. MAS replaced and 'smoke tested' to eliminate air intake issues at my expense. Garage said not to drive it as potentially the Cam chain has stretched and is interfering with the engine timing.

*21/06/2026 - car taken off the road and parked up.

25/06/2026 - After reviewing options, emailed Vertu/Peugeot questions "Are you able to provide me with a car to use in the interim? Also, could you please reassure me that it is safe to drive my Peugeot the 54 miles to your garage, as I am concerned that doing so may be dangerous or could seriously damage the engine. If you are unable to confirm that it is safe, are you able to collect the car from my address?"

25/06/2026 - reply from Vertu/Peugeot - No curtesy car available for duration. Can't confirm if car is safe to drive without transporting it to Exeter (55 miles away) at my expense. Suggested arrange for the vehicle to be recovered in on the day of (or day before) your booking (which I did at my expense).

10/07/2026 - curtsey car canceled by Vertu/Peugeot so potentially stuck from 8am to 5pm in Exeter on the 20/07 as it's not practical to use public transport home.

*Arrange for car to be collected and delivered to Vertu/Peugeot for recall work on the 20/07/2026 - cost £300.

17/07/2026 - Car delivered and inspection video sent. First mention on the video of a potential issue regarding not having a full service history and the car will have to be inspected and accepted by Peugeot before recall work can be completed. Also mentioned that the car had lightly rusty disks because it hadn't been driven for a while.

20/07/2026 - contacted by Vertu/Peugeot. Told they were unable to continue with the recall work as it needed an inspection because the engine warning light was on. The cost of the inspection would be 5 hours estimated work at £125 (£750 inc Vat) and that Peugeot can take 2 weeks to a month to decide. Then the work has to be booked in again. Vertu/Peugeot were unable to give an estimate on how long that would take. Out of desperation I have agreed to this. If Peugeot do not authorise the work, it will cost in the region of £4500 ex vat to fix which is about 50% of the cars current value. I was also told that that if I wanted to scrap the car because it was too expensive to fix, Peugeot has some really good deals on new cars...

20/07/2026 - Managed to get a copy of the last service from my garage detailing type of oil etc and send it over to Vertu/Peugeot. No other paperwork available.

Notes: Service is overdue by a few days but most of this time is due to it being standing waiting for the recall. Unable to drive it to get it to a garage for it's annual service because I've been told not to drive it. Recall stated that oil would be replaced so thought it not worth doing before work was carried out.

Ectophile

There's no way to tell if the engine light is related to the recall without some investigation. It could be an unrelated fault.

But I'm not sure how it takes 5 hours' work to find out why a warning light is on. If they read the fault codes, that should point them where to look.

gwenols

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82076429#Comment_82076429

Agree, although in this case the fault code can point indirectly to a stretched timing chain, which is the thing it's being recalled for, and they want to investigate to see how much damage has been caused to the engine. If they take the head off to look at the chain, thats 3 or 4 hours work tbh.

My issue is that this happened in the 60 day wait for the work to be done whilst I was told it was safe to drive, now they want £750 to see if they can get out of doing the recall work, or if they can charge me 5 grand for a complete engine rebuild.