Impending court case vs VW dealer

phillydog

Thanks for all your advice – much appreciated. The car was past its warranty period but has always been diligently serviced at Nationwide Autocentres (who I’d highly recommend). The only reason I took the car to the original VW dealer was the intermittent nature of the fault - I wrongly assumed the dealer would be able to accurately diagnose and rectify the problem.

Their defence is that on the first occasion a test reported a fault with the temp sender (cold start sender) and recommended cleaning the throttle body as it was dirty with carbon deposits (£240) On the second occasion the dealer looked at the distributor and found the bearings worn and so fitted a new distributor and cleaned the plug leads (£200).

The fault was exactly the same so my dispute is that whatever was carried out on the first occasion (and the diagnosis might as well be in Latin to a layman like me) it didn’t solve the problem and so was in breach of the Sale of Goods Act. The repairs were less than a month and 2k miles apart. The fault had never occurred before the first repair nor 15k miles since the second repair. Am hoping the small claims arbitrator will take a view of common law rather than an expert witness – repair garages don’t exactly have an unblemished record of correctly diagnosing faults.

Am minded not to proceed but having paid to take the case to a Small Claims Court I’ve got nothing to lose have I?

anewman

phillydog wrote: »

Am minded not to proceed but having paid to take the case to a Small Claims Court I’ve got nothing to lose have I?

In some cases they can make you pay the other side's costs if you lose. But I think they probably only do this for really frivolous cases with no or little chance of winning.

goldspanners

phillydog wrote: »

The fault was exactly the same so my dispute is that whatever was carried out on the first occasion (and the diagnosis might as well be in Latin to a layman like me) it didn’t solve the problem and so was in breach of the Sale of Goods Act. The repairs were less than a month and 2k miles apart. The fault had never occurred before the first repair nor 15k miles since the second repair. Am hoping the small claims arbitrator will take a view of common law rather than an expert witness – repair garages don’t exactly have an unblemished record of correctly diagnosing faults.

Am minded not to proceed but having paid to take the case to a Small Claims Court I’ve got nothing to lose have I?

the fault wasnt the same, the symptoms were the same. you will have to prove the fault was the same.
within 2000 miles something else could go wrong and show the same symtoms.
i think if the fault re occured the day after they said it was fixed you would have some come back.

mis diagnosis is a common thing,especially with an intermittent fault,when the fault doesnt show constantly the dealer can only make assumptions by reading the fault codes from the diagnostic software and from previous experience.
they could have gave you the car back with a labour charge similar to your first bill and told you they couldnt find any fault with any part,you wouldnt have been to happy with that either im sure,so they have probably replaced something that has been known to cause this fault before.
if i was you i would be happy it has been sorted second time around,in my opinion you have been lucky it has only took 2 attempts to cure the fault,sometimes intermittent faults can be very costly,time consuming and use a lot of parts. i dont think this is down to incompetence in the mechanics,its just luck.

i would cut my losses and forget the small claims court.

jeannieblue

I'm not sure the garage has done anything wrong.

When it is an intermittent fault it is not always that easy to diagnose and they seem to have gone to try and rectify it by going for the obvious first. If that doesn't work, then you go to the next stage up and so on.

In some ways, you have been lucky, many dealers go for the expensive option first and work downwards at great expense.

Don't know what to say really. Not sure if you have a case here, but its hard to tell from what you have said. More details of their reports would help.

jeannieblue

You type quicker than me goldspanners - but think we are on the same wave length here!

goldspanners

jeannieblue wrote: »

I'm not sure the garage has done anything wrong.

When it is an intermittent fault it is not always that easy to diagnose and they seem to have gone to try and rectify it by going for the obvious first. If that doesn't work, then you go to the next stage up and so on.

In some ways, you have been lucky, many dealers go for the expensive option first and work downwards at great expense.

Don't know what to say really. Not sure if you have a case here, but its hard to tell from what you have said. More details of their reports would help.

great minds and all!

goldspanners

jeannieblue wrote: »

You type quicker than me goldspanners - but think we are on the same wave length here!

you beat me there!

jeannieblue

goldspanners wrote: »

great minds and all!

Aw schucks - we're just plain 'Great'

cyclonebri1

phillydog wrote: »

Thanks for all your advice – much appreciated. The car was past its warranty period but has always been diligently serviced at Nationwide Autocentres (who I’d highly recommend). The only reason I took the car to the original VW dealer was the intermittent nature of the fault - I wrongly assumed the dealer would be able to accurately diagnose and rectify the problem.

Their defence is that on the first occasion a test reported a fault with the temp sender (cold start sender) and recommended cleaning the throttle body as it was dirty with carbon deposits (£240) On the second occasion the dealer looked at the distributor and found the bearings worn and so fitted a new distributor and cleaned the plug leads (£200).

The fault was exactly the same so my dispute is that whatever was carried out on the first occasion (and the diagnosis might as well be in Latin to a layman like me) it didn’t solve the problem and so was in breach of the Sale of Goods Act. The repairs were less than a month and 2k miles apart. The fault had never occurred before the first repair nor 15k miles since the second repair. Am hoping the small claims arbitrator will take a view of common law rather than an expert witness – repair garages don’t exactly have an unblemished record of correctly diagnosing faults.

Am minded not to proceed but having paid to take the case to a Small Claims Court I’ve got nothing to lose have I?

Sorry phillydog but your post seems abit "out of time", by about a decade:rotfl:
You said it was nearly new but was out of waranty? so that must be 3 years old?

And I havent seen a distributor on a new car for about 10 years?

No offence, just strange.

jeannieblue

Oh.

Over to you guys to get technical and stuff - to explain that things go wrong with cars of a certain age and parts need replacing etc.

Not sure the garage has done anything wrong - distributor etc - not a bad bill considering... what car is it?? age?? Can't help much without some details.