Further to previous posts, here is an update:

GY56 AZC - 2006 Mazda 5 Furano purchased new November 2006

We suffered all the widely reported problems in the first 18 months: ripped off by dealer with "£1,000 DVD player offer" (actually junk worth £200); heavy inside edge rear tyre wear; loss of power; turbo failure; treated like dirt and insulted by Birchwood Mazda Eastbourne (subsequently reorganised due to customer service problems and now shut down as allegedly failed financial audit); engine failure at 31k.

We have a very large file of correspondence and I am currently working out the best way to share this to help other owners. Meantime here is a precis supplied to the independent engineer: see attachment at www.mazda-campaign.co.uk
And the Engineers Report: as above.

Points to note when you read the precis:
1. When we inspected the engine it was clear within minutes that the engine failure had occurred due to long-term overfuelling on no.1 cylinder, due most likely to a faulty injector. There was no evidence to support Mazdas assertion that we had not maintained the oil level.
2. Mazda had at no point properly inspected the engine. It had simply been looked at by a dealer mechanic. In fairness to that mechanic, you cannot expect a standard dealer
mechanic to diagnose a complex engine failure. The Mazda Regional Engineer, who is qualified to make such a diagnosis, had never been asked to inspect the vehicle. Instead,

Mazda Head Office relied on a basic inspection by the dealer mechanic and a number of assumptions to make the decision to refuse the warranty claim of £10,000. They then ignored every single item of evidence presented to them and doggedly maintained a refusal of the warranty claim. To do so they presented made up, technically flawed and embellished arguments, consistently ignoring the facts. They were deliberately vague and obtuse in correspondence and it was clear that deliberate tactics were being used to make it as hard as possible to challenge the warranty decision. I suspect that many other owners have given up faced with such treatment. This caused a long delay in instructing an independent engineer because I wanted answers to all my questions before presenting the information to an engineer. It was important that he inspect the car with all the background information and evidence because it is unlikely you will find an independent engineer who knows something as specific as Mazda DPF.
3. Although I had an issue with some statements made by the Rivervale Mazda Service Manager, relating to the 'evidence' they had concerning what they told my wife about some warranty work, I have no real issue with Rivervale. (One of the arguments Mazda used was that we did not have warranty recall work completed. We had taken the car for this work but did not realise that it had not been done until Mazda told us during the warranty refusal. The dealer claims they told my wife to rebook the car, but they did not and in the discussion about this, Mazda made up three different stories ranging from 'my wife demanded the car back before the dealer could do the work' to 'the laptop was
unavailable and we have evidence that your wife was told to rebook'). Apart from the above which I think came from the pressure Mazda Head Office put Rivervale under to
support the 'DPF' warranty refusal, Rivervale have always been courteous and as stated above, you cannot expect a dealer mechanic to diagnose a complex engine failure for a warranty claim - that should be the job of a suitably qualified engineer. It is clear from my dealings that Rivervale were put under pressure from Mazda Head Office. The Rivervale Service Manager told me that he felt 'trapped' between the customer and Mazda Head Office. What you can criticise them for is being a bit stupid in the first place - had they not felt trapped and instead fully supported their customer, we would probably have bought our replacement car from them. However, it is important to make a distinction between the Mazda dealer, a separately owned and run business, and Mazda UK.
4. There is a lot of information about DPF in my correspondence prior to the independent engineers report. In my case this became irrelevant because it transpired that the engine failure had nothing to do with the DPF process. However, I still maintain that if I had been properly informed about DPF prior to purchase, I would not have bought the car. You can see from my correspondence that Mazda UK didn't understand DPF in any great detail themselves. Their explanations were initially confused and contradictory, although this may have been a combination of incompetence and a deliberate attempt to confuse the customer.
5. In relation to an ECU printout that Mazda UK used to 'prove' we had ignored dashboard lights, the metric they claimed proved that the DPF dashboard lights had been on for 255 cold starts was in fact not used by the Mazda 5 and probably not by any Mazda model. It is a standard EU metric that is dormant (not used) in many EU cars. In other words that metric will read 255 regardless of the make/model/DPF state. The fact that no dash lights ever illuminated (except when the engine actually blew up) was consistently ignored by Mazda - presumably they just didn't believe us and they never managed to explain in one paragraph which DPF lights should illuminate, in what state (flashing/steady) and when.

If you are currently fighting Mazda on a warranty issue, note the following:
1. Do not assume what they tell you is factually correct or honest. It will be biased toward refusing the warranty.
2. The "Customer Service Manager", Robert Hancock, is no such thing - he is a warranty claims repudiator/negotiator. He has no regard for customers. Two weeks after the engine failure, my courtesy car was collected and when I phoned Hancock to ask when the replacement was being delivered, he told me I would not be getting another courtesy car because my warranty claim had been refused. I told him that I have been left with no car to pick up my children from school in 40 minutes time. He said "That is not my problem". I will not forget those words in a long time. It hadn't occurred to him that regardless of the warranty view, I still owned a Mazda 5 which needed repair - I was still a Mazda customer! It takes a special person to treat people like that and then sleep at night. I had to call on neighbours to find someone to give me a lift to collect my children and then go to get a hire car. It then took 8 1/2 months to prove the warranty claim. He refused to escalate the matter and his immediate superiors could not be bothered to get involved. I got the impression they were far too important to talk to a customer. After all, they had important internal meetings to attend. After the warranty was proved, I got a glib letter from Mark Cameron, Sales & Marketing Director which did include an apology but it blamed the dealer for making errors in their initial diagnosis and advised "we are satisfied that our handling of your case was purely based on the information available to us". In other words, 'although the correspondence clearly shows we made a load of things up to support our warranty refusal, I am going to give you a glib response rather than get to grips with that'. I have never had a satisfactory response explaining why they made up stories. Most of my questions have been answered in a deliberately vague or obtusive manner. I gave every opportunity for Mazda UK to turn their cock-up around but they failed at every point. Rather than get to grips with the institutionalised contempt for customers that they have at Mazda UK Head Office, they would rather leave customers feeling very aggrieved and negative about the brand. That sums up how you will be treated by Mazda UK if you have a problem.
3. Have your car inspected by an independent engineer. Do not accept the offer by Mazda UK to have the car inspected by their own 'independent engineer'.
4. If you are successful with your claim, do not sign a gagging order. Make sure Mazda remove the gagging order clause from your acceptance form. You do not have to sign it. If you are preparerd to sign a gagging order then that should be a separate voluntary/financial agreement and has nothing to do with any settlement you are entitle to under the terms of the warranty.

Seconded. If we had more people who were prepared to stand up to these organisations rather than just dumbly putting up with shoddy goods or service, everyone would be far better off. The Americans are generally rather better at it than we are.

Although strictly not on topic, I think it's also very important not to make a personal sacrifice in cases such as this one. I know a car is big investment, but health is priceless and there are signs here that this could become endangered.

Be prepared to compromise, don't be as childish or as vindictive as Mazda obviously have been in this case and above all gain satisfaction from the thought of helping others to either fix this problem or preferably avoid it altogether.

I can speak from a position of comparative comfort, having avoided the VAG "water ingress problem" by taking advice gained on this and other forums. Many thanks to all those who have given such advice so freely.

The Mazda problem and the VAG water ingress problem have a common factor of the vehicle becoming dangerous under fault conditions - in the case of the VAG fault, servo assist can be lost.

Why is VOSA so spineless? Time for an agency shake-up I think.

659.

Hello Everyone,

For those of you who are aware of the current Mazda problems whether it be the famous DPF problem to tyre wear & valves snapping off - i have waited long enough for a government agency to do something about it after ignoring all of our complaints and stories.

I am going down to Watchdog in London tomorrow, so sorry for the short notice but if any of you are interested in supporting me with covering letters from your self then it would make the visit to watchdog a lot stronger.

If you are interested then please email your letters or points you would like to make to: contact@mazda-campaign.co.uk

Thank you

This filter is there for a reason and removing the DPF is a health issue which you dont mention.These people have a issue with Mazda who should sort it out but removing the filter is not the answer.

hi all, to add to my mazda6 story, car went inti limp for about 3 mins on friday on motorway then worked ok.

Saturday, after driving to birmingham from portsmouth (120 miles) ok, coming home...was dog slow on M40, then came back to life at oxfoird turn off. for 5 mins ok but then boom, DPF flashing light and engine amber coloured light. Git!

As i know the oil is good, as it was with magna mazda 2 months ago, i fear its oil strainer or DPF knackered.

Can anyone give me an better/cheaper advice than go back to mazda, and potentially fork out a +£1500 bill to get it all fixed??

And once it is fixed, its for sale! Cheap to sell! Fed up with mazda and being held to ransom at their dealership workshops!!!!

cheers,

Goose.

Hi guys, just a quick update, as i feared, i bottled out of jacking the car up and climbing underneath it last night. Did shine a torch under though and saw that the DPF assembly is pretty corroded, so if the inside is in as bad shape as the outside (but for a different reason obviously), the DPF has seen better days.

However, phoned a local garage this morning, asked if they dealt with DPF and they said yes, theyve had mixed success with them in the past but is becomming a more common problem theyre seeing come in. They have the diagnostics that will read and reset the ECU errors if necessary including the Ash one.

So i'm gonna drop it off there tonight. Best case, they find a dodgy sensor or something and replace that for all under £200. Worst case, they fit a DPF assembly that i supply them (£300), reset the pooter (£50), and charge me a days labour or something (£350).

My best DPF removal option has been Avon Tuning in Bristol, very helpful guy there on the email, but that option would involve me driving the car 100 miles more in limp mode to bristol. further risk of further damage.

Will keep you all posted. Marty.

spoke to garage end of yesterday, they did a auto regen via a laptop and it didnt clear itself. as i wouldve guessed. no fee so far cause they havent fixed it. gonna check sensors and stuff today and ring by 12. (not gonna bet on that happening!).

A few other avenues have opened for DPF removal, but will try and get it fixed first.

will keep you posted.

Marty.

on a side note...the car will be due a srvice in 2000 miles time, i dont intend to go to mazda because they will kick up that someones played with the set up removing the DPF, and make sure they b***** the car up. so i will be taking it to the independant garage locally who tried to regen it for me, and other thigns, had it for 3 days, but didnt charge me a penny.

they have the software to perform the ECU, so they can have the service job. Screw mazda dealerships!!!