I have a real heartache over my newly purchased 07 plate Berlingo van and really hope you could point me in the right direction!

On 6th of June this year I bought this van from a dealer near Sheffield. I was told that it had a 3 month warranty with it that was administered by the RAC.

After exactly 8 weeks it broke-down, with white smoke plumes coming from the exhaust, a whinning noise from the engine and a lack of power.

I phoned the supplying dealer, who told me to report this to the RAC warranty department to report the problem. This I did. They told me to either take the van back to the supplying dealer (20+ miles away) or take it to any other motor repairer so long as they were VAT registered. The garage that does all my servicing was less than a mile away so, not wanting to risk further damage, took in to them.

The garage examined the van and diagnosed that the turbo had failed. The RAC instructed them to remove the unit and dispatch it to a turbo specialist. This they did.

After a couple of days I phoned the garage who told me that they had heard nothing, so I phoned the RAC warranty department myself and was told that the repair was not covered by the warranty because of 'oil starvation' inside the turbo unit. This being wear and tear! My poilcy document, however, lists the turbo as being covered!

I complained about this to the RAC warranty departments senior engineer, who told me that this problem was commonplace in all vehicles that use my type of 1.6 HDI engine and was a flaw in the basic design of the engine. Sometimes the pipes connecting the engine to the turbo can block up. They refused to honour the warranty.

I went on to phone the RAC Ops department about this and was informed that the RAC warranty arm, was not really the RAC at all, but a company called TWG, trading under the RAC brand identity. They said that 'a part is not generally covered if a lack of maintainance caused the problem'. I would accept this statement if I'd had the van for a year or so and not bothered having it serviced, but not after just 8 weeks! The supplying dealer serviced the van directly before I took delivery and I always check the oil level twice weekly, in fact it was actually checked on the morning it failed!

At this point I decided to contact the supplying dealer again, who told me they would contact the RAC (aka TWG) to argue my case. This they did with no success. I then phoned Consumer Direct about this, but there advice was more than a little vague, other than to say the seller is the person I should complain to.

Finally, now over three weeks without the use of my van, I went over to visit the seller, to ask them to help me with this matter. The salesman who sold me the van told me that he would contact the RAC Warranty rep for help, plus talk to one of the directors of his company to see if they could 'perhaps make a contribution' to the repair. I understand the total cost of repair to be nearly £1,000. Now three days later I haven't yet had a reply.

An added complication is that the van is at another garage in bits and minus the turbo unit. In hindsight I should have took it back to the seller, but at the time I thought that I was doing right.

I would really appreciate any help that you could give me on this, as I'm at my wits ends what I should do now.