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My new Skoda Superb Estate's Front Assist feature won't work - should Skoda fix it under warranty?

I bought a new Skoda Superb Estate seven months ago. When driving a few weeks ago, a warning light appeared on the dashboard saying 'Front Assist Not Available'. The light has been on ever since. My local Skoda agent says that that the radar unit at the front of the car needs recalibration. It hasn't the equipment to do this, and says that the cost will not be covered by warranty. The agent confirms that there's no sign of any physical damage that could have caused the fault, and certainly I'm not aware of any. No adjustments have been made to the car - steering or suspension - that might be responsible. The car has covered less than seven thousand miles. There are lots of references in the internet to problems affecting the front assist/adaptive cruise control in Volkswagen Group cars. Do more recent models still experience these, and is it reasonable that Skoda should say that the problem is not covered by warranty, even if the owner/driver cannot have caused it?

Asked on 10 November 2017 by David Chesneau

Answered by Honest John
That is definitely not acceptable. It's the legal responsibility of the dealer who sold you the car to repair this and I don't understand why he has not referred the matter to Skoda Customer Care to get it fixed. Probably worth referring the matter to Skoda Customer Care yourself. If they won't fix it, assess the cost of this feature of the car as part of the specification and sue the supplying dealer for the full cost of it using Small Claims: www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money / Or, if you regard this as an essential feature of the car and one of the principal features of the car you could reject the entire car, but this might involve a full, very expensive, County Court case.
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