I live in Belgium and in May 2012 bought a second-hand Seat Alhambra from an out of town (Ledermann-Halle) SEAT dealer with a two-year Federauto warranty. The car ran well for 8 months despite a rather jerky upgearshift when driving at around 40km/h. HOWEVER - suddenly in January when driving at 50km/h the car felt like it flipped into first gear - producing crazy revving and massive loss of power. Restarting the engine solved the problem. Took car to local dealer (D'Ieteren-Fort-Jaco), where an error registered on the computer indicated a problem with the contacts from the gearbox, reset everything (under warranty) and gave me the car back with the proviso that if it happened again they could fix the problem by replacing a part.

Brief period when the car was fine, then two weeks later the problem recurred, but this time restarting the engine did not remedy the problem. Limped home in first gear - very scary. Had car towed to local dealer who ordered the part on 30 January 2013. The car has now sat at the dealer for 11 weeks waiting for the part. The part is 7M3713203e-mcu.

There is still no schedule for the manufacture of the part. SEAT Belgium have tried to help by chasing up the part but seem to have no leverage over the manufacture of part. Seat Belgium also made an attempt to procure a second-hand part, but these generally seem to be too damaged to use.

We're now despairing of whether we will ever get our car back AND/OR whether the elusive part will actually solve the problem as someone at one point mentioned that it's just a decorative cover (????). I have a copy of the diagnostics if this helps.

(To add to the frustration we have not been allowed a replacement car and no sign of any compensation yet; the warranty doesn't seem worth the paper it was written on and despite our complaints no effort has been made by Federauto or the dealer who sold us the car to do anything at all. All our complaints to SEAT.es have just been forwarded back to SEAT-Belgium. VW, who could help since the part is the same for the Sharan, aren't remotely interested.)

Please help!