Nightmare Altea

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Mon 17 Jul 2006 10:26
Nightmare Altea - tsr
I would be grateful for any suggestions on how to deal with our Seat Altea 2.0 FSi.

Since we have owned it from 1 year old it has repeatedly entered ?safe mode? when driving on the motorway. This means the car loses all power and the only solution is to coast to the hard shoulder, switch off and restart which clears the warning lights. This version of safe mode doesn't let you do 40 mph or anything near that, it maintains idle speed which is enough to ensure that brake and steering assistance is not lost.

Despite 8 visits to the dealer and many different parts replaced the car has continued to fail and we estimate that we have had to make 15 emergency hard shoulder visits in the last year.

Has anyone successfully rejected a 2 year old used car? I have little faith that the dealer is suddenly going to be able to fix the fault so I feel like there is little choice other than replace the car and let it be someone else?s problem.

Tim
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Mon 17 Jul 2006 11:28
Nightmare Altea - Carrow
I don't know the ins & outs of the law, but if you have a detailed log of the dealer visits (bills,etc) then why not phone Seat Uk & look into the possibility of them sending out someone from their technical dept to look at it. Vauxhall (and I'm sure many others), do this for their customers when a persistent fault beats the dealership.

Either that, or threaten them with watchdog.
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Mon 17 Jul 2006 13:13
Nightmare Altea - Falkirk Bairn
My son had similar experiences with a 3 series (2002) BMW - BMW garage insisted it was engine management - the AA man said the lambda sensor.

Turned out to be the lambda sensor - once replaced car was 100%

In the outside lane of a motorway and losing all power is worrying.
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Mon 17 Jul 2006 13:19
Nightmare Altea - Galaxy
You could try to contact the previous owner and see whether they experienced the same problems with this car.
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Mon 17 Jul 2006 19:10
Nightmare Altea - Bill Payer
If you've already approached Seat directly and had no luck then get What Car magazine's helpline involved.
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