BP - the dealership will need to be paid somehow for the work. That can only come from the customer or the manufacturer's warranty. The dealer will not be able to help the OP.
Of course there might be some value in informing the dealer what you're doing for the purposes of keeping a good relationship. In the case of my Renault, it was actually the dealer who suggested "off the record" that I talk to Renault (and who explained the process above to me).
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BP - the dealership will need to be paid somehow for the work.
No they don't. That's a bit like saying Ford *need* to be paid. The dealer could choose to do it out of goodwill. In legal disputes under the Sale of Goods act responsibility rests with the retailer, not the manufacturer.
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The OP doesn't say how long he's had the car, but if he's owned it 3 yrs, the SOGA is worthless, surely. That's if it's even the supplying dealer doing the work.
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The OP doesn't say how long he's had the car but if he's owned it 3 yrs the SOGA is worthless surely. That's if it's even the supplying dealer doing the work.
He mentions it was registered 31/5/06 but he took ownership a couple of weeks later - but there's no suggestion it was pre-registered to the dealership so he's owned it from new.
SOGA offers protection in just the same way on used cars as it does on new, but obviously relative to the cars age and price. As it happens, he'd have more protection if he bought it in the last few mths as the selling dealer would be automatically liable.
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I would ask the dealership first before piling in (however nicely) to Customer Services.
>agree
>>>>>>>>>> if i ran the dealership and a customer had sneaked behind my back without asking me first then i would be well peeved
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I recently contacted Mazda UK headoffice regarding goodwill for a water pump which had been diagnosed as leaking, whilst in a main dealer's having its third annual service, 15 days after the manufacturer's warranty had expired. I'd just bought the car a few days earlier, otherwise I'd have made sure it was serviced before the warranty expired, however having said that the service was carried out within the recommended intervals, as were the first two services the car had at a main dealer with its previous motability owner. The car had only done 27500 miles in its 3 year life.
Mazda told me to get stuffed, which sadly discourages me from buying another one as I like this car very much.
Good luck with Ford. I'd be interested to hear their response as I'm leaning towards a petrol Mondeo when change time comes in a few years.
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I'd just bought the car a few days earlier
>
Presumeably you bought it privately?
Manufacturers will rarely pay on recently acquired cars - you could have got the car cheap with a known fault and then be trying to get them to cover the cost.
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Mazda dismissed my enquiry out of hand without asking how long I'd had the car nor where I'd bought it.
I had bought from a dealer, who did pay up for the part to be replaced. However, they took about a week to get back to me and agree to pay and during this time I was concerned that I was in for trouble with them, so I contacted Mazda as a back up. And I was disappointed with their attitude.
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Thanks for all your replies.
I phoned the dealer, and spoke to the guy in charge of warranty repairs. He said that Ford have a price threshold before they'll contribute, so I'll need to get the fault at least diagnosed first. However they will look at getting Ford to contribute.
I've got the car booked in for later this week. It's a 1.8 TDCi, and as you are all no doubt aware, common rail diesels can be very costly to diagnose and fix. Here's hoping it's something as simple as a dodgy fuel filter, which I know would have been replaced during the service.
The fact that the car hasn't yet gone into limp home mode and there's no engine management light on is slightly reassuring - it just hesitates occasionally, and displays 'Engine System Fault'.
On the plus side, the car has always been serviced at Ford Dealers at the appropriate service schedules. I did lose the service book however, but I know that the services are logged with Ford on their computer system. I'm in the process of getting another service book stamped up, because I have the receipts from the previous service.
Edited by Ravenger on 09/06/2009 at 14:50
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I've just been going through the paperwork and found that the car was handed over to me on the 15th June 06, so it looks like it could still be in warranty - just!
However the car registration doc says it was registered to me on the 31/05/06. I believe the dealer registered it at that date to meet their targets for registrations.
Do you think the dealer would quibble over this? I'd say that the car wasn't actually in my possession, until the 15th, so the warranty should run from there, but I can imagine the dealer might say that the car was legally mine when it was registered, and not when it was handed over.
Edited by Ravenger on 09/06/2009 at 20:50
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I would imagine that will be the date mentioned in he warranty stuff - worth asking though !
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Definitely. At least I've got some documentary proof that I didn't actually take possession of the car until two weeks later, which should help get some goodwill if they state that by the letter of the rules it's not under warranty. I know the dealer registered the car early to meet their end of month target, because they told me at the time! Of course at the time I didn't think about any possible warranty implications of that.
Edited by Ravenger on 09/06/2009 at 21:45
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Had a diesel C-Max and the alternator packed up a month over the 3 year warranty expired. Fully serviced and MOT'd I had the car towed to a local Ford garage. They batted on my behalf with Ford CSC and paid half of the bill of a new alternator as a goodwill gesture.
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Ford CSC and paid half of the bill of a new alternator as a goodwill gesture.
I wouldn't be happy with that at all - even at 50% Ford and the dealer probably still make money. It's not even as if you're better off from having a new alternator - it's not a wear and tear item.
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OP said >> I know the dealer registered the car early to meet their end of month target, because they told me at the time! Of course at the time I didn't think about any possible warranty implications of that. >>
You helped the dealer out quite a bit by agreeing to that, OP, so they should be returning the favour now in any way they can by intervening with Ford or taking some of the hit themselves.
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Unfortunately the dealer went out of business, and the franchise and customer base have been taken over by someone else.
Ironically I went with a dealer over a broker so that I'd have a point of contact in case there were any problems, someone who I knew would be responsible as they sold me the car. I didn't bank on them going out of business!
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I dropped the car off this morning, and the dealer said they'd take it up with Ford, but asked me to also contact Ford myself, which I did.
I spoke to a very helpful bloke on their customer care line, who opened a case for me and said to ring back when I have a diagnosis. He also said that Ford give the dealers a pot of money each year to help settle these sorts of cases, so they do have discretion to sort it themselves.
It's a bit of a con really, that if the dealer pre-registers your car to meet a target that the warranty starts from the date of registration, not the date of delivery. I'll be wise to that if I'm in the position to buy a new car again.
If I'd had the money I'd have traded in the car a few weeks ago for a new one, as I'm aware of the potential problems with diesel cars out of warranty. I thought about buying an extended warranty, but the premium is quite high, so you have to balance that against the likelihood of a serious fault occurring.
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BMW are pretty helpful out of warranty - and I believe from this site that Honda are the same.
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So, believe it or not, are Renault.
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I thought about buying an extended warranty but the premium is quite high so you have to balance that against the likelihood of a serious fault occurring.
A warranty probably wouldn't have been any use anyway for this kind of fault - they're really looking for something specific to have broken and they will replace that, but they're not good at covering diagnostic work etc.
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The garage have just phoned and they reckon it's a faulty crankshaft sensor. Going to cost around £200 with all the diagnostics, parts and fitting. Here's hoping that does actually fix it.
Seems a bit excessive as the actual part is under £20 if you buy it yourself, and fitting is allegedly a 5 minute job, but the dealer charges an hour!
I told Ford about the diagnosis and they're going to contact the dealer to see about doing it under goodwill.
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Goodwill, in my experience is - they pay for the parts - you pay for the labour, and it has to be done at a dealer.
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I got the curly dashboard changed on my then Discovery. Very minor amount paid by me, just to give "customer paid date" for guarantee on the work and Landrover refunded the dealer. From what I recall, the dealer did all the paper work.
So I was happy.
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Goodwill in my experience is - they pay for the parts - you pay for the labour and it has to be done at a dealer.
When my Focus' coil pack failed, out of warranty by a month or so, my car was recovered by the AA to the nearest Ford dealership and the fault was fixed at no cost to me.
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"I wouldn't be happy with that at all - even at 50% Ford and the dealer probably still make money. It's not even as if you're better off from having a new alternator - it's not a wear and tear item."
In their eyes they don't have to spend out a penny when its out of warranty. I was thankful for not having to pay full whack. What did you expect me to do with a non runner. I had no alternative. Paying to have the thing towed from one auto electrician to another would have just been too costly. I didn't have the time. I settled for the compromise. Maybe if they had refused to pay anything I might of had to take it somewhere else. Better the devil you know sometimes.
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What did you expect me to do with a non runner.
I wouldn't expect you to do anything else. Just saying that I wouldn't have been happy.
Like I'm unhappy that daughter's 4yr old SEAT Ibiza failed its MOT and we had to pay for repairs. The car will be replaced soon and now it won't be with another SEAT.
I really don't understand how car manufacturers (although strictly liability rests with the retailer) manage to avoid their responsibility to produce satisfactorily durable items.
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Call me a cynic but, I have my doubts that Dealers actually push that hard for "Goodwill". A paying Joe Bloggs gets charged £60ph (example) for any work needing doing, my bet is that a manufacturer will only pay a dealer maybe 50% of that price for warranty work. As a result it is in the dealers best interest for their profit to ensure as little as possible goes through as a "Goodwill gesture".
This is possibly why you seem to see a lot of the "you pay for the labour and Ford/Vauxhall/Honda etc, will pay for the part" the dealer is on a huge winner, they get full labour rate plus the benefit of customer thinking how well the dealer fought for them, manufacturer gets to supply part only so very little cost to them, only person getting forced over the bonnet and spanners inserted is the poor old customer!!!
Personally in cases such a this I would just use the SOGA against the dealer, far easier.
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Well it looks like the dealer isn't pushing Ford hard at all, and I've just spent a long time on hold to Ford Customer Service and the representative wasn't as helpful as the previous two I'd talked to. He said I might only get 20 or 30% of the costs back, which I've probably already spent in mobile phone calls to their 0845 number!
The problem is I really could do with the car back. It's been repaired, the cost is around £200, which though a tidy sum is something I can afford. I could pay for the repairs then claim off Ford, but they will only refund at warranty rates, not retail rates, which doesn't include VAT.
If the original dealer was still in business I'd have had more leverage to get them to sort it out personally. I'm still miffed that due to the pre-registration my car has two-weeks less warranty. Normally that'd not make much difference, but in this case it has.
I'm not going to give up trying to get some sort of recompense, but I'll have to weigh up getting the loss of money if I pay for the repairs, against the loss of car usage if I wait for Ford and the dealer to fight it out, which would definitely take a few more days.
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I cant see how they can hold the argument that the warranty started when the car was registered. In all other forms of purchases (that I am aware of) a warranty starts from the date of purchase, I would say you had a very strong case.
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The car was "purchased" by the dealer when he registered its sale.
MVP
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It's really tough luck, ravenger.
I'd pay the money and get the car back and then see what (if anything) you can get out of Ford.
In the world of complicated motor cars, £200 isn't alot to get a car back on the road. Think of the cost of some of the more expensive bits that could have failed.
Cheers.
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£200 isn't alot
SEAT have lost the sale of a new Ibiza to my daughter because I believe that they and their useless dealer scammed £200 (all but £6 of which was labour) out of me.
The money is nothing to me - but I don't like my kids being ripped off.
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Thanks for the kind words and encouragement. I'll probably pick the car up tomorrow.
I don't have much confidence in garages fixing modern diesel cars. The cars are so complex that even the dealers don't understand them and from what I've read on here and other forums they tend to diagnose by replacing ever more increasingly expensive parts until they find (or don't find) the fix.
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I am not happy.
Picked up the car this morning, paid just over £200 for the repairs (hoping to claim at least some back off Ford), drove the car down the road for a couple of minutes and it exhibited exactly the same fault.
Took it back to the dealers, and I asked for a refund, which they wouldn't give me as they insisted the work done was valid and the part did need replacing.
They said the technician had road tested the car, but it couldn't have been a thorough test. When I drove the car to show the fault to the technician it faulted several times on the way out of the car park!
This is turning into a nightmare.
On the plus side the supervisor did promise to push my warranty case with Ford.
What's the best procedure in dealing with this sort of problem, when a repair has been performed but hasn't addressed the actual fault?
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Ask to speak to the overall manager and air your grievance in public especially if there are prospective buyers around in the showroom. I'm sure he will escort you to a quieter area to sort the thing out. Maybe try this weekend when the dealership will be busy.
Edited by spood on 12/06/2009 at 14:35
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sell it as quick as possible as it will be a money pit from now on.
With a petrol car you are not forever watchingfor teh 'engone light' to come on.
The dealer diagnostics seem to be iffy, why on earth should teh car be excatly as before, if cured?
Probably a guess, and the next fix will be too, and the next.
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See what they will give you for a petrol car OP. If it were mine i would make it this weekends task to be into something else by Monday morning.
I write as a long term diesel enthusiast by the way, but wouldn`t trust a used diesel or any of the current new ones. That`s due to misfueling and dpf`s , not to mention the dumping of used diesel cars with complex problems)
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Well I've owned this car since new, and it's never been misfuelled. I used to use supermarket diesel, but over the last year I use nothing but premium diesel like BP Ultimate or Shell V-Power. It's only done 34,000 miles, but it gets used for motorway trips regularly, so it shouldn't be getting coked up.
I'd have traded it in already if I'd had the cash to spare. As it is I've already spent quite a bit of money on it over the last few months with new tyres and the 3rd service + mot + front brake pads. That's probably approaching a grand I could have put towards a new vehicle.
I doubt any garage would take the car off my hands while it's exhibiting an engine systems fault though.
And I'm well aware of money pit cars. My previous Citroen Xsara was a disaster in that regard.
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