Hello,
I wondered if you might be able to help me.
I bought a 1 year old, one owner, Nissan Micra from a Nissan dealer in
Jan '07. Everything seemed to be in perfect working order & the
vehicle had 3 services left on it's warantee (which expires Jan '10).
It had a service with the same Nissan dealer in '07 & another in '08.
In Nov '08 I bumped the left side (rear passenger door) into a
bollard. I took the car to a garage recommended by my insurance
company. The door needed to be replaced & the door of the arch needed
making good. I was covered by insurance, the total cost was approx
£1,500.
I started smelling a fowl smell in my car 4 weeks ago, I only realised
it was coming from the mold covered boot last week (it's spread to
some seats & surrounding areas, my child's buggy). It was then that
noticed that the area where my tyre sits had approx 1" of water
sitting in it. I assumed the water had leaked in from above.
I booked my car in for a final service at the Nissan dealers & asked
them to look at this issue. Yesterday, over the phone, the service man
asked me if I'd had an accident involving the passenger door, I told
them that I had, he told me that the garage who had fixed this
accident had done a "really bad job" of replacing my boot floor (the
garage never mentioned doing anything to the boot floor to me), that
there was a hole all the way round the boot floor & that he could see
outside through it.
My insurance company suggested I take the car to the bodyworks dept of
the Nissan dealership to get an estimate for the damage not properly
repaired by the garage, they would send someone out to evaluate the
damage themselves next week, & that they would bill the garage for
this cost of the repair.
Today, the Nissan dealer's bodyworks manager couldn't find the hole,
so he phoned the service man. The service man replied that he'd never
mentioned a hole or that he could see outside, only that he'd said it
was a really bad boot replacement. I have no idea why he lied about
this. The manager said that he was 100% sure that the boot replacement
would not have been caused by the bollard accident & that at some
point the car had been shunted forward during an accident (he said my
insurance company wouldn't therefore cover me for this). The mechanic
confirmed this & said another reason this was apparent was because it
was possible to see that the tail gate had been replaced. The manager
said that either the work had been done prior to my buying the car
(that sales people might as well be selling fruit & veg as cars for
the amount they knew about them) or whilst at the garage while it was
being repaired (assuming there had been an on site accident).
The manager & engineer were unable to work out where the water was
coming in from & would need to remove the rear passenger seats & look
underneath the car (the manager said he didn't know why this hadn't
already been done by the service dept). The engineer said he assumed
it would be the welded area under the passenger seat. He also told me
that the work to the door & the arch had been done very well. They
both confirmed that the boot floor work had been done badly & needed
to be fixed.
The manager suggested I take my car home & that he would find out when
this work had been done.
Are the Nissan dealership responsible for fixing my car as I bought an
'as good as new car' from them which it blatantally wasn't? I'm also
worried that the structure of car isn't as safe as I bought it
thinking it was due to this accident (had I known it had been involved
in an accident requiring a new boot floor I wouldn't never have bought
it). I read somehwere that I should stop dirving the car & let the
dealership know, but also write them a letter recording all of this. I
don't to irritate them though, as the bodyworks dept seem to be quite
helpful at this stage.
I would be sincerely grateful for any help or advice.
Many thanks!
|
No expert, but I would think you will have great difficulty satisfying anyone that the 'damage' was present when you bought the car almost 3 years ago, or for that matter that it happened during the repair a year ago. It will be just your word against someone else's. Almost anything could have happened since.
The only message I can think of is that you remember to take a better look after any repair work you get done in future. Don't trust anyone. :-(
|
Something similar happened to me one, luckily (for me) it was a company lease car.
I took a 1 year old 'return' car and I immediately noticed missing external trim which was replaced. A year or so later the boot filled with water and the franchised (coincidentally supplying) dealer said it had been badly repaired. Lease company had no record of the repair so I wonder whether previous keeper had for some inexplicable reason paid a backstreet garage to repair it.
Net of it was that the lease company patched it up then sent it to auction.
Have you found out the probable cost of a proper repair (or even a 'patch up' ) yet ?
|
...lease company patched it up then sent it to auction...
I've always thought cars are in auctions 'for a reason', and I can see this Micra going the same way.
As has been said, the passage of time makes pursuing the supplying dealer a waste of time.
Were I the OP, I'd be trying to establish if the car was roadworthy, then as idle chatterer says, the cost of the cheapest doable job and the cost of a proper repair.
Best option might be to auction it and divert all available resources to its replacement.
|
|
|
Lease company had no record of the repair so I wonder whether previous keeper had for some inexplicable reason paid a backstreet garage to repair it.
Pretty likely if his employer is anything like my old one, and deducts a £500 insurance excess from the employee's next pay packet if there's more than one non-recoverable (fault) claim on a company car in any 12 month period.
If it had happened to me, and a backstreet place had offered to 'sort it' to a standard where nobody would notice for a couple of hundred quid, I would have done the same.
|
I'd agree but my company doesn't have any such policy, the cost may be charged to your manager for non-insurance claims e.g. if you misfuel but it isn't generally passed on to the employee.
The only costs which are passed on (with a punitive admin fee) are for unpaid congestion / parking / speeding tickets, then the manager is encouraged to recharge the employee or alternatively process it as a BIK under HMRC rules.
So I can only guess that the previous keeper of my car was planning on leaving the company and wanted a 'clean' NCB letter or more likely the car was damaged whilst being used in some unauthorised manner. Actually I'm at a loss as to why someone would need to do this on a fully expensed company car......
Back to the OP - I'd patch it up and sell it asap unless a proper repair can be effected ata reasonable cost.
Edited by idle_chatterer on 27/11/2009 at 11:29
|
|
|
|
|
|
I dont think you have any come back against the dealer at this point.
1st thing is to find out where water is getting in from - check the door and boot seals as a first step. Talc/vaseline/jetwash can be useful here.
Oh and dump the dealer as they are obviously a waste of space.
|
|
Surely if it was a bad repair from before the OP purchased it in Jan 07 water would have been leaking into the boot at that point and would have come to light long before now? Also the last repair was a year ago, I'd have expected stagnat water to smell the car out long before now.
|
samk1970 this is what i would do
find the name and address of the former keeper (look on your log book)
phone them up or write a sweet letter asking very very politely if they know or even had done any work in the boot while they owned it
if they did then i would use this against the supplying dealer
its probably only just started leaking because the sealent to cover the bodge has finally failed
you are in a very difficult situation at the moment and i wish you luck
|
Phone them up or write a sweet letter asking very very politely ...
Well, it's worth a try. But at this distance I would guess any letter would be ignored. My experience is that many previous owners don't want to get involved in this sort of tangle - especially if they have covered something up in the first place.
|
thats the honeytrap see
once you ascertain that they tell you the car was perfect when they traded it in you get a full dvla printout of all the owners dates and times and work out that spotty youth micheal walled it while not on company business while main agent were keepers and the haddock and chips look now rather cold
its a paper chase and a case of having proper legal help but where theres a nissan theres a way
ambulance chasers take note
this could be juicy as my neck hurts typing it
|
>> this could be juicy as my neck hurts typing it
>>
Do you find that if your neck hurts while typing, you can't reach the shift key?
;-0
|
Two years down the line from buying this used car I would say at very best you might get an enhanced trade in offer to change it if you could 100% prove it was an apalling repair that existed when sold to you. The chances of proving this are minimal though unless the Nissan manager is more helpful than you could expect. There may have been no reason for them to have looked at the underside of the car at the time you purchased and the two years that has passed really clouds the issue....as does the 2008 accident repair.
If you have to follow this through I'd pay for a good independent bodyshop to inspect it in your presence and see what they think about the repairs and when they might have been done.
|
You could be throwing good money after bad.
Inspections will only give you ammunition that you probably won't be able to use.
If you're not happy with the car, sell it on, if you are happy with it pay for the repairs and chalk it to experience.
|
Agree with you really Lou... I just thought the OP seemed keen on finding some responsibility.
Our local bodyshop would give it 15mins on the ramp for £35 and at least you'd know exactly what was what with the car for minimal cost.
|
Hello again,
I spoke to the head of sales at the Nissan dealership this w/e. I wasn't at all confrontational, yet he sounded panicky & asked me to bring my car in asap. He's been extremely accomodating. He told me that they would check out the car, see if they could make it as if it had come straight from the factory & if they couldn't replace it.
On Mon the bodyshop manager told me that he was waiting for the engineer who 1st looked at it to look at it thoroughly on Tues. Today he said that they'd re-sealed the boot floor, have done safety tests (which it's passed), that it had needed a couple of other jobs (one on the exhaust), & that they'd paint it & then do a water test to see if it's leak free. he assumed it would be ready tomorrow.
I know that this situation is a lot better than you envisaged, but I'm not totally happy. I don't understand what the point of having a warrantee is unless to protect your rights in situations like this. Am I correct in assuming that the resale value will have gone done because of the accident/repair work do you think? If there's any chance that this has happened I'd like them to replace the car for the same type & age, but without the accident issue. If this isn't an issue I don't want to cause an unnecessary fuss.
I'm sorry to bother you again about this.
Many thanks!
Sam
|
|
I completely forgot to say thank you to all of you for taking the time to help me with my 1st query!!!
|
If they have done the work you report free of charge under goodwill then I think you have a real result. The warranty you refer to is I assume the Nissan 3yr warranty from new?? If so then this warranty could never cover the two accident damage repairs you car has had.... likely neither were by a Nissan garage and so outside the control of Nissan.
Bear in mind a huge amount of shiny newish cars on the road that have been repaired after accidents.... it's just a factor of motoring.
|
A others have said the warrenty does not protect against damage/repairs - its one for rust and mechanical breakdown. I would accept their work and paperwork showing what they had done and happily drive it until you need to replace. When you replace you will have to mention that it has been repaird, but that will also be covered under warrenty for the repair. Yes the car will be slightly down in value - but declaring "two" incidents wont make any difference to just the one. In fact it will look like just one incident anyway wont it?
I think you have come out of this ok,a nd I doubt the garage would let you drive away an unroadworthy car after the trouble they have gone to.
|
Sam, you said:
"that it had needed a couple of other jobs (one on the exhaust)"
I think this is where you got them by the short and curlies. If exhaust had been leaking back into the car through the boot floor then that could have been potentially very bad news for you.
tt
|
|
