Motor Related Consumer/Legal Advice Please

[BigDawgV8]

Hi,

I'm in need of a little consumer advice please

A friend of mine has a 1 year old, 6000 mile Mini Cooper.
It is an ex-demo and she has owned it for about 6 months.

A couple of months ago she noticed that the drivers seat fabric was fading and at roughly the same time the digital mileage countdown for the service schedule froze.
Today the display has reset the trip by itself and the date displayed has jumped forward 3 months!!!
It has been back to the dealer 3 times and they have finally agreed to replace the seat cover.
They don't seem to be able to satisfactorily sort the display problems.

She/we are banging our heads against a dealer brickwall here!!!!

BTW - We both work for a motor-dealer!

Any legal types out there know what is the best way forward?
She loves her car and wants this resolved asap.

As usual any help much appreciated.

Cheers

Martin

[charlie_morris_minor]

would suggest you use the sale of goods act.. not fit for the purpose you could reasonably be expected to put it to...

Write to them and send it recorded delivery telling them they have 28 days to put it right or you will be taking it else where and presenting them with the bill.

If it has come from BMW get in touch with BMW directly tell them you are un happy with the service from your local dealer.. I did this with rover and local rover dealer called me 30 minutes later and resolved the issue at his cost despite his initial refusal to resolve the issue telling me it was all my fault and he would do nothing.

[Dean]

In my experience dealers are given 'X' amount of pounds per car to cover warranty. In 1992 Rover's was £50 per car, once the dealer had spent this anymore warranty work was done at the dealers expense. This is when dealers get funny and start to blame the customer or the "common problem" excuses occur. I would do as others have suggested above and get in touch with BMW directly by phone, then by letter to get everything in writing. The dealer is at fault here.

[rayofleamington]

I have a lot of sympathy for dealers when it comes to computerised gizmos (and the converse as well, depending on whether they did what they are meant to do or not).

When I was dealing with dealers (regarding diagnostic issues) they were being paid a standard repair rate for warranty - the jobs are costed based on a standard repair time, and sometimes only paid if the equipment is proven faulty when it arrives back at the supplier.
With the complexity of cars growing faster than the diagnostic capability it's often nearly impossible for the dealer to find out which parts need changing - so some will start changing parts based on guesswork. If things go well they get good advice from technical support folks, but in some cases those giving the advice don't know what they are saying. In other cases the dealer gets it wrong by not asking for advice or not following it properly.
In the really tough cases there is a software bug so it doesn't matter what gets replaced by the dealer, as the software is still at fault (e.g. the supplier may not be aware of the issue or not been able to release an update).

So dealers may spend an immense amount of time trying to diagnose an odd fault, with no success. When they start changing parts by guesswork they can be out of pocket very quickly. In other cases there may be an issue but 'big brother' has decided to save costs and not allow dealers to do repairs if it's not safety critical. I've yet to see a waranty repair where the dealer makes something out of it.

Fortunately in my experience most issues are looked at carefully with the aim of finding the route cause and rectifying it. Finding the route cause is sometimes trickier than others - especially if the customer or dealer gives misleading failure symptoms (you'd be amazed how different a real fault can be, compared to what a customer/driver/dealer thought had happened).

In 99% of cases the dealer is just a middle man as they can only work with what they're given. The vehicle diagnostics has to work well, and that was the end product of many things that happened years before the first car gets down a production line. When faults occur and the diagnostics don't find the issue, it's then down to the dealer network to make sure the right people are informed, and then the vehicle engineering and supplier technical guys to find out what's actually going on (how many cars affected and what are the symptoms). The dealers job is only to make sure the problem car is around when people want to check something (e.g. by offering a temporary replacement) - but for intermittent problems it can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Sorry - got transported back in time by a few years then it was good fun dealing with new technology releases at the time - but I'm especially glad to have left that all behind!