Skoda warranty does not wash - like the car

[Gordon Millar]

I had a Skoda Octavia 1 VRS company car for a while and was delighted with all aspects of it despite it being slightly spartan. I even persuaded my normally highly sceptical brother to buy a VRS Estate. I formed my own business last year and bought a very nice Octavia 11 VRS diesel in Race Blue. Fine.

A few weeks ago, I jet washed the car to remove some dry dust. I was wearing a £350 suit and therefore kept well back to avaoid being splashed. Consequently, the pressure of the jet wash was significantly reduced in respect of the water contact with the car.

Astonishingly, a patch of paint flew off the front bumper. The patch was c 60mm in diameter.

I visited the Dealer in Colne Lancs who advised me that Skoda would be unlikely to do anything about it as it would be deemed a "stone-chip". Well, it would have taken a brick to remove a patch that big.

He took a digital pic and sent it off to Skoda who turned down my claim immediately and without discussion or inspection.

I have since been bounced around by Customer "Services" who incidentally do not provide any service and I have been informed that as the case is "closed", Customer Services cannot intervene. That's a bit unilateral in my view because as far as I am concerned, the case cannot be closed because it has not even been discussed.

I was also told by Customer Services that I would not be allowed to speak to their Warranties Dept as it is "not customer facing". In other words, Customer "Services" exists simply to fob off the uninitiated and prevent them from having a real dialogue with the very department which should be resolving technical issues.

I pointed out that I have considerable experience in the plastics industry through designing and producing injection moulded components, many of which have been coated so I do understand the process and chemistry.

In reality, the plastic bumper has been moulded with a release agent in the mould to aid the removal of the bumper. It will then have been cleansed to remove the release agent before spraying. This is the area of the process which on examination, has been clearly defective. Stonechips and jetwashes aside (and who hand washes cars nowadays anyway?) there has been no bond between the plastic and the primer/paint. This is evident due to the characteristics of the edges around the patch which has been removed. Sadly, the patch was washed down the drain, otherwise, I would have retained it and been able to undertake a spectrographic analysis.

The car has since been jetwashed more vigorously without any more paint flying off from the areas of the bumper which have microscopic stonechips (despite originally paying extra for an Autoglym finish "to give protection from stonechips"). This in itself makes a nonsense of Skoda's response that stonechips are the cause of the damage. It means that the remaining paint has been properly keyed on and that the patch which came off was most likely due to a defect in the post mould washing which left some of the release agent on the surface at that point.

The dealership has given me an estimate of £270 to repair the car. I have since been to a well established bodyshop which does contract work for several dealerships of various makes. Without prompting from me, the guy volunteered why the problem had arisen and guess what? My evaluation was 100% correct. Bad preparation is the source of the problem. His quote to fix the bumper was £104! Is the dealership making an extra bit of margin or what?

I have also asked Customer "Services" to forward to me a copy of VAG/Skoda's ISO QA protocol pertaining to paint preparation and adhesion tests. No response! They probably don't actually know what this is, but they will have one. Perhaps it's just not "customer facing".

The dealership has agreed to have a representative of Skoda inspect the car but I am advised that his word will be final and that will be considered to be the end of the matter. Oh yes?

Well, if it comes down to it, I will pay the proper bodyshop £104 to fix the car. After that, I will have my car serviced by my independent local garage - one where they have mechanics not fitters. I will save about £7 per hour on servicing. I will never buy another Skoda. My wife will not buy the Fabia VRS which she rather liked. My brother will not confirm the order for a top spec Superb which he is about to place and the net losers in all of this will be A. The gutless dealer who does not have any clout with his supplier and B Skoda.

Having persuaded several people to give Skoda a try, I have in my own way been an excellent advocate for the company and would say that I have probably been indirectly responsible for selling about 15 cars for Skoda. This is because I have been known to have a long background in motor sport, preparing Formula Fords, 2 litre sports cars and a Formula 5000. I am considered to know a fair bit about cars.

OK, so unless this unilaterally,dismissive and arrogant posturing on the part of Skoda is resolved, I shall put as much efffort into dissuading people from buying Skoda.

They have come on in leaps and bounds in a short space of time, but they will lose market share even faster if they don't honour their warranties or at least show some willingness to have a discussion.

It's not the money. I spend 50 hours per week making my clients happy. I expect the same in return when I spend my hard earned cash.

The message is - and they can sue if they want. MY ADVICE ON THE BASIS OF MY EXPERIENCE IS DO NOT BUY A SKODA. Or, if you have to, for goodness sake, do not wash it. Let them sue me and take me to court. They will be receive a great deal of negative publicity.

Google Skoda complaints. I'm not alone.

[BigW]

Welcome to briskoda :wave:

[sharkrider]

I no longer drive a skoda, for exactly the same reasons, they wouldn't honour their warrenty,(suspension bushes) and the customer service centre didn't want to know......

trading standards said I had a good case to go to the small claims court to get my money back, after I paid for repairs myself (that should have been done under warrenty), but when I told them i used my car for my business, they said i probably wouldn't win :(

I now drive a fiat, and have had a garantee from their warrenty dept. that if any suspension bushes need replacing during the warrenty period, they will "of course" be replaced free of charge, without ducking out under the "wear and tear" lie, as skoda did (unlimited miles warrenty my ****) I've even had them replace a bonnet seal free, and I lost it! lol... what a difference......

skoda UK read these pages, its always good for them to see these things, they are loosing customers.

edit: welcome to briskoda

[Malc]

Thats a tad poor service I would have to agree - welcome to Briskoda

In my experience they have been great, Chichester in Hampshire being the best.

I had the usual front arb bush issue which was taken care of no question asked (Mk1) and additionally the indicator relay but mine were pretty much case closed on the warranty front..

Don't give in, VW are stubbon SOB's so I take they have picked it up from them

[expostmanpat]

If you do a search you may find quite a few posts with regard to bumper paint/ laquer peeling particularly in the area of the creases, iirc some have had this sorted under warrenty.

If the area is the size you describe it, then i would hope upon inspection by a technician Skoda will foot the bill, let us know.

Welcome to brisky btw

[bengie]

for sale:

soap box

welcome btw

[_ZS_]

Pressure washers are evil. You probably caught the edge of a stone ship and off she went.

[runboy]

Don't talk to me about Skoda and paint warranty. In my experience they don't want to know or fully explain their decision as to why they will not honour their paint warranty. First and last Skoda for me but you live and learn. This is the first time I tried to claim under paint warranty so I can't compare other manufacturers so who knows, they could all be like this.

[moley]

The paint was peeling on the lower edge of the tailgate on my MK1 octy a few years ago. I emailed the dealer some photo's of the problem and they phoned back to arrange a date to fix the problem, job done under warranty with no hastle. Before I contacted the dealer I showed the problem to my local dealer who told me that Skoda would not repair it under warranty.

[Genoa1893]

Well done,

IMHO the very problem has shown to be Skoda customer service, obeying to the mantra of cutting costs at all costs.

Here in Italy this has exactly been FIAT policy for decades. FIAT had almost the whole market, now no more.

Gordon, I hope that in the end, you may as well share with us your knowledge of cars.

[sworrall]

welcome to briskoda and sorry to hear about your experience. must be a real shocker to lose a slice of paint that big!!

might be worth you adding a review of the dealers via the review button at the top of the page

[InSaNeCaT]

I'm on my 3rd skoda atm and havent as yet been directly affected by a similar issue, but reading stuff like this makes me not want to buy another skoda just out of principle. Get your act together Skoda!

[Ants]

A. The gutless dealer who does not have any clout with his supplier and B Skoda.

That's a bit harsh, is that the same dealer that took digital images and sent them to Skoda, arranged a quote for repair, I suspect from a Skoda APPROVED bodyshop and also arranged for a Skoda representative to inspect your car? If Skoda UK say NO, what else do you expect the dealer to do?

Edited 8 August, 2008 by Ants

[JackDusty]

I had a very similar experience, within weeks of buying the car privately I had blisters appear in the paint work on the bumper and then a couple of 50p size chunks just fell off when jet washed. Eventually the lot simply washed off!!!:eek:

Went to my local dealer and told him it is apparently a common problem (as indicated by the number of posts on here) to which his reply was:

1 - never heard of it being a problem

2 - your car has been in a bump and thats a replacement bumper anyway so not prepared to raise it as a warranty issue

Although it transpired that the bumper had in fact been replaced (previous owner bare-faced lied when originally asked if the car had any accident damage ) it still raises the point that for some reason their bumper plastics dont hold the paint well.

As an aside I paid about £250 for full bumper respray - 150 labour and 100 materials and bought a new bumper too just to 'know where I was starting from' for another £150.

Buy my old one for £75

http://briskoda.net/items-sale/octavia-vrs-mk2-front-bumper/117936/

Hope you get it sorted fella.

JD

[KenONeill]

Hiya Gordon. It's not my business, but I've been playing about with painting plastics since about 1980. Your and your independant diagnoses were exactly what I thought from the size of the piece of paint that came off.

That said, I also have to say that pressure washers have no business near car paint! They're all to good at pressing dirt into the paint!

[jlindstrom]

Have to agree on the bad customer service there..

Parents had a sort of similar experience with their then brand new Saab 9-3 sports sedan. It was less than 4 months old and had well under 6k kilometers on the clock when it started showing stone chip like dents in really weird places. We're talking right in the middle of the roof, in the front part of rear doors.. and there were lots of them. Basically in places where you can't get stone chips in under normal circumstances. They took it to the dealers, who stated it was stone chips - case closed.

Well, as you propably guess - not by a long shot. I started searching the web and found out about half of the company's boards e-mail addresses including one responsible for sales and one for marketing. I mailed them in a very polite manner, explained myself, gave them a weblink with pictures of the car and explained the poor service from dealer. I also explained to them that if they didn't react to this with a proper inspection and sort out the paintjob I'd next be e-mailing the same issue to all major car magazines and tv shows I could think of and also making sure it was the first hit on any search engine the net I could have influence on..

It took about a week before the stealers contacted my parents and told to bring in the car for a paint job. And they got a free courtesy car for the time the car was under work. They didn't even inspect it first - straight to paint.

So my advice is a) don't give up find high enough execs and contact them in a polite but firm manner. It should get you sorted.

From what I've come to understand about these large corporations is that the very top execs really don't hear anything about what's going on in the field cuz every "small boss" is protecting their own hiney and making problems go away. So when you contact the top management, even them asking a guestion about it will cause instant fear over the little guys job. Thus they'd rather sort it out no guestions asked than risk getting a bad rep under the top execs eyes.

Don't give in! We're all rooting for you. I personally have nothing but positive to say about skoda and I'd like it to stay that way.. so keep them on their toes!

[fortyfirs]

I also had the problem of powerwashing on to the rear bumper of a Nissan which was 1 month old and over half of the silver coating came off revealing a black bumper. Nissan had it done under warranty with no problem, as for our Octy i still use the washer but from a reasonable distance from the paintwork.

[Old Blue]

I have always been advised never to use a power washer on a car for the very problems you guys have had!

Use a hose with a brush and soap container or hand wash it, it does not take much longer and you get virtually no swirl marks and hazing!!

[runboy]

Auto Express recently had one of their regular used car double page spread, this time about the Octy II. One of the comments was about known issues with poor paint on the roof. I'm very interested in this at it's the roof that caused my warranty claim which Skoda have declared they will not honour. I did email Auto Express and asked if they could tell me more about their comment but I haven't heard a thing back in about 2 months.

[bigal rallyred]

I've used pessure washes on al the cars i've owned and if you buy a good machine and use it correctly then there is no damaged caused.

Obviously I keep well away from stone chips but on undamaged paint there's nothing to worry about.

People look at the PSI ratings of pressure washers and think that is the figure that counts but too high a pressure is bad and it's actually the flow rate that's important.

Sorry it's O/T but when someone mentions using a brush and hose rather than a pressure washer then that's clearly bad advice.

The only dealings I've had with skoda C/S have been a waste of time as they always quoted that the dealerships are run by the individuals and they have no real say on what goes on, the thing is they have their name above the door and anything bad that goes on directly has an effect on their public image.

[Old Blue]

I've used pessure washes on al the cars i've owned and if you buy a good machine and use it correctly then there is no damaged caused.

Obviously I keep well away from stone chips but on undamaged paint there's nothing to worry about.

People look at the PSI ratings of pressure washers and think that is the figure that counts but too high a pressure is bad and it's actually the flow rate that's important.

Sorry it's O/T but when someone mentions using a brush and hose rather than a pressure washer then that's clearly bad advice.

The only dealings I've had with skoda C/S have been a waste of time as they always quoted that the dealerships are run by the individuals and

they have no real say on what goes on, the thing is they have their name above the door and anything bad that goes on directly has an effect on their public image.

Be interested in your reasoning in that using a hose and brush is bad advice!!

IMHO using a power washer is the same as using a car wash, not good for keeping a decent paint job.

[bigal rallyred]

A brush is harsh and drags the dirt about I use my pressure washer with a foam lance as a pre wash then pressure wash of the remaining foam.

Then I wash the car using a wash mit. Rinse off and dry with a microfibre drying cloth, no leather chamois in sight.

No doubt after you use your brush you probably pick up a big yellow sponge off the groud and wash the car with Fairy Liquid.

[Old Blue]

A brush is harsh and drags the dirt about I use my pressure washer with a foam lance as a pre wash then pressure wash of the remaining foam.

Then I wash the car using a wash mit. Rinse off and dry with a microfibre drying cloth, no leather chamois in sight.

No doubt after you use your brush you probably pick up a big yellow sponge off the groud and wash the car with Fairy Liquid.

Very droll!!!

If you had read my original post you would have seen that I use a hose WITH an integral soap container!

Before I soap the car I use just the hose to loosen up any dirt on the car then use the brush and soap.

Other than that I use the hose then a 2 bucket wash and finish as you do!!!!

Whats Fairy liquid? Is it something that fairies use?

[bigal rallyred]

No Leprechauns use it when they run out of lucky charms.

Then make Blue Peter models with the empty bottles.

[Old Blue]

Wrong fairies!!