skoda diagnosed wrong fault, where do i stand?

[feemackenzie]

hi, ill try to be breif, i bought second hand 1.4 16v W reg fabia. since i had it the car is hunting and has an erratic idle. also power steering light keeps coming on.

i went to an independant garage who cleaned throttle body and sensors, also did a diagnostics which was clear and checked all my earth cables which are fine, so as a last resort i paid skoda an hours labour to look at the car.

mechanic came back and said it was the throttle body that needed replacing and that the steering light was due to low battery and would stop on its own. they quoted £447 for throtte to be fitted inc labour. so i scourced the part brand new myself for £230 and had it fitted by a mechanic friend for free. and still no joy. i went back to skoda who said it needed resetting, which they did there and then free of charge, but still no joy. they have admitted that they diagnosed it wrong and have agreed to look at the car in detail again next week.

so my question is where do i stand on trying to get back the money i spent on a part i didnt need!! although i didnt have it fitted by skoda, the problem remains that i paid for the part based on their incompetent diagnosis! has anyone else had this problem, if so how did u get dealt with, i know i dont have much of a leg to stand on as the car is out of warranty, but i still have a broken car, and £230 less in my bank!

any advice is much appreciated

[expostmanpat]

The best you could reasonably expect from the skoda garage is a free hours labour to diagnose the fault, again. If you had let them do the work then they would have been in a position to swap your old TB and test the car with a new one and swap it back if the fault remained, and/or you would have been in a better position to claim they did unnecessary work.

If you still have the old TB you could get your mate to swap it back out and try returning the new one as unused or selling it on fleebay.

[MoggyTech]

Not got a hope in Hell if you have a garage diagnose a fault then have it fixed elsewhere.

[TeflonTom]

i would point to something like a blocked breather hose on one of those 16v jobs if it is idling erratic

[fordfan]

Even by main dealer labour rates £217 (£447 - £230) is an excessive charge. So it seems to me that you did not source the part from the Skoda dealer and yet they reset it free of charge. You could try returning the part to the company who you got it from. They were honest enough to tell you that the steering light would settle down, rather than sticking on a £100 sensor.

Early Fabias do tend to suffer from a range of problems, so any diagnosis will have an element of experience based thought within it. You could get Skoda to clear out the EGR pipes, erase ECU learned values and carry out any basic settings that are required, when they look at it next week.

[feemackenzie]

cheers for all ur advice guys, ill just see wat they say when it gets back on the ramps, i unfortunatly cant return the part i ordered as it was ordered specific for my car, but i might do as suggested and swap back old part and sell new one on fleebay and try and get some money back on that.

ill just be glad to get it sorted as i love the car, i just hope im not damaging anything else driving it as it is!

[TeflonTom]

i doubt if you will get much for it on ebay, you would have to find somebody who specifically wants that type of throttle body, might be better off saving it for when the original one breaks

[lehto]

hi this can happen if you need a flash upgrade this is a update to the ecu we do this to customers cars and it sorts out about 75 % of them

[feemackenzie]

interesting, cheers lehto, ill mention that to the garage on wed when it goes in. due to the other minor probs im having with the car im convinced its an electrical prob anyway. will let u know how i get on! cheers