I have been driving for over fifty years and have never had a car that has had the two following faults.

Last year a safety belt failed and this year an electric window and yet Skoda appear to consider this unexceptional.

The plate that holds the electric window winding gear was held on with pop rivets, not screws, not nuts and bolts but pop rivets. When the mechanic took it off he found that a square corner bracket on the lifting gear was broken which was not surprising because it was made from plastic and probably cost about two pence.

Needless to say it was not possible to replace the cheap plastic bracket at a cost of two pence I had to pay £70.00 plus for a new plate and then two hours labour on top. Needless to say I will not be buying another Skoda.

I have been driving for over fifty years and have never had a car that has had the two following faults.

Last year a safety belt failed and this year an electric window and yet Skoda appear to consider this unexceptional.

The plate that holds the electric window winding gear was held on with pop rivets, not screws, not nuts and bolts but pop rivets. When the mechanic took it off he found that a square corner bracket on the lifting gear was broken which was not surprising because it was made from plastic and probably cost about two pence.

Needless to say it was not possible to replace the cheap plastic bracket at a cost of two pence I had to pay £70.00 plus for a new plate and then two hours labour on top. Needless to say I will not be buying another Skoda.

I can see your point of view, but i think your find this is the way modern cars are now. Nearly all fairly new VAG cars have this cassette type system for the window regulator and associated door parts, its just the way VAG do it. Often it is easier for the technician to replace the whole unit, and not just replace the part, so labour time is kept lower than if the faulty unit has to be disasembled just to replace a small part. So the total bill for replacing one tiny part or a whole unit may simlar. This replace and not repair is not just with VAG, but with all newish cars. As cars become more complicated, and more refined for you the driver, more stuff has to be cramed into the same sized car, so something as simple as a new window regulator on a old car, now consists of working around modules/speakers/amps/airbags etc that are now all in the door, so the method of repair has to also alter. Hope this helps

Matt

I have been driving for over fifty years and have never had a car that has had the two following faults.

Last year a safety belt failed and this year an electric window and yet Skoda appear to consider this unexceptional.

The plate that holds the electric window winding gear was held on with pop rivets, not screws, not nuts and bolts but pop rivets. When the mechanic took it off he found that a square corner bracket on the lifting gear was broken which was not surprising because it was made from plastic and probably cost about two pence.

Needless to say it was not possible to replace the cheap plastic bracket at a cost of two pence I had to pay £70.00 plus for a new plate and then two hours labour on top. Needless to say I will not be buying another Skoda.

The bit that broke in your window is a VW part and their weakness is well known , especially in Mk4 Golfs.

Built to a price just like all other makes. I would hardly class the two listed faults as 'Falling Apart'.

:wonder: A failed window mechanism is hardly what I'd call 'falling to bits'. I have had three Skoda's so far and ain't had a problem with any of them.

Haha... Moggy.

I'm really sorry to hear that you had these two faults. Cars these days are not made the way they used to be. And I'm very glad as my first cars needed servicing every 6000 miles and that was a FULL service including the ball joints. And I expected to break down. These days I can drive for 10,000-20,000 between services and my car is almost as reliable as a consumer appliance.

I have been driving for over fifty years and have never had a car that has had the two following faults.

Last year a safety belt failed and this year an electric window and yet Skoda appear to consider this unexceptional.

The plate that holds the electric window winding gear was held on with pop rivets, not screws, not nuts and bolts but pop rivets. When the mechanic took it off he found that a square corner bracket on the lifting gear was broken which was not surprising because it was made from plastic and probably cost about two pence.

Needless to say it was not possible to replace the cheap plastic bracket at a cost of two pence I had to pay £70.00 plus for a new plate and then two hours labour on top. Needless to say I will not be buying another Skoda.

My heart bleeds for you pal.

After a new clutch and flywheel 2 weeks ago at a cost of £600 fitted AND new console bushes at £150 fitted

the week before that AND a new battery at £90 a week before that I still love my Skoda. It's the best car I've ever owned.

My question is...

Why join a forum just to bleat about a couple of cheap little repairs you've had to suffer and tell us

all how crap Skodas are???? Part of responsible car ownership is maintenance and running repairs.

You say you've been driving for fifty years so I'm guessing you're an older chap. If it's cheap hassle free transport

you're after where someone else does the maintenance and servicing... May I suggest your bus pass... Job done.

+1

grr666 that got meaner and meaner as i read your post lol, very true tho mate

if you dont want the expense of keeping the car running and in good shape, then maybe an alternative method may be needed, well said dude

Elliott

Let's see. Buy a Skoda £10,000. Have a few repairs here and there that cost £1000.

OR

Buy something better put together for £25,000, and when any repairs are needed the parts cost more.

But then again if cost is the only determining factor then I suppose there's Hyundai which seem to make quite reasonable cars.

TBH the thing holding Skoda back is the use of VAG parts, if they designed and made them themselves they'd be miles better. Sadly they have little flexibility. Skoda will need more than "it's a VW on the cheap" as their selling point when people realise VW's aren't all that great, and there's competition from the likes of Hyundai I guess they're going somewhere towards that with the unique styling of the new fabia, the superb estate, the yeti, and the roomster.

Edited 14 July, 201015 yr by anewman

I would suggest a little consumer experiment if you think Skoda or any VAG cars are not well built you should buy something Frence next time a similar sized Peugeot or Renault and see how many bits fall off

I think you guys have said it all.

But lay off the age thing. I'm coming up to my bus pass entitlement, but I'll still prefer to use the Fireblade.

you should try driving a french car, something breaks every month !

Minimokes first sentence + 50 years ago? I started driving in 1964. The electric windows didn't fail, but the manual winding mechanism did - or, if you had a mini, the moss jammed the slides LOL with memory.

Seat belts ho ho ho - these were for fighter pilots only. In 1960 for today's equivalent of £12K you got a box with an engine which might last 60K, a crude heater was extra, brakes arggh, 30mpg was good, at night 50mph was the limit, no radio, no external mirrors, no tacho, no heated rear screen or mirrors, no rear wash wipe - in fact no wash at the front just one speed wipers, etc etc. - and do you remember how things like speedometer cables failed? Of course the car came pre-rusted with a 6 month guarantee. I do love our Furbies, and, yes, one window failed which I fixed at minimal cost, just a few hours work. The good old days? No thank you.

The answer to all your problems

Something not right with that traveller... the alloy wheels do not suit it AT ALL

I had my Mk1 Fabia for 8 years and not one thing fell apart or broke off and hope my new Mk2 Fabia is just as good or better. I find the build quality of Skoda very good.

you should try driving a french car, something breaks every month !

You can say that again, No2 car has had it's problems but I'm determined to make it stay in one piece.

Compare to my previous cars, a Punto, and various french cars, the fabia is wicked. Mines done 144,000 miles and theres a few bits that have needed sorting, but for its age and miles its solid.

Matt

I would suggest that for anyone who has had a fault with their clutch, flywheel, console bushes and a battery must be extremely unlucky or a rubbish driver. However, to then say they still love the car sugests a character default. Leaving aside the childish Bus Pass insults the facts of the matter are that the window fault is well known but Skoda prefers to ignore it. Why join a forum to complain? Well that’s simple. Skoda are a powerful organisation who can and do ignore the consumer because they have no power. The only way to gain the attention of large organisations is to use a forum.

I would suggest that for anyone who has had a fault with their clutch, flywheel, console bushes and a battery must be extremely unlucky or a rubbish driver. However, to then say they still love the car sugests a character default. Leaving aside the childish Bus Pass insults the facts of the matter are that the window fault is well known but Skoda prefers to ignore it. Why join a forum to complain? Well that’s simple. Skoda are a powerful organisation who can and do ignore the consumer because they have no power. The only way to gain the attention of large organisations is to use a forum.

You honestly think your pointless rant about basically nothing is going to change anything? Do you even think someone at Skoda who could possibly change anything would read it? Dont be so short sighted.

If you actually took the time to think about it, what you are getting for your money when you buy a Skoda is a lot. Seriously some people are never happy. You make me sick :wonder:

I would suggest that for anyone who has had a fault with their clutch, flywheel, console bushes and a battery must be extremely unlucky or a rubbish driver.

Flywheels and clutches tend to fail due to the amount of torque put through them, and not always down to the driver

Sorry to hear you have issues with your car. Sorry also that people jump down your throat because you have said something negative about the brand they love. I do agree that you may have been a little ott in saying that the car is falling to bits, but there's no need for the insults.

It is true that cars these days don't seem to be as well put together as they used to be, all part of the cost cutting to provide more for less. French cars are terrible for it, Japanese, and indeed Korean cars, offer exceptional quality.

Failures on my 2003 Fabia saloon, which you would assume would be designed for greater reliability for the fleet market have been greater than those on my previous 1981 VW Golf 3-door hatchback.

So far I've had the ARB fail, rear doors leak, horrendous engine oil usuage, aircon fail, cambelt and front brake disks replaced at an earlier interval than I would expect.. On the Golf it was just the clutch and the passenger bulkhead failure.

I appreciate that Value engineering techniques, productivity improvement and purchasing cost reductions in production are applied to keep the price down and that may include the substitution of pop-rivets for bolts etc, but its another thing when longevity and relaibility of the product diminish.

My feeling is that whilst the extent and scope of these cost reductions are determined by the need to keep the price of entry and base level models affordable to the mass market, they have been implemnted over the last 30 years exclusively for the benefit of the marketing depts of the manufactuers i.e. building down to a price rather than up to a standard, to increase sales and profits without due regard for reliability. Further, the benefit obtained from utilising these techniques is then applied by manufacturers throughout and up the range, whwere sales prices are highert, to increase profits.

IMHO the extent of productivity improvements must been at least 1% per year in western economies for the last 30 years. However, price inflation in the UK has been, on average 2.5%. So that, even if all the cost improvements in manufacturing had been passed on to the consumer prices would still have risen by 1.5% per year i.e or about 63% in 30 years.

Applying this rate of price increase to my own experience, I would conclude that whilst the prices in real terms for base models are about the same over this 30 year period - OTR price of 1981 Golf 1000cc (50HP) 3 door hatch (£4,000 then , projected today's price (x 1.63) £6,530), 2010 OTR price for equivalent spec car, Polo urban Fox 1.2 (60PS) £6,495, you get slightly improved functionality with today's models i.e. EMUs, 10 year body work warranty's, better suspension, steering and braking but not as much as should be expected from 30 years of improvement. Further, the prices of the mid-ranged models have been well and truly inflated and that increase has been taken by the manufacturer as pure profit and not passed back to the consumer as reduced failure rates or improved relaibility - base model for golf now OTR £14,500 !!!! Does 200cc extra engine capacity , power steering, aircon, a Cd palyer and 150 litres of extra space/metal anount to £8,000 difference in price !!!!! Manufacturer's are keeping standards and costs as low as they dare and are just tapping the increase in disposable income in western countries.

Nick

Edited 18 July, 201015 yr by Clunkclick

People want more from there cars, but don't want to spend any more money, so some things have to be made with money in mind - Simples