Hello peeps, going to go on with a rant now....

Skoda dealer griffin "con artist" mill garages, pontypridd! Had my vRS serviced at 50k, everything was fine when the car went in, and the day i drove away i felt it was different, abit sluggish and no power, but thought nothing of it and the engine management come on a day after. Took it back complaining it wasn't right since the service, called me up today billing me with £1000 plus of damages!! I was like WTF!!! . Claiming my EGR valve is stuffed, along with a new turbo and parts (something F moto?!) and fuel parts that were stuffed and needed changing. To me this is taking the right ****, car was fine when it went in and now its completely screwed!

Whats your opinion on this guys? something just dont add up! supposedly they dont routinely check those things during a service because it takes them to long! Also they dont plug anything in to the diagnostic port to check for errors?!

Am i being played for a mug or not?

HELP!!

Edited 20 July, 201015 yr by channy86

Are you saying they fixed all that for you and trying to charge you £1000? or they think it's those components and could cost £1000 or over?

That price is a charge of the parts and labour to get it all done if i was to carry it out with them! I'm absolutely gob smacked, my warrenty just ran out in february aswell funny enough!

Also they dont plug anything in to the diagnostic port to check for errors?!

Then they're clearly not sticking to the servicing regime detailed in the Service Schedule, as it states this is to be done during every inspection service. One could argue they're charging for work not done. Complain to Skoda UK? :( (A relative had an issue with a dealer with one of their vehicles - German & Swedish clutch fitted but charged the OEM rate for the part by a VW main dealer - they complained to VW, who told the dealer in no uncertain terms to refund the difference)

Edited 20 July, 201015 yr by martinch

If the garage had no clear instruction to do the work and then they went ahead without permission, then they acted without your authorisation .To complain that the car was not "right" after the service does not in my opinion give them the right to charge you anything. At the very least it gives the garage permission to investigate for which they could charge for diagnosis if their opinion was that the service did not induce the fault.. It may be prudent to ask them who gave them the go-ahead to do this work.

So you took your car for a service, paid and drove off. Next day, warning lights start flashing so you took it back to the dealer/garage and after a look they said it needs this, that and the other, work doing to the tune of £1,000.

Are you asking if the garage has done a dodgy on the car, as it seems a bit odd that it was functioning OK, with no warning lights, before the service, then suddenly… ?

I would suggest you ask the garage exactly why they didn't do a diagnostic during the service, and what they think about all this stuff going wrong straight after the service. Could an imcompetent mechanic have caused all the damage? Have they actually done the work already and are charging you, or is it just an estimate for the work?

We need more info :S

hello just got back from the garage the estimate was an under estimate for the work which is needed to be carried out. they quoted me £1763.13 including labour and the following parts: EGR valve supposedly clogged up, a new flap motor and 2 gaskets and a new turbo!

Im so confused its unreal. One moment my car was fine and now to find it has this many problems. Its so wrong its unreal!

Not commenting on your specific issue but this dealr has a history of being a ****wit

Yeah I know they have a sh-it reputation only reason why i went there was because it was alot closer than having to travel all the way to newport. Right after some research about blown turbo's i can't see my car having any of the symptoms at all, there is power loss but no clouds of smoke from the exhaust, so possibly indicating a blown pipe somewhere? But wait if there was, surely they would have spotted it right? Or maybe im being to trusting? They actually let me drive out the garage with the engine management light still on aswell. I've driven it home about 15 miles i just can't see a problem other than no boost!

Flap motor's nothing to do with the engine, so I wonder how fault-finding on the engine threw that one up?!?!

OMG lol, can't believe are you telling me, griffin mill dealers are really STEALERS ? From my invoice flap motor costs a whopping £261.11. I dont have a clue what it even is! They claim my EGR valve is clogged, i searched that it can be cleaned with WD40 or carb cleaner? Where is it located can it be done by a rookie? Im still not convinced my turbo has gone, i just need some hard proof to take griffin mill down, take legal action!!

I think you need to do a scan and give us some codes. If the turbo really is blown I'm sure you would have known about it at the time.

Did you check your mileage to see if they'd driven it anywhere? It all sounds mighty dodgy to me. Have they thrashed it and done blown the turbo themselves?

uhoh i hate things like this i actually threatened Ford Motherwell that i would drive the car through there showroom if they never paid out haha

My though exactly if the turbo had gone, surely i would heard a big bang or something like that. Like i said the car drives perfectly fine, maybe its worth getting the EGR valve replaced and that will get rid of engine management light? Anyone with Vag-com in south wales area, looking for meet? does it have to be vag-com?

Take it to a trusted VAG specialist for a second opinion , ask on here for one close to you?? A big to your dealer though.

Edited 20 July, 201015 yr by Dmac1969

I found a VAG specialist nearby will give them a call tomorrow, will get some fault codes up and see what they say, will definitely keep this thread updated. I swear all these problems are not what griffin mill claim them to be. I'm taking Griffin Mill down!

Right guys took my car for a good drive today, twice today i had this experience. I felt as my car driven as normal feeling the boost come in and can hear the prominent turbo whistle between 1.5-2k rpm, then after travelling up a series of steep hills my car could not go over 40mph or over 2.5k rpm or was 3k can't really remember. Then my car felt really sluggish which to me is my 1st experience of "limp" mode. So i pulled over turned off the car and restarted it and presto everything's back to normal again! To me i think this is an indication of a faulty MAF sensor? correct me if i'm wrong guys. I think it is and i'm really furious to claims which the dealer has made that my car needs a new turbo, flap motor and a new egr valve just to solve the problem i went in with which was the engine management light coming! What you think guys, are my findings correct?

Cheers

Right guys took my car for a good drive today, twice today i had this experience. I felt as my car driven as normal feeling the boost come in and can hear the prominent turbo whistle between 1.5-2k rpm, then after travelling up a series of steep hills my car could not go over 40mph or over 2.5k rpm or was 3k can't really remember. Then my car felt really sluggish which to me is my 1st experience of "limp" mode. So i pulled over turned off the car and restarted it and presto everything's back to normal again! To me i think this is an indication of a faulty MAF sensor? correct me if i'm wrong guys. I think it is and i'm really furious to claims which the dealer has made that my car needs a new turbo, flap motor and a new egr valve just to solve the problem i went in with which was the engine management light coming! What you think guys, are my findings correct?

Cheers

Could be a lot of things including seized up Turbo vanes. You would need to get all the failure codes to begin to understand what the problem(s) is/are.

channy my turbo recently blew on my VRS and trust me if the dealer is telling you its a blown turbo you wouldn't even be able to reach 20mph let alone 40mph. The turbo would be screeching and giving off a very high pitch whining tone. If your able to get 40mph out of it with no noise that definetly IS NOT a blown turbo sounds like a dodgy dealer is it an official skoda dealership or just a regular garage if it's a dealership I'd be straight on the phone to skoda head office with a complaint there usually really good with stuff like that and are more than likely going to chase there backsides down for you.

Morning guys, yeah it was a skoda dealer i took it to and i called the skoda head office they were just as unhelpful claiming i haven't 5 years of services instead i had 5 services every 10k miles (Current milages 50k) after4.5 years! The garage was GRIFFIN MILL in pontypridd, i recommened totaly avoiding them! Blown turbo vanes? If it was that would i be able to even reach a speed of 70mph? i not sure what turbo vanes are to be honest, but surely the a turbo would be needed for me to get to that speed right? I only think its the MAF because my brother suffered the same problem with his polo 1.9 tdi. I damn hope it is!

Only a fault code scan will tell - we used to have an interactive map of members who had VAG-COM would might be able to help in return for beer money, but I don't know what happened to it...

Hello! i said i would keep this thread updated. Went to see a VAG specialist today about my issue (Euro Performance South Wales) ran a VAG com diagnostic and he did find a fault about my EGR valve and turbo but he also carried out a engine visual inspection to find one of the pipes was snapped off on the vacuum chest (The black box thing top left of engine). So he repaired that by cutting off the end of the pipe with the snapped bit of plastic in it and put the pipe on a spare valve on the vacuum chest (Think he said it was a vacuum pipe). He then resetted all the faults via VAG com and we took the car for a good rally trying to get the engine management light to come on and to put it in to limp mode, but could not! Vag com it again and no faults came up. So hopefully this had solved my issue! So how the pipe broke i don't know, possibly when the dealers were taking of my strut brace or putting it back on they must of snapped it without knowing! So instead of carrying out a thorough check of my engine after complaining they went with fault codes that come up and wanting to charge me £1800 where as i got it fixed for £60!!

Can i take this issue any further, like trading standards? regarding the way i was treating and trying to be ripped off?!

scum!!

this is why my car will never see a dealership!!!

are they even mechanics or just read service notices

my mate works for vw and he's stupid lol

Edited 29 July, 201015 yr by BigJase88

I've had issues before with garage servicing and the local trading standards will be very interested to take this up on your behalf, they were very helpful in my case. They are part of the local authority so you should be able to find some contact details for them from your local council website or via a google search.

If you've now got the firm evidence of the repair quote from the stealers and the invoice from the actual corrective work from the indy then you could copy those to Skoda HQ and make a complaint too - perhaps they may be more inclined to listen with hard evidence in front of you.

Good luck!

to me it seems skoda scan a car.... check the codes and just say your car needs part a. part b. and part c. to fix it without actually looking into it!!

when my car was at ford i knew what problem it had what it needed, yet they told me they would not order the part for it without them diagnosing it! which cost an hours labour.... guess what the problem was as i stated