Broken A/C - Unreasonable Skoda?

[wills]

Hi everyone,

Need some opinions I guess...

As my profile says, I have a 2011 Skoda Fabia vRS. Recently, I have been getting a really annoying whine when the A/C was running. If I pressed the A/C button to turn it off it would all go quiet. I booked it into the dealer to be looked at - the day came round and in it went. Couldn't find anything wrong.

However, it kept on doing it so I went back to the dealer and got one of the techs to sit in the car and have a listen. He finally heard it and agreed there was a fault and it would need to be booked in. A few days later it was back in and they diagnosed a faulty A/C compressor. They said they would need to order the parts. 3 weeks later the parts arrived and the car went back in to be sorted last Thursday.

While it was in I got a call from the Skoda garage saying that the condensor was damaged as well and that it would also need to be replaced as all the gas had leaked out. I said ok and I then got told I would not get this replaced under warranty because a stone had damaged it. I immediately said I was not happy about this and if the part was so delicate why was it not better protected. This fell on deaf ears really and I was then advised I could make a claim on insurance for this damage if I wished.

I told them to not do anything and I would ring back.

I immediately contacted Skoda UK expecting some help and some reassurance from them that they would help sort this out. I initally spoke to really helpful lady who took down all the details and told me a case handler would be in contact although it may take 72 hours. I told them this was not acceptable and I needed someone to get back to me ASAP as I had one of the dealers courtesy vehicles. This was noted and I sat and waited.

The phone rang and it was the case handler. She advised me she would be handling the case and it could take upto 72 hours. I said this is fine but I would need to keep the courtesy vehicle for this period until a decision is made at the very least. She said she would be working as fast as she could and would be in contact tomorrow with an update.

Friday came around and the dealer rang me to say they had the part waiting to go in but couldnt proceed until they knew who was paying. As I had not heard anything I decided to ring for an update. I at first got told my case handler was on the phone and she would phone me as soon as she was done. An hour passed and I had heard nothing so I rang again - this time she was at lunch and she would ring as soon as she was back. 2 hours passed and still no call back and I rang again, this time she had stepped away from her desk and again a message to ring me as soon as she was back would be left. Another hour passed and still no call back so I rang again - she had gone on a break this time but a message would be personally left by the phone operative for her to ring me back. ANOTHER hour passed and still no call, I rang again and said I was getting pretty naffed off with the whole situation and I wanted a call back within the next 30 mins as it was getting to late afternoon and I was being told by the dealer they wanted the car back by the end of play on Friday. I was told that the lady I needed was in a meeting but I would definitely get a call back with the next 30 mins.

40 mins later the phone rang and it was my case handler. She advised me she was still waiting on some documentation and she would be passing this along to her tech team who would then make a decision but as we were still within the 72 hour window so there wasn't much she could do. I said, ok, thats fine, however I would NOT be returning the courtesy vehicle until a decision had been made as I would have zero means of transport or even getting back from Skoda without one. This immediately seemed to annoy the lady on the phone and I was told that the courtesy vehicle was not mine, that if I did not return it I would be in effect stealing it and that the dealer would most likely call the Police and that one gentlemen who had done the same got arrested by doing the same. I said that I didn't believe it was as black and white as that and I think that Skoda are being unreasonable trying to leave me without a vehicle for the weekend - especially as I have a 3 year old child that I needed to get from nursery who has pretty serious medical issues. I advised her public transport was not an option and neither was a taxi due to the equipment I needed to carry for the child. She responded that if I could have her in the car then surely a taxi would be fine. I unfortunately got a bit upset at this point about her response and had to hang up saying I would ring back!

I calmed down and rang back after 15 mins and asked to speak to a manager. Bearing in mind it was roughly 1645 by this point and it was fast approaching 1800 at which time the dealer would shut. When I got back through I was told no manager was avaiable and that there was a 4 hour turn around for a manager call back, however, due to the time of day on a Friday it would now be Monday before I would be called back. I again got pretty annoyed at this point and explained the whole situation down the phone and I believe the manager must have been monitoring the call as the lady suddenly said a manager was available and she could speak to me there and then.

I explained the whole situation once again, all about the A/C, all about me needing to keep a courtesy vehicle and finally the fact I was very upset about the way the case handler had, in effect, shown total disregard/compassion towards me and the child. The manager was very understanding and told me to leave it with her and she would ring me back before 1730.

1728 - the manager rang me back. She said she had spoken to the dealer and they had agreed I could keep the courtesy vehicle for the weekend. However, even though she had not had an offical decision she said I should ring the dealer and authorise the work to go ahead and pay for it as she was pretty sure that Skoda would not be willing to pay anything out towards this as it was standard wear and tear. Owing to the fact I had just about had enough of Skoda UK by this point I said ok and it was left that she would ring me back on Monday.

I rang the dealer, thanked them for agreeing to let me have the car for the weekend and for them to go ahead with the work on Monday. I did not pay any money then however.

SOOOO, the situation I am left in is this. I have the courtesy vehicle until the end of Monday and at the moment my local Skoda garage are going to put the new condenser in on Monday and the vehicle would be ready for collection as soon as thats done.

Does anyone think I am being unreasonable going after Skoda for this?? I have had plenty of cars since I started driving in 2005, have covered over 500,000 miles in that period and in all that time I have never had a situation like this. Infact when I went outside my house and checked, several cars have a standard front plastic bumper with plastic grill but behind this is a metal mesh to stop any objects from flying in and damaging any radiator in the way mine has been broken. I feel that Skoda have a poor design here and that if the rad is THAT delicate then why on earth is it in such a prominent position and unprotected.

As it stands I am going to carry on at Skoda UK from Monday and fight for this to be covered but I am really not sure I am going to get much mileage - has anyone had any similar experiences (including the unhelpful service from Skoda UK!)??

Sorry for the long post!

--

-Will

[Ootohere]

Not good, but i dont think you can say its due to a bad design.

I have not heard of many being stone damaged. Actually not any.

How many miles have you got on the vRS now?

Did they show you the damaged condenser,

and how much were they going to charge you?

That is some miles you do a year.

I thought i did many but not near 71,400 average.

george

[bluecar1]

stone damage is often excluded from radiator / condensor warranty

did 236k in octavia (2000-2007), 165k in my roomster 2007-2012, neither of which suffered any damage to rad or condensor even though i was constantly on motorway kent to west midlands (and scotland now and again)

sometimes a dealer will do a "good will gesture" payment to retain a customer,

are you being charged for fitting and recharge of the air con system ?

if not then i would be happy to just pay for just a condensor as they could end up saying the compressor failed due to the stone damage and charge you for that as well

[PAW3001]

Well the same happened to me with my 11 superb, A/C not working. Took it in, told condenser had stone damage and needs to be replaced. £700 but got it down to £550 for the repair.

Pointed out that there was nothing to stop it happening again as the grill is so open and that I do around 20k miles a year. I was advised to stick some mesh behind it.

Why the hell can't Skoda do that if the design is so bad in the first as it seems more people are suffering from this issue

[jrw]

If you have to pay - make sure when you sign the job sheet put the words 'paid under duress' or 'paid under protest' across the amount. This way when SUK refuse to pay a penny (which they will because they use the stone chip excuse for everything) you have evidence that you didn't just agree to the work.

Now, if you are prepared to fight this case (which i think you should as condenser faults happen way to often with 'stone chip damage') then the first port of call is to contact trading standards and they will ask you to send a letter to the supplying dealer as per the SOGA and give them 7 days to reply, this will go back and forth for a while and if the dealer refuse to budge then threaten them with the small claims court. This usually works (I was one day away from filing a small claims on my old car when they relented over rusty wings caused by 'stone chip damage') but if it doesn't be prepared to file a small claim. It only costs around £50 and you can do it online. Then if they actually turn up to court, they have to prove that it was caused by a stone chip, that the part and fitting of it thereof it of reasonable quality for them to win the case. Clearly as delicate part of the car has been damaged by a stone chip then it is of reasonable quality under the sales of goods act.

Trading standards should be able to help you and give you a lot of advice.

Good luck.

[jrw]

Well the same happened to me with my 11 superb, A/C not working. Took it in, told condenser had stone damage and needs to be replaced. £700 but got it down to £550 for the repair.

Pointed out that there was nothing to stop it happening again as the grill is so open and that I do around 20k miles a year. I was advised to stick some mesh behind it.

Why the hell can't Skoda do that if the design is so bad in the first as it seems more people are suffering from this issue

As per my reply above, its a design fault therefore not of reasonable quality and Skoda should fix and prevent it from happening again.

[Guest]

Wills, speaking from the other side (no I'm not dead!) as ex-tech...stone chip damage to rads and condensers is (as pointed out above) not covered by warranty. My Fabia has the same design as yours and I would not say it's particularly open to stone damage when compared to other car makes. In fact it is less exposed than the main engine coolant rad and if a stone hit that and damaged it I don't suppose you would be ranting at Skoda about that would you? It happens on every make to cooling rads and condensers wherever and however they are mounted. The design is no different to many other makes of car on the road. I assure you of this, I've worked on many of them so I can confirm this. As for proving it's a poor design, you stand no chance against a car company that is using the same design as 75% of the rest of the car world. It's unfortunate you have experienced this but I don't think you can blame Skoda. You should be able to claim some compensation from you car insurers though. That's what some have done that I know of when we have had the odd car in with this sort of damage. If you are nice to Skoda and your dealer you may get a discount. Good luck on this though. It's a shock when the unexpected happens.

Edited 16 September, 2012 by Estate Man

[Kiwibacon]

If the condensor was damaged and all the gas had leaked out, then your AC would not have been working and nor could the AC compressor be clutching in and squealing.

These things do not add up.

[Guest]

jrw, you give good advice that can work in many cases, but almost certainly not this one if it goes to court. I know of only one person that has actually used a small claims court against a dealer to get a condenser rad replaced and it failed completely. I represented our dealership and arrived at court with our area technical rep and legal rep. This was after an exhaustive process during which we tried at every level to help although we couldn't just give him another cooler as the cost was substantial. I had the specs for the car with me, the old rad and an independant report from the AA which our garage had comissioned. A copy of this report was sent to the claimant and the court of course. He still went ahead with his claim against the advice of the trading standards. All evidence showed the rad was damaged by a stone chip to the cooler. The part was of merchantable quality, the design no different to any other car at the time. It was not covered under warranty as was stated in his warranty agreement. All very unfortunate since in the beginning our dealership had offered him a very good discount on having the job done. It wasn't our fault a stone had damaged his cooler, but he was our customer and we wanted to help. He would have in effect, paid cost price to have a replacement and he would have paid minimal labour from what I remember. In the end we withdrew our offer as he was just so nasty and threatening to us and very unreasonable. In the end we understand he paid much more at another dealership to have it done but he really was a customer we didn't want business from so we were happy for that to have happened. It was one of the very rare customer dealer relationship breakdowns that I'd ever experienced.

[stevensmith91]

Sorry but this sort of thing can happen in any make cars , just pay for the repair or do without Aircon as your wasting your time through SMC or SOG .

Why do people expect accidental damage to be covered under warranty ? after all its just that Accidental damage and there's nothing you could have done to avoid this .

[Tech1e]

If the condensor was damaged and all the gas had leaked out, then your AC would not have been working and nor could the AC compressor be clutching in and squealing.

These things do not add up.

There is no clutch on the compressor. I suspect the noise heard was because the gas level was low and there was nothing wrong with the compressor anyhow.

[weeloon]

I can't believe the OP thinks this is either the garages fault or Skoda UK's fault.

The layout of the car is no worse than any other manufacturers.

Going by some suggestions you better put a mesh grill in front of the windscreen as is so stupidly placed its bound to get stone chipped!

Poor garage being told they can't get thier courtesy car back, I wonder how many other customers are now delayed as the car they had booked wasn't available and their children now can't go where they need to?

Grow up & either pay to have it fixed or live without your a/c.

[Kiwibacon]

Forum issues, can't quote.

Tech1e, so these are variable volume compressors that are running 100% of the time and just scale right back rather than clutching out?

How much gas can leak out while still having an operational system? On my cars it's very little, but those systems are traditional clutch in/out even though some of them run variable volume compressors.

[Tech1e]

That's right mate, scales back to a minimum of 2% just to keep it moving. The solenoid is duty cycled from the control unit. As gas levels drop you get a kind of whooshy burbling noise from behind the dash, I've seen this happen at very low gas levels. It seems the pressure switch still keeps the system in even though there ain't enough gas for it to really work.

[Furbytom]

If the stone chip damage is genuine I don't think you have any basis for a claim. I would however complain about the sloppy service from SUK - failing to call back when they say they will is very annoying and poor.

I'd be abit sceptical why they didn't find the damage to the condenser the first time it was in the workshop? Are they saying it must of happened in the 3 week interval between trips to the dealer? Is there the possibility that they damaged the condenser whilst doing the compressor repair but are trying to now pass this off as 'stone damage'? Seems unlikely and most mechanics are not dishonest like that but I do like a conspiracy theory now and then! ;-)

[Ootohere]

Best to get them to show you the Condenser & take pictures of it, (post them here please)

& have it kept safely for inspection.

(mark your 'condenser' with a freezer marker)

I can not see where the direct hit is coming from on the A/C Condenser,

unless you are sitting behind a car at a start of a gravel rally stage.

Its a hit in a million.

Every windscreen chip i have ever had, has been from a HGV going in the opposite direction or cars speeding or overtaking in 'Loose Chip' road works, and i have heard or seen every hit coming..

Small stones make pretty small paint chips.

george

(obviously the Grey one is as an example of a vRS, not mine, just incase anyone does not know what a front looks like)

[weeloon]

I can not see where the direct hit is coming from, unless you are sitting behind a car at a start of a gravel rally stage.

Its a hit in a million.

Every windscreen chip i have ever had, has been from a HGV going in the opposite direction or cars speeding or overtaking in 'Loose Chip' road works, and i have heard or seen every hit coming..

george

I usually see and defo hear any windscreen chip too, but the ones on the front end of the car I don't, I do touch them in to stop them rusting on the bonnet though.

I will agree its not a common fault but more common these days only because a/c is way more common.

The 1st time I experienced it? A mk3 16v vw golf under warranty so probably 1995/6. Pulled a vacuum on the system which it held fine and when regassing the system got hit in the leg by a stone and then some very cold gas.

**** happens

[Guest]

I usually see and defo hear any windscreen chip too, but the ones on the front end of the car I don't, I do touch them in to stop them rusting on the bonnet though.

I will agree its not a common fault but more common these days only because a/c is way more common.

The 1st time I experienced it? A mk3 16v vw golf under warranty so probably 1995/6. Pulled a vacuum on the system which it held fine and when regassing the system got hit in the leg by a stone and then some very cold gas.

**** happens

+1 on the above...it's more common now with ac being so prevalent in motors of all sizes.

[rwbaldwin]

Dealers just don't see that many stone damaged condensers. It normally takes a double hit to cause a leak. The first stone flattens the fins which adsorbs most of the energy. When another stone hits the flattened area it causes a hole.

You seem to have been fortunate that the tech concentrated on the noise rather than hooking it up to the a/c station. Variable displacement compressors cause all sorts of pressure fluctuations so the pressure switch only flags an error when a significant amount of gas is lost, but the a/c station would have revealed the loss.

I'm guessing that if the hole had been discovered before the warranty claim for the compressor had been approved, you would have been on the hook for the whole lot.

[Moist Von Lipwig]

Unfortunate but I've got to agree with the majority on this that the stonenchip is not a warranty issue, would you blaim them for a chipped windscreen, bumper, etc? However as indicated above make sure that this is the actual root cause rather than a coincidence or even a dealer/SUK excuse.

[The Plumber]

My wife's previous Corsa destroyed 7 or was it 8 air con pumps, one associated flexi hose (exploded) and two rigid pipes (collapsed) in four years; Vauxhall just kept replacing the components and never bothered to look any further as to why this was happening.

Gave up at that point and bought a Fabia II, however after two years of almost fault free motoring, that's now giving us issues but for other reasons.

Oh the one time I got poor service from SUK and the dealer I e-mailed the CEO of SUK, which proved effective it getting things resolved to my satisfaction.

TP

[skoda1982]

I have only had my aircon on twice since ive had the car i just open the window. If my aircon got damaged i would not say anything cos in 1 year i will px for a new car so there problem then

[david allcock]

hello, just to say i must agree with the guys who have said that is wouldnt be covered

i use to work at a main dealership where we use to do air con services and can honestly say in a good week we would do 2 or 3 condensers a week, its not a design fault as you will probably find out lots of manufactures put them at the front in front of the std radiator .. right behind the bumper , and it only takes one big contact to cause the leak .... to be honest if they have said thay they will cover the compressor i would go along with it as you may find out that the leaking condenser has caused the compressor to over work and burn out ... classed as consequential damage ... ie not covered under warranty ... good luck

[Guest]

I have only had my aircon on twice since ive had the car i just open the window. If my aircon got damaged i would not say anything cos in 1 year i will px for a new car so there problem then

If you have only had the aircon on twice since you bought it then the seals may already be 'fooked'. They will dry out and leak if you don't use it for about 10mins per month as per the book.

[rwbaldwin]

If you have only had the aircon on twice since you bought it then the seals may already be 'fooked'. They will dry out and leak if you don't use it for about 10mins per month as per the book.

This is not correct. A variable displacement compressor is never really off. The minimum displacement is sufficient to circulate the PAG oil and stop the seals drying out.