Tuesday started well with my local dealer agreeing to come and pick my car up from home and take it in to have the front seat covers and the temperature sensor replaced under warranty. Unfortunately, when it was returned on Wednesday evening the guy (Alex from Caffyns in Ashford - nice bloke ) said that one of the seat covers had got a stain on it. He explained to my wife that they had tried to clean it off but had not been entirely successful - said to try and clean again and then ring back for another replacement if we had no success. Anyway, got up on Wednesday morning and the drivers seat had completely swollen up in the middle :eek: - whatever they had used to try and clean the stain off has obviously reacted very badly with the foam underneath the cover which has just ballooned. Any ideas what might cause this sort of reaction?

..... day got worse when I returned to find my car had been clamped for (slightly) overhanging a parking spot :rant:

Originally posted by KentStu in this post

..... day got worse when I returned to find my car had been clamped for (slightly) overhanging a parking spot :rant:

You're in Kent? Call out Anglegrinder Man!

http://www.anglegrinderman.co.uk

Stu, the padding for the seat is listed in ETKA as a separate part so get them to replace yours under warranty.

Cheers Denis - Garage has said to wait a couple of days to see if anything changes but I must admit I was worried about what whether the padding was an integral part of the actual seat or whether they could just replace the relevant section. That ETKA thing seems mighty useful

Clamped? :( - Not as bad as speeding I may add. Get that escapologist bloke from the USA, who is doing some david blanie'esque street tricks over here. The trailer for his show saw him removing a wheel clamp from a car. What a wonderful asset it would be to be able to remove wheel clamps with your bare hands

that why i keep a 12" grinder in the boot jason

Handy Tip # 101

"Some" wheel clamps can be extremely easy to remove

If you can get your hand to the inflation valve, then you might be lucky.

Jack the car up, let the offending tyre down, and hopefully, the clamp will pull over the now flattened tyre. If you have very low-profile tyres, this probably wont work.

When attempting to remove a clamp, dont be tempted to cut it off, as you will be open to a nice Criminal Damage charge.

If you DO get it off, take it back to the company that owns it, otherwise its theft

I would insist they change the non perfect parts, including those affected by their poor attempt to get out of the mire shall we say.

There is no way I would agree to waiting a few days to see if something they had done and caused got better, insist on replacement parts, especially as they should have done it with new parts already. (Whose fault the new part is "faulty" is not your problem, and to you should be an irrelevance)

Andy

Andy - am likely to request that in the end but am willing to wait a couple of days as the dealer has been very helpful and friendly so far. Also, there is limited point in me getting in a strop early as it took Skoda ages to send the seat covers to the dealer in the first place and I can see that it will take even longer to get the foam padding ordered - will see if it cleans up / settles and if not then start causing a fuss.

Very fair point Stu....I tend to get all aggresive when things go wrong with my car, and being in the Service Industry I usually want things moving straight away.

But if your dealer has been helpful, and as you say the parts took a while I spose I would probably take a similar view, but I would still have let them know about the foam swelling. That to me sounds like something that wont do the foam anygood longterm, so at least you will need that replaceing?

One thing tho Stu...could it be the ballooning of the padding is a chemical reaction resulting in a gas build up?

I would just be careful and make sure the car is vented and the ballooning allowed to subside before use?

Andy

My seat covers bubbled up slightly like yours after it was replaced before, I don't think any chemicals were used on it, they did replace it again and the padding underneath.